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.
OK so you got me!!! I fell for all of that crap, Nesara, tunnels, you know the drill. So much so that my hubby was going flying on inauguration day 2021 and I begged him not to as The crap was going to hit the fan that day! After that day I realized Hmmmm it didnt happen and hasnt since either. Why are so many weaving that storyline? We DO KNOW something is drastically wrong in our country, between covid and vaccines etc etc etc. but sorting out the information has gotten so hard to do. I USED to believe MSM but no more, I never turn on the TV, so digging for the info is tough. Being a retired nurse I KNOW that our medical system has failed and hospitals have become a place people are afraid to go to. I hope we can turn this around and have a better world soon!
Awesome article, Jordan. I started my Q investigation somewhat late in the game in 2020 (distracted trying to keep our business in business with all the crazy compliance and watching Trump, cuomo and our local county exec blather on every day). Anyway, my first foray (like most people) is just to open a search engine and start looking at different things that come up. I just looked at everything good and bad. Of course the first ones to come up are what i feel are "promoted fakes". Obviously, I started out with charlie ward, david steele, scott mckay, michael jaco etc. because they were the ones coming up. After a month or so, I could pretty much dismiss everyone but scott mckay...for him I listened a bit longer but never bought into the nesara/gesara luckily. I did believer some of the other crap he spewed at first, but then I found you and X22 (I am not sure in which order), but then I felt like I was getting solid info. From your channels, I found many other credible people on youtube (just before the great purge of Oct 2020) and later telegram. I really appreciate that you actually engage and answer people in the chats telegram and took questions on twitch when you were live! You gently pointed out a few of MelK's idiosyncrasies when I was on the fence about her in the beginning and Stew Peters. After the giant let down of The installation of Biden, I realized that I had let my emotions get the better of me. I have always been the type of person to make sure I take a step back when I feel emotional about something and then look for fact-based confirmation before acting on it. I now have gone back to my second level of evaluation. If I am really excited about something and sounds awesome, I make myself research the opposite point of view and require that I find some solid info pointing toward the "belief" without the hype. (Sometimes I try to run it by the Hubbs to ask him if I sound like it's too far fetched.) I make sure I get more "facts" in the pro column than the con. Now when I discuss things with people (like the lady in the article above) I bring up the fact that I have had a tendency to believe certain parts of the hot topic issue, but since then I read this article or watched that video and i have shifted my belief on a sliding scale from "probable" to "possible" to "not likely" (or something along those lines). I also always try to be honestly open minded and look at things they send over too so they know I really am. Where it gets difficult for me is when someone is starting out COMPLETELY outside the realm of my understanding (like talking points from MSNBC or some of the more left activist talking points). WIth these people there is alot more ground to cover to get to common ground. I had a heated telegram interaction in one chat where one guy was using profanity to everyone who made a comment in the chat. I asked him why he was even in the chat and why he cared so much. After a few unpleasant exchanges he finally admitted we were all idiots and we vote, which greatly concerned him. I told him that was fair, but that most of us felt the same way about him voting. I was happy that he seemed to let me ask some questions and once I told him that I didn't believe in most of the crap that he rambled off, I also told him there are alot of people out there SPECIFICALLY planted to make us look like asses to the normies and that it is actually hard to wade thru all the info out there. People are all on a different timeline too...I have changed my mind a few times from a year ago and I think I will change it once or twice (LOL) in the next year.