“I’m fine, thanks. Who are you?”

My first week at the MAGIC school! 💥🏰 | Vlog, Room Tour, Teacher tier list I feat. @hgranger and @ronny_w

Winning the lottery. Not “acceptable” maybe, but a valid reason nonetheless.

My observation during Covid was that once they are “hooked” on a certain conspiracy, they go out of their way to discredit/ignore any facts that state otherwise. My assumption is that the longer this goes on, the harder they are fighting to stick to “their truth”. They rather accept obvious false news than accept that they were wrong initially.

Why? Because they would need to go back and acknowledge being wrong, " loosing their face" in front of a lot of people. They may have had angry conversations over the conspiracies with loved ones and may have even cut ties. (Experienced that first-hand with family.) The further down the rabbit hole they go, the higher the “costs” of going back up.

I wish it was that easy. That part of my family is a bit more remote, so I don’t see them that often. Still, I hurt thinking about how this misinformation was able to divide us like that. There’s also little point in arguing with them. We simply don’t talk much anymore, and if we do, we keep the topics light and refrain from politics and/or other world-news topics such as climate change. (Which is not really a thing, if you ask them, but I think you get the idea.)

For us, the topics just changed. After Covid, they started to talk Pro-Putin bullshit, probably Q-Anon related. It’s honestly shocking to see people who I once thought of as intelligent turn brainwashed. We rarely talk anymore, and if we do, it’s very superficial.