“Moon landing was fake!!!” “You still believe the moon is real?”

My best friend has an unnatural talent for this sort of thing and really enjoys toying with conspiracy theory nuts.

When folks start talking about crazy shit, it makes me very anxious and I tend to shut down. Not my buddy. He eggs them on, encourages it, and gets them to say things or agree with things that are even more outlandish than where they conversation started. Things will start at “China invented covid to kill off old people” and somehow end up at “Hillary Clinton paid to have her chromosomes added to the covid vaccines so that DNA evidence can no longer be used against her in the courts”.

I fondly remember reading a comment in /r/conspiracy on a post claiming a geologic seismic weapon brought down the towers.

It just tore into the claims, citing all the reasons this was preposterous bordering on batshit crazy.

And then it said “and your theory doesn’t address the thermite residue” going on to reiterate their wild theory.

Was very much a “don’t name your gods” moment that summed up the sub - a lot of people in agreement that the truth was out there, but bitterly divided as to what it might actually be.

As long as they only focused on generic memes of “do your own research” and “you aren’t being told the truth” they were all on the same page. But as soon as they started naming their own truths, it was every theorist for themselves.