This is a long but very good read. I think of the people I know who have gone down this rabbit hole. https://secularhumanism.org/2022/12/a-light-at-the-end-of-the-rabbit-hole/
Lost a very close friend of 27 years to this rabbit hole. This writer's life-arc into conspiracy theory belief is a very close mirroring of his, but instead of seeing the light shortly before 2020, he went deeper and deeper down. Where he remains, no longer speaking to me or any of his old friends. I think about this situation every day. I miss my friend.
Like flat earth or any of the other BS peddled as some hidden truth, this is just a bunch of folk wanting to be the center of their world in a world where there is no place for them. religion and other collectivist hobbies used to pat this down but in a post-truth era it seems harder and harder to avoid being exposed to all this crap. I’m sorry for those of you that have lost friends and fam to these things. It is a difficult thing to forego when it is the only thing that grounds you.
Good read, thanks for sharing @Roger it's easy to see how this could happen under the right circumstances. I used to listen to Art Bell every night when I was a kid. I imagine if I didn't have many friends and conversed heavily with other people who listened it could have slid closer in this direction and further from entertainment (which it was). @gatiio I was definitely thinking about religion while reading this. You could have substituted the word (insert your favorite religion here) and the essay would have tracked. How much of religion is just socially acceptable conspiracy theory? I thought of our corner of the weberverse when I read this excerpt: "My personality is inclined toward obsessive, hyper-focused bouts of interest in specific topics, so these obsessions come and go. A particular interest may be relegated to the background of my attention, but it is always somewhere in my mind." I have the same personality but fortunately I'm hyper-focused on grown man baby dolls and not Qanon!
