"Victim" is an interesting term, but quite accurate. There's such a an effort and investment into converting people to that cult. I wish you the best with your mother, hopefully the other half of your conversations is more pleasant and eventually overtakes the conspiracy theories.

I don't. We don't talk. Relatives of mine, including one of my parents, sank into vaccine conspiracies, then followed that pipeline to Qanon, and then explained to me how they were waiting for Trump to lead his secret army to take down the government of my non-english-speaking, european country.

I gave them their keys back, I got my keys backs, I blocked them everywhere, I nuked my accounts on the social media they use (and where their posts steadily got worse). It's a hard decision, I still think about it often still (it's been nearly two years), but I will never talk to them again.

I fell in love with Submerged when I played it. It's an exploration game set in a flooded city, where you play a young girl looking for supplies for her injured brother. Lots of navigating between buildings in a little boat, climbing around, and taking in the scenery. Incredibly relaxing to play.

I think the young feel immune, and that they feel socially progressive news cannot be lies because "that is not what our side does, we have ethics".

It's not true in practice, though. Fake news are used to sow division, and making people angry on both sides is part of it. The far-right, boomer fake news are more obvious because they are outlandish, but there's more than that out there.

It is, and I feel the questions are quite obvious.

That being said... I'm related to conspiracy theorists. I got a first-row seat to their dumbassery on facebook before I deleted my account. And... a significant issue was paywalled articles with clickbait titles, during Covid especially. The title was a doubt-inducing questions, such as "Do vaccines make you magnetic?" and the reasoning disproving that was locked behind the paywall. And my relatives used those as confirmation that their views were true. Because the headlines introduced doubt and the content wasn't readable. That and satire articles.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firehose_of_falsehood

The immediate aim is to entertain, confuse, and overwhelm the audience, and disinterest in or opposition to fact-checking and accurate reporting means the propaganda can be delivered to the public more quickly than better sources.

That's... That was true for me, I think. I'm old, didn't always have the internet, I trusted books and family.

But I trusted books, which made me a bit of an alien in my family. And then I acquired extreme suspicion of everything when, at the same time, I started paying attention to far-right politics, and my family got sucked into far-right thinking.

Now they went full Qanon, which pretty much radicalized me. Things are so emotionally charged for me now that I have to doubt and cross-check out of sheer and absolute spite. That shit robbed me of my family and I am so, so pissed.

Or it becomes mostly unmoderated, near a major election, at the same time as twitter turns into disinfo central.

Go for it! Time on Stardew Valley is time well spent!

I find the farming sims that have a plotline are easier for me to stop, even if I get obsessed, because you finish the story, befriend everyone... And then there isn't much left to do unless you just want to chill and collect things. At which point you can move to My Time At Portia or any of the hundreds of similar games and start the whole process all over a....... I have issues, don't I?

I am taking supplements, but I need to figure my shit out because I fuck up either on the B12 or iron, each time. My first "bad" B12 deficiency came with some nerve issues and I do not want a repeat of that, it doesn't entirely go away.

My goal is to entirely cut out meat, though. Right now, I don't buy it for home food, but if I'm out with friends or coworkers, I'll get whatever. It's iterative, and as more alternatives become available in public places, I'll get there.

I don't feel like that's a fair comparison. Meat consumption has a lot of issues, but the consumer, at the end of the production chain, does not eat his steak with the mindset of "how much more can I make an animal suffer for the lulz, and can we take pliers to it first?". Mostly, they are apathetic or unaware. (Disclosure: I have reduced meat a lot myself but am not entirely out yet and I keep giving myself B12 deficiency.)

I'd compare with much higher in the production chain, the people who devised and enforce inhumane practices.

I have no fucking clue but it gets tiring...