As someone who went down the conspiracy theory rabbit hole in the 00s but realized Alex Jones was full of shit by 2010, I was incredibly baffled to see the movement align behind someone who could be an avatar of everything it feared.

That said, the racism and bigotry in that movement had gone right over my head and I generally dismissed the more out there shit like lizard people or aliens being involved because it sounded stupid. I believed (and still do) that that shit is part of a real strategy to use ridiculous claims to generate noise that makes real things like MK ultra more likely to be dismissed along with them.

[–] HawlSera@lemm.ee 6 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

Went through the same thing, admittedly what got me out of it was realizing how often it came back to "And that's why Hitler did nothing wrong!"

Which made me go "That whole "genocide is good actually" thing... doesn't really align with all this talk of how peace and love are being threatened by the forces of darkness..."

I figured it was a few bad eggs who just somehow got the wrong message, but it kept happening

All the people telling me I was on the George Soros payroll was kinda the very last straw, because how could I be the bad guy in this "conspiracy" and being so richly rewarded for it if I was struggling this much? And who the fuck was George Soros? I still to this day barely know who the fuck that even is.

[–] Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 4 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Yeah, for me it was Alex Jones presenting this idea that the world elites had a plan to depopulate the world, saying that he had a solution, but then leaving that as a cliffhanger for his next video. I was left thinking, "wait, this seems more urgent than 'wait for my next video', if that's really happening, it should be a 'we gotta stop this now'".

And then I thought about the high production value of his videos. They were professional level, which would take a budget. Someone threatening such powerful enemies wouldn't have a budget, they'd have problems created by those enemies (because I never ended up in that "our enemies are simultaneously strong and weak" mindset). I didn't realize at the time how profitable his schemes were and that he could easily pay for professional-level feature-length videos, but by the time I understood that, I saw his grift for what it was.

Lol I remember being frustrated by the normies that kept dismissing it, but getting caught up in the denial shit from within sounds even more frustrating.

[–] HawlSera@lemm.ee 3 points 3 weeks ago

This reminds me of when I kinda realized Fox News was pure evil because I saw them talking about how Obama was this crazy tyrant who was plotting to destroy the nation...

And I just asked the guy on the TV "Wait, if he's a Tyrant who doesn't care about the Constitution hellbent on this evil, flaunting it as you say..... Then why hasn't he ordered your execution? Why are you on the number 1 rated News program talking about this in broad daylight in a high definition television that's just sitting casually in the middle of this Hardee's?"

And then that's when the lady behind the counter is like "Sir, this is a Wendy's"

and I'm like "I am a Ma'am, and this is a Hardee's!"

[–] Overshoot2648@lemm.ee 3 points 3 weeks ago

Went thru the same thing in 2014