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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsNext time you see a Republican spout "crisis actor" conspiracy theories on social media, report them
Between "crisis actors" and this QAnon tweet that says Trump is arresting his deep state enemies, but Hollywood is replacing them with clever imposters, it's too much, and it's dangerous.
It's the Capgras delusion, where the person suffering from this believes people around them have been replaced by imposters... You see it with brain lesions (Charles Whitman, a spree shooter, had one), see it with dementia, with schizophrenia... things that aren't good. Not only is it a sign of both declining physical and mental health, it's hard to treat, mainly because the person with these sees everyone else as imposters with dark motives.
This isn't simple enabling, like calling the workplace for a person who has a drinking problem and telling them they can't come into work because they feel sick.
This is next-level enabling, it's actively enabling the problem:
It's like telling a teenage girl with anorexia that she is fat and ugly or it's like telling a person who suffers from auditory hallucinations the voices he hears telling him to hurt himself are onto something.
But yet we see it on social media, it being broadcast that people aren't real, they are actors and imposters.
I think that maybe tweets that push "crisis actors" and "Deep State imposter" conspiracy theories should be reported by anyone who sees it, this isn't politics, this is mental health.
I don't know, maybe we should work to make it a policy that this kind of dangerous enabling shouldn't even be allowed on social media, it's no different than hate speech IMHO.
guillaumeb
(42,641 posts)Some apparently need to believe in such things. Conspiracists have an explanation for everything. The problem is that their explanations are generally unsupported and often dangerous.
Witness the armed man who went to the pizza parlor to rescue the child sex slaves.
safeinOhio
(32,532 posts)voters going back out and putting on a hat and fake beard and voting again and again?