Clickbait Recovery: How Do You Save Your Friends From The Hopium??

The mainstream media tries to brainwash us, and some "patriot" influencers do, too.

As many of you know, I’m not a fan of influencers who manipulate others for their own personal benefit, especially when they promote clear disinformation to their audiences for fame and money. If we’re going to call out the mainstream media for being propagandists and spreaders of falsehoods, we cannot become the same.

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.
- Friedrich Nietzsche

While some get upset with me for going after the clickbait and promoters of it, I think it’s important to devote some of my time and energy to that task. There are many people new to waking up and this “truth movement”, and they make easy targets for clickbait connoisseurs. Heck, I myself was once caught up with “NESARA is coming!” and “mass arrests are happening!” narratives back in 2012. I know the emotional roller coaster and psychological stress that can come from believing these sorts of false narratives, and I wish I had someone trying to slap some common sense into me back then. My goal now is to give some tough love assistance to those working to hone their discernment.

A viewer sent a great question to me the other day on Telegram that I want to expound on here.

This is what was asked:

She wanted the truth and didn’t let her feelings cloud her judgement about these subjects. Good. Unfortunately it sounds like her sister is letting her emotional attachments to these ideas affect her critical thinking.

So how can we help people get off of this clickbait “madness”?? I do have a few suggestions here:

1) Question and counter.

Continuously question the particular clickbait narratives that they believe. “What is NESARA? Where does it come from? Why do you think the Earth is Flat? What technology do these med beds use? What evidence is there of kids being rescued from tunnels under the White House?”. Keep asking questions in an effort to really get them to clarify what they believe, and more importantly, why they believe it. You can also attempt to counter with truthful information, but this may cause cognitive dissonance in their minds and you could get certain pre-programmed defensive responses, so this may or may not be successful. I find that asking question after rhetorical question can be successful because you can sometimes get them to see (and admit) the ridiculousness of their own beliefs.

2) Ask for sources.

”Where did you read that?” and “Who did you hear that from?” Asking for them to provide sources for their narratives is very powerful, often people who latch onto clickbait propaganda will forget where they first acquired the narrative because they are far more focused on the emotional response to the idea than the truthfulness of the claim itself. Asking them for a source, and then the subsequent blank stare you get when they cannot provide it, may help them to realize the error in their judgement. In the chance that they do provide a source, you can then further inquire about this source, asking “what makes you think they are credible”. Getting someone to do some mental gymnastics in an effort to prove disinformation super spreaders like Real Raw News or Charles Ward may help you find success.

3) Challenge them to take a week off social media.

I find that one of the main reasons people get addicted to hopium and clickbait centers around an addiction to the ‘ cult of personalities’. It’s not really about finding the truth to them as much as it’s an emotional comfort zone listening to talking heads and their crazy claims, whether they realize it or not. Ask them to commit to take a week or two off of social media, maybe do the challenge with them because anyone could benefit from normalizing the dopamine levels in their noggin’. They may just realize that their life is a little better without the constant mental stress of needing to know what’s next and hearing the roller coaster of allegations from the social media conspiracy community, and they just realize how addicted to the clickbait they were.

4) Patience.

Sometimes all you need to do is wait. A good friend once told me “Bullshit has a shelf life”, and boy does it. I remember when I was caught up with the NESARA stuff, I really did believe the internet blogs that would say “It’s coming this weekend! Next week! Almost here!”. When all of these claims didn’t pan out, I began to realize that I was getting hoodwinked. As your friend or family members continuously gets let down by the claims that don’t come true, eventually they will realized that they themselves are getting hoodwinked by careless influencers.

As the old adage goes, you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make them drink it. While you can attempt to make the horse realize it’s thirsty and make that water look real good for horsey, at the end of the day it’s up to them to drink it. You can try to help your friends and colleagues realize that they’re getting duped by internet clickbait, but building discernment is an internal, personal process. It’s up to the individual to experience and hone that discernment on their own. While that’s said, do not give up! Never underestimate the power of planting seeds in someone’s consciousness. It’s up to them to build the discernment, but any of us can surely help. Question, challenge, share with them counterpoints and truthful information, over time they will develop a seasoned approach to critically thinking through ‘conspiracy theory’ world.

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