You really don't understand how crazy you sound?

Okay, so first you start talking about conspiracy theories at a party. Okay, not the greatest discussion for 11:30 PM on the 31st, especially after a few drinks, but hey, I can dig it.

So then you start talking about how the term is demeaning, and go off on this massive tangent about what a “conspiracy” means, and what qualifies as a “conspiracy theory”, as if this somehow made your point that I was being “closed-minded”. But okay, it was confusing and I was drunk so I indulged it.

Then you start talking about Fukushima, and how it’s killing eagles and how my hair is going to be falling out within the next few years due to radiation poisoning and all kinds of shit which is basically insane (FXMaster, don’t even fucking start). When I whip out my smartphone to check the claims, you see nothing wrong with how the sites talking about this claim provide very flimsy evidence and happen to be the same kind of sites that talk about the illuminati preparing for takeover. But what the hell, maybe that was just the wrong site.

And then you claim that everything is orders of magnitude more dangerous than the government claims. And then when I ask for decent evidence for the claims made, you dodge by claiming that there wouldn’t be evidence anyways, and after I point out that you’re shirking the burden of proof and that that’s not good enough, you assert boldfacedly that “things like the burden of proof exist to keep the system in place and bolster the establishment”.

Come the *fuck *on. You know I respect the hell out of you, and you’ve achieved a lot in your life. But telling someone who spends a lot of time looking into science, the scientific method, and the fruits thereof that logic and reason exist to keep the establishment in power… Ugh. No. I get irked enough when someone pisses in the fountain of collected knowledge; this is more like rerouting the inflow pipes to your dick.

And then you claim that I’ll figure it out eventually. That it’s something I’ll learn. That it’s something that comes with age, that people figure out. Never mind that most people don’t just “figure out” with age that the government intentionally understates the danger of essentially every compound, and that a great many people don’t believe that, ever - an argument I actually brought up. But you’ve already basically stated that you find logic a waste of time…

Man, you might wanna lay off the drugs. Yeah, I know you’ll say that the studies showing that weed makes people paranoid are sponsored by the corporate overlords, but god damn. You are paranoid to the point of delusion and it’s freaking me out. Stop hiding behind your “wisdom” (read: age) as an excuse to never back up any of the things you hold for self-explanatory, and expect us to believe. Some of the things you said are simply insane, and as an adult professional who is damn cool in almost every other regard, it bothers me to see you act like this. Or at least don’t kill my buzz like that.

So there are two drunks at a party…

I wonder if Budget Player Cadet knows my crazy relative from Florida.

He really had to be crazy when on the last election he did fall for clearly racist conspiracy theories from extreme tea party groups. I pointed at him that he and his family would not be living in a happy land if people like the ones pushing that kind of nonsense were in power.

I’ve got no love for CTers, but you must be a whale of a lot of fun at parties.

I don’t whip it out until the level of baseless claims becomes obscene.

Hey, I once hunted down a copy of Two Gentlemen of Verona at a Christmas party to prove a gasbag was wrong. Ignorance fighting is a 24/7 duty, baby!

You are supposed to make fun of idiots at parties, not educate them.

Yep. I’m always surprised how long people engage crazies. A sentence and a half in, and I look at my phone, “sorry, gotta take this” and walk off.

Context. It’s all about context.

I actually have the complete works of Shakespeare on my phone (there is indeed an app for that) and have used it about half a dozen tiimes in such a capacity. You wouldn’t think people would still be quibbling about Shakespeare in social gatherings at this point in time but you’d be wrong.

Does not compute.

It was actually a Schubert issue.

wins the thread!

Weird. Apparently it was the time for Fukushima craziness. I was online recently–I think it was NYE–and one of our local online crazies started going on about Fukushima. Started reasonably enough, with something about reactor 3 melting down or the like. And then slid down into crazy, culminating with “I wonder if Fukushima (in Japan) gave my late father (in California) the cancer.” Well, in a word? No, no it didn’t. Arrrghgly.

Wonder if he met an old friend of mine…

As for myself, I don’t whip it out until the girls present become obscene, but YMMV.

I hate it when people are wrong at parties

I’ve spent so much time expected to people why they are wrong for liking the PT and special editions that I could have spent mingling with girls

Sigh this is the curse of being part of the intellectual elite

This.

I was at a Christmas party and my girlfriend wanted to leave to go back home and do some Christmas boning and I said, “No bitch. You shut your hole. You can suck my dick anytime. There is this stranger who I will never see again saying something that is not correct. I’m off to the library to check out an encyclopedia to prove this bastard wrong and stroke my own ego because that is the most important thing in the world.”

I thought you whipped it out for just about anyone.

I used to observe this behavior (CT) from afar and wondered how they could get there but in the last year someone in my near-immediate family has gone off the deep end. I saw her the other day and she was going on about how dangerous vaccines were. I argued for a few minutes and then gave up. You can’t fix crazy.