i'm kind of seeing how the mainstream
media and the alternative side of the
pandemic both use sensational fear
mongering to get people to look at their
articles
so my dad called me this week this is a
month after he pretty dramatically cut
contact with me and my sister he
completely freaked out about the war in
ukraine and told us that he couldn't
talk to us anymore until we came to his
side basically it was kind of shocking
like coming in the middle of what i
thought was a pretty successful attempt
to slowly de-radicalize him which came
from the breakthrough that we had in the
family therapy session i was even
writing an entire essay about what i was
doing and how it was working and how
other people might be able to do
something like it but i've had that one
on hold because it's looked like
everything might have failed but that's
where my dad's call this week comes in
he left a message saying that he missed
talking and he just wanted to catch up
so i called him back and we ended up
having one of the most constructive
conversations about his beliefs that i
have ever experienced in my life my dad
is q and on adjacent i would say more
like he was one of the original 911
truther conspiracy theorists influencers
if there was such a thing for the early
2000s and then q anon formed itself
around beliefs like his so following the
q anon currents he's been mostly
concerned with coveted conspiracies so
every conversation we've had since the
pandemic began has at some point got
into talking about how it's all hoax and
the vaccine is going to kill me and
stuff like that but that's where things
suddenly changed in this phone call so
in one of my conversations with my dad
post the family therapy session he asked
me if i would be willing to consider
blog posts and things about coveted
conspiracy theories
as long as they used government and
health organization data to prove their
points and i've always engaged with his
conspiracy theories a little bit i've
never believed them but i've always been
willing to talk about the less terrible
ones so i told him that was fine and he
took me up on that and a few times
between the therapy session in october
2021 and the beginning of the war this
february he emailed me these huge
batches of posts from internet
conspiracy rumor blogs and to his credit
the posts stuck to using some kind of
official data so i took a look at what i
had time for and i found that in every
case it took about five minutes to
figure out how the author was
deliberately misunderstanding the data
to validate some fear or
make themselves feel like they're
smarter than the scientists and then i
would email my dad back to thoroughly
but calmly
and in as positive and generous terms as
possible
explain why everything on these posts
was wrong i figured that after the
success of our therapy session that
trying to debunk these claims might work
out differently than it had in the past
but it didn't seem to
at least at the time he just moved the
goalposts back toward his higher order
belief that global elites are lying
about the pandemic to control us but he
was still less obsessive and angry and
he was willing to put these constraints
on himself when talking to me about this
stuff so
that was something at least and then the
war started and it seemed like all that
was gone but here's what he said to me
in the call that we just had and i'm
gonna look at my notes so i get this
right from my best recollection because
who thought he would ever say this okay
quote you really got me with those
articles i should have checked to make
sure they were right and i'm being more
careful about which ones i use now
i'm kind of seeing how the mainstream
media and the alternative side of the
pandemic both use sensational fear
mongering to get people to look at their
articles
in 20 years of my dad being an avid
career conspiracy theorist i have never
heard him say anything like that before
but that doesn't mean that he's turned
around he still believes that the
vaccines are dangerous and all kinds of
other counterproductive and terrible
things but i've never thought of getting
him off conspiracy theories as a
realistic goal like conspiracy theories
are his life i've just wanted to get him
to a place where he no longer supports
and definitely doesn't spread the most
awful beliefs that he picked up during
the trump era he's always been willing
to listen to me but for him to
internalize the things i've been saying
when i debunk the anti-vaccine codes
conspiracy blogs is like just crazy like
he's actually willing to flatly dismiss
conspiracy theory articles that i debunk
and not not to move the goal posts again
but just to say like gotcha that's why
this is wrong thanks for telling me at
least with covid conspiracies and
there's still
a million more things to debunk still
that's something that i thought would
never happen and if that can happen with
my dad
it doesn't mean it can happen with
everyone but it can certainly happen
with a lot of people the call was a bit
of a one step forward two steps back
situation but
right now i just want to focus on the
good part i'll get to the bad stuff
in a bit