"Birds Aren't Real" leader TED talk about his movement | Peter McIndoe

I had this saved for a while, but was too busy to watch it until today (more like did not prioritize it). I should have watched it sooner, it is really good. The idea that people are going to conspiracy theories for communities was nothing new to me. However, hearing Peter's experience of having people come up and critique his conspiracy theory and him getting defensive was highly insightful. He did not believe it, but due to his method acting he felt what true believers actually felt, which even surprised himself. The other idea that I thought was interesting is these aggressive approaches people do to help conspiracy theorists come to reality actuality defines their otherness. Peter explained the concept of how we put people into the category of the other/outsider much better than me so those reading this should watch this and listen to him explain it better

There‘s a great documentary on Netflix called “Behind the Curve” about people—in that case genuinely—believing the earth is flat. I went into it, admittedly expecting to laugh at them for believing in something so absurd (and some bits are genuinely funny) but what impressed me most was a whole angle towards the end of the documentary where they go into why people join the movement.

It’s all about community, finding a place where you can connect and share a common belief. I got the impression a lot of the people in it just convinced themselves to believe the conspiracy theory to get a place in the club and that feeling of being part of something exciting. I wouldn’t know how to translate that into a way to sway people away from conspiracy theories that are genuinely harmful (and it seemed like flat earther beliefs can be gateway drugs to more dangerous theories). But there’s something about the issue that isn’t talked about enough and that could eventually be a solution to the rampant spread of online conspiracy theories.

This might be the longest post of mine, big one incoming. A whole lot of my time and effort has gone toward understanding these kinds of dynamics because I'm surrounded by them. I've never really committed it all to a single piece of writing, so I'd like to make that attempt here. When I go in second person, I'm not telling folks what to do or how to think, it's just a way of phrasing it that makes it easier to say, to me.

The video was a good watch. It got me thinking a lot about some conclusions I came to in trying to understand and work against this kind of thing among people close to me. I wouldn't argue mine was the best way or the only way, or even anything novel. Just that this was much more effective and less confusing than trying to debate facts with people, and I hope with sharing it others can find something useful. Just to preface, I'm being very literal and mechanistic in trying to present what I'm saying - I'm not trying to argue a value judgment, though I can't help but relate where I stand with some of it. When I use the word "conspiracist" im referring to someone who is subject to conspiratorial thinking, a consumer of the material. Not someone who produces new conspiratorial material or leads/helps administrate any of their groups. The sheep, if we want to be rude about it. I'm also not attempting to describe or fully illustrate how the conspiracies or their associated groups operate. I'm attempting to lay out an approach that in my life actually produced positive results, meaning individuals who were once lost in it returned to being people who could, at least, conduct themselves and their families in a way that actually lined up with what they wanted.

Some market logic ended up being very helpful. Helpful, in that it provided a framework for understanding how information flows within the conspiratorial groups. I think what's happening at base is transactional, because of the constraining nature of addictive patterns. An addiction restricts perspective, reduces one down into a more immediately self-serving mode, and I believe the further you go into that the less intellectually grounded you become, backed by both some book learning and experience. By "intellectually grounded", I mean having beliefs that you can explain and justify, and debate somewhat dispassionately. Beliefs you arrived at because you felt they made sense and served a purpose you can (and want to) articulate, as opposed to "feels good", "just seems right", etc and being reticent with the details. The folks I was observing would outright state their beliefs were grounded in those latter sentiments, which to me means the whole concept of debate has been cut from the equation whether they think so or not. They were not looking for the truth, so there is no point trying to find it with them, which is what a debate is meant to work toward. They were deliberately engaging in confirmation bias as a measure to resolve anguish. "Truth seeking" is a lie they told themselves to justify the time and attention spent, their attempt at rationalizing their excessive consumption. I deliberately dropped the idea of their educational level having any meaning, because in this framing, it is only tangentially important - it affects the precise way in which you conduct things, how you talk, but in and of itself educational material will not address the problem because its usefulness has been dismantled by group psychology and bad faith actors. You have to operate without any of the usual intellectual tools, in other words.

So, I reframed the problem, from an intellectual one into a behavioral one. As in, I started considering the problem of conspiracy as a problem of behavioral patterns. If I had to be succinct, it's this:

Media addiction is driving people to use their beliefs as currency to buy the support their addiction ultimately precludes them from having. The dissonance doing this brings about produces a feedback loop, of diving further into the material to offset the discomfort because it is their primary coping mechanism. The effect of technology has been to enable networking of individuals in this state, creating "anti-support" groups - groups which use the threat of ostracization to maintain their structures and redirect time/effort toward ends the subject doesn't choose, producing further dissonance that fuels the addictive pattern.

In this framing, the conspiracist's beliefs, themselves, are irrelevant. It doesn't matter whether it's flat earth, putting h2o2 in your humidifier, ufo's, whatever. Think of each of these like a crypto coin (I'm sorry for that analogy, really lol) - each Belief is worth something to different groups. Hold the appropriate coin and the group lets you in, and you want in because it gives you stuff you're not otherwise getting (or, can't recognize, or even more importantly, don't want to recognize. People also wind up here out of sheer boredom, even). Trading and exchanging principles becomes easier the more they do it and their groups share techniques for rationalizing it. Their values change over time; what purchased entry today might not tomorrow, because of the efforts to turn the group toward specific ends. Those ends vary and aren't really relevant either - some groups are one person's cult, some are partisan in nature, both and neither, so on and so forth. The groups the conspiracist belongs to will ostracize them for not making the same trades and holding the same coins. They have an awareness of this but I doubt would ever articulate it this way; hypocrisy really gets to them, because they know in some way they're effectively wallowing in hypocrisy to get what they want. They know they're inconsistent and their beliefs lack justification. The groups help them ignore that and lie to themselves about it. There can be a lot of shame wrapped around that, which makes it very difficult to approach directly. They can also come to see people who aren't engaging in what theyre doing as being stupid, because the addictive pattern means they're often just mapping themselves onto people instead of understanding their perspective and motivations. "You're a fool for not wanting what I want" is a pretty classic piece of human shittiness rhat gets worked on with all the rest, in that world.

That means, from the end of someone attempting to reach them, what you're doing when you debate the facts is effectively questioning the value of the beliefs, which for them is an incontrovertible, demonstrable truth. That currency buys access and that is their value (again, to the conspiracist). "Truth" is just the word folks are using to denote the value (again, their perspective), so you sound pretty ridiculous/stupid for not seeing it the same way, like someone who doesn't understand money. They think you're playing their game badly. Your argument doesn't go anywhere because your argument can't deliver the stream of feel-goods those beliefs do and it's the feel-goods that matter. You're arguing with the addiction, not a set of reasoned positions, and the subject will trust you less the more obvious it is you are not participating in their patterns, another piece of classic human shittiness also being worked on by their groups.

So the approach has to be different if the goal of talking to them is to get met. They're hunting for a bond, for belonging, and this drive has become irrational. It takes time away from things they cherish, they know, and the sunk cost is dissonance they're constantly trying to avoid, poorly. The best you have, by my measure, is the relationship that exists between you. If that relationship matters to them, it can function as leverage to pull them out of their addiction - ostracization is their biggest fear. By delivering a superior form of connection, one which they prefer over the conspiracy shit, you can deliver what they're looking for and thus cut off their reasons for engaging with insanity. That can take some good forms, too - it really can mean stuff like "we went to see a movie together", or y'all started a hobby, etc. what they're getting online is a cheap facsimile of a bond, give them a real one and they'll move on.

When I started looking at it this way, I started to figure out ways that changed how folks in my life engaged with this sort of nonsense. Limiting access is huge for challenging an addiction, and in this case they have it 24/7 by way of technology. Filling the time with anything else, as often and as much as possible, radically changed their disposition. I had to fill the time, because there wasn't a way to remove the technology. Using important life events to cultivate stronger bonds, eroded their attachment to the stupid shit. What never actually worked, was debating the facts. They don't understand what it means to debate and use the act of debating in an almost masturbatory fashion, to the point of instigating it and feeling put off when it doesn't happen, even taking it personally when you won't do it. They will lie and obfuscate not necessarily because they're some sort of awful person, but because they don't place value on the same things you do, and they've been primed to treat you as being false and deceitful by their groups. To try to have an intellectual debate with someone who is in this position, is highly likely to be fruitless every single time, because no argument can really work against a honed and supported cynicism. They have to change that. So what you can do, is remind them why changing that matters - they can have better stuff, more fulfilling relationships, if they devote their time and effort to that and not to their telegram chat.

You've still got the entirety of your normal relationship to contend with too, if you do reach them. Might be there's a lot that needs addressing, because often families and friends cause each other anguish and often too they do a shit job of talking about it. You may be in for an intense time immediately following a very intense experience. Prepare for it, and it can mean being able to reset a lot all at once. You can deal honestly with the real person again, and not the amalgam of whatever beliefs they had to use to purchase their friends. You dont, and should not ever, debate the newsmax anchor, which is what you're effectively doing in those arguments. He's a professional, his words are crafted to make yours irrelevant and it goes as deep as it needs to to make that happen. He has no restraint and nothing is sacred. Instead of trying to overcome that by being better than him at it, pull a Kirk's Kobayashi Maru and change the game, into one you can win.

I think it's also important to perform a certain kind of calculation, that some will probably find distasteful but nevertheless reasonable. You have to ask yourself whether the people in your life are worth this kind of effort. It's a lot to do and takes much from you. It's also likely not something you can offload to a professional (not at first, at least), because of how central the bond is to making it work - good luck getting a proud conspiracist to go see a therapist at all, much less actually have an honest conversation with one. They'll torpedo those kinds of efforts deliberately and sometimes use the experience to further entrench themselves, when they dont just renege outright on doing it.

For me, family is worth that. Friends are worth that. Because those people were there for me when I needed them. The random dude saying shit about masks on the street is not. The folks organizing to protest each other, are not. Because those folks aren't playing any role in my life. I look at it in that way on purpose, so that I don't commit myself to more than I can actually, effectively do. You gotta pick your battles, and these battles can be very long and uncertain, so be sure about your choice, is all I'm really getting at.

Because what's necessary is a bond to leverage, it means you're stuck in a position where you will have to grow and cultivate that a bit, and if you're talking to random folk on the street there's no telling how much time and effort that will consume. With family and friends, something is already there that you can use. Use it for good purpose and I don't think you need to sweat what it means. You're turning the methods of more nefarious people against them, to create things that are superior and good for all of you, if it all works out. It's also, deliberately small scale, because most of us are just regular ole people with limited influence out there. The change can come from a bunch of folks doing it, if you need something larger to aspire toward.

For me it was much more base - I am sick of it. All of it. I have no more patience for this game of validating each other's perspectives and commiserating over made up/irrelevant problems. That's all it is with folks who are stuck in conspiracy world, constant commiseration and it's fucking miserable. I don't believe what I've been seeing actually had much to do with anything intellectual or political, and so I tried to map out what sort of problem it actually was and then go wreck that problem's shit to make myself a bit happier. Doesn't really need to be any more complex than that, I feel.

Hopefully this is helpful, it's all stuff I'm very interested in and fascinated by outside the negative feeling and personal relationships. Would love to compare notes if someone else has figured a way of punching through, or has their own framework for understanding the issues. What I wrote is what has worked for me inside my slice of things; I shared it in the hope it would be helpful, or at least interesting, since the video is all about how someone experienced being in the thick of it, and every time a story like that comes up I always see folks say they can't think of a way to get at trying to reach people. Tried to offer what I've been able to put together myself now that I can at least articulate it a bit.

This "conspiracy theory" always reminded me of DHMO, which is way funnier and probably less of a social experiment.