A few year back, there was a Netflix documentary about flat earther. They’ve done a couple of experiment to prove that the earth is flat which (Spoiler alert) demonstrated that the earth is round.
So now that these persons have demonstrated scientifically that the earth is round. How are they doing ? Still flat-earther ? or did they give up with the amount of evidence they collected ?
Most probbably just doubled down and made excuses. The main takeaway of the documentary was a lot of those people are just lost/lonely and being part of that club gave them a sense of belonging to a group of similar people.
Yea I’m glad the documentary uncovered that. It really shows why someone would get into this despite it being pretty easy to prove otherwise (even inadvertently proving themselves wrong) they have this little community of friends.
People like to feel like they’re in on some truth that most people aren’t aware of.
The sad part is that the less intelligent someone is, then the stronger is the need for that hidden truth. Highly educated and intelligent people are more comfortable with ignorance and need less that validation of having secret knowledge.
On the other side of that coin, it is much easier for someone with a high degree of intelligence and self awareness, to perform the necessary mental gymnastics to justify bullshit beliefs…
It seems that a lot of the ‘hidden truths’ that the lower intelligence people seem to gravitate to were manufactured by this kind of intelligent bullshit artist. Sociopaths that realize they can control and manipulate gullible people and use them to their own benefit, like cult leaders and such.
A form of narcissism. The need to feel Superior and Special.
There was a short segment on 60 Minutes (maybe?) back in 2020 before the elections where they interviewed someone who had deprogrammed himself from Qanon.
It was the same story. He had no friends IRL, no social support, he had turned his mom onto Qanon and she was still down the rabbit hole.
He said that was the part that kept him in it for so long, even once he started questioning things. All his “friends” and close relations were part of the cult and he would have to cut ties with everyone or worse, they would turn on him and attack him as a traitor.
It would be sad if these online-cults weren’t so damaging to society.
Yup. Eerily similar with what people getting out of MLMs experience.