That was an absolute masterclass of a reply. Agree from end to end.
Because that means admitting they’ve been fooled, which is the worst thing imaginable.
My wife also believes in a lot of (mostly) harmless woo.
She doesn’t believe in the Mandela Effect. She believes some guy on Facebook Reels who says that there are alternate universes, and we switched from the one in which Fruit of the Loom undies had the wicker cornucopia into the one in which they never did. At some point in the 70s or 80s I guess.
She believes in astrology, although (thankfully) she doesn’t make any decisions based on it.
She believes those guys in Canada really are going to find buried pirate treasure on Oak Island some day. And absolutely the Rosicurians (or maybe it was the Knights Templar) had something to do with it.
…and so on.
ETA: Fortunately, she’s (mostly) grounded in reality. For example, she watched, with me, in awe as the Artemis craft slipped behind the moon a few weeks ago, without once shouting “Fake!” And of course, she’s as far from MAGA as possible.
I thought it was a mashup of AI and HAL (as in the 2001: A Space Odyssey computer). Even if not, I kinda like that: a nod to a famous AI prognostication, while gently mocking the (IMHO) overblown claims of sentience (it’s all just some dude named Al, like in the Paul Simon song).
It goes deeper than that. They want to believe it’s true whether it’s bears playing with toddlers or George Soros bankrolling brown immigrants moving to America’s heartland where they eat pets. Your evidence to the contrary is harshing their reality so they want nothing to do with it.
Find a website where you can learn to make simple AI videos. Make one about cute animals, such as the ones she watches. Or one where an AI “person” promotes an absurd fake treatment which you’ve just made up. Then sit with her at the website, and make one with her.
If she can make a video herself, she may feel smarter than the people who make ones with obvious mistakes (like the disappearing mat).
You can also show her websites where fake videos are made, and people post their own. There’s a disclaimer pasted on about how it’s fake. I saw a fake video about a person interviewed by an Atlanta TV station bragging about how much money she made off of food stamps. It came from one of those websites, but someone easily removed the disclaimer. Fox News believed it and ran it.
I should mention that this all new to her. One of her kids got her a Facebook account and that’s where the video are from. I’m not on Facebook and have no idea how to work with it. It can be quite funny when our grandson visits on the weekend. He is 13 and very social media savvy. Sometimes when grandma is moaning over some kitty being chased by wolves I get a text from him, “Fake, fake, fake!”
Sadly, once she starts watching these on FB, she’ll be fed them nonstop.
If you Google, you can find many doctors on FB who make posts debunking these videos. I especially like Dr. Jessica Knurick. She’s great! I’ve seen many others, but I don’t remember the names.
I’m not sure how serious @mixdenny is about this, I’d be inclined to let it ride out.
If she tells you some bunk don’t try to debunk her. Say “That’s nice, honey” and walk away.
Unless real problems arise, as in dumb use of money or not going to regular doctor, I’d leave it.
I don’t think @mixdenny is married to a dumb 22yo. Apparently this woman had the good sense to marry him and has lived awhile.
It’ll be fine. I promise.
It wasn’t fine for Steve Jobs.
I think this is the answer. If the OP can get his grandson to direct his wife to legit videos, FB will start serving them. That should help. But the way the algorithms work if you look at crap you’ll get fed more crap.
I think that is the answer. Let the grandson at least try.
I have to say that these comments trouble me, and don’t seem like you. The OP is talking about his wife, someone I assume he cares about who’s having a problem.
It was implied upthread, but isn’t this just an amazing way to put it?
“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”
― Carl Sagan
He also said – and I think it’s relevant here:
“What counts is not what sounds plausible, not what we would like to believe, not what one or two witnesses claim, but only what is supported by hard evidence, rigorously and skeptically examined. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”
–Carl Sagan
One of the things about watching the debunking videos, when they’re done well and they don’t talk down to you, is that soon you feel like you’re one of the “in the know” people. I guess it has to happen before you’re too invested in the woo.
I guess I kind of misread the tone of the thread. The whole thing seemed so silly to me at first glance, which it obviously isn’t. Sorry, @mixdenny, for belittling your problem.
You’re a mensch.
@Voyager I don’t think Mixdenny is saying she’s not following regular medical advice.
He says she found a recipe for a joint rub. I don’t believe it sounds like it would work but it sounds like it smells nice. How awful can it be to massage your knees with nice smelling oil?
I think it would brighten my outlook. Not cure, of course.
It’s all gonna matter how deep the wife is going into this. Might be a good time to divert attention from the phone.
There are ways.
I feel like I know something about when a “loved one” starts exhibiting this sort of behavior. I use “loved one” on quotes because these sort of beliefs often seem so core to their being that it begs the question “what do you actually ‘love’ about them”? Like “I love my wife…except for her complete rejection of scientific principles.”
I don’t think there’s an easy answer to how or why it happens. I mean, we know all the common steps: some sliver of doubt, a feeling of powerlessness, constant propaganda/advertising and careful silos of information, teachings to distrust the “them/others”. It’s been the language of propaganda for countless generations. It just seems to happen much faster with social media harvesting your every single click.
I know several people who have fallen down this hole, or were (in the more traditional sense) born again into a faith, or even guys and gals who absolutely married for the wrong reasons (sex for men mostly, fear of being alone for women) and then desperately tried to live the life they told themselves they wanted. It’s human.
One thing that I wanted to try to make clear to @mixdenny in my prior post though is that at some point, you need to draw a line when the behavior becomes too painful for you, too risky, or unrecoverable. And (speaking to the 8-yr old me whose parents divorced) to avoid blaming yourself or trying to figure in 20/20 hindsight what you should have done to somehow “fix” things. Because I’m reading some self-blame behind the lines of their second post.
I think the thread’s suggestions of directing to less confrontational debunker that’s equally online is a helpful option, especially if it comes from someone who is less directly involved. For all my fatalism, there are a few people who come back and reconsider after going down this sort of rabbit hole. Only the OP knows how much “I give up…” is literal, or just a moment of despair-venting.
Being completely serious here. Facebook is the problem. Or at least the pointy end of the problem.
My Dad will call to ask me two separate (to him) questions: Have you heard about this miracle cure? Can you fix my Facebook?
Browsing Facebook on his phone is a series of only semi-coherent ads for woo medicine, mixed with teasers for interesting things to read. Invariably the teasers don’t actually lead to an article that tells you “what this woman saw in her kitchen that changed her life,” instead they just go to some other Facebook group or webpage. This frustrates him immensely. He wants to find out where this bear got to that he just won’t believe, and assumes it’s because Facebook isn’t working right.
The ads lead to extremely long videos of people selling honey pills or whatever as a cure. We’ve mostly managed to convince him that if it doesn’t come from his doctor he doesn’t want it.
This is really disappointing, because for 15 years Facebook was how he kept in touch with friends and family, and it is unusable now. Anyone who doesn’t believe me go read Facebook with no ad blockers. Be sure to read and look at every single thing it shows you, because your finely honed internal filter that helps you scroll past the junk is missing in my Dad, and probably Mrs. Mixdenny.
The only thing I can suggest is to work from the anti-Facebook direction. Explain that everything she sees on there is a lie. It is a mix of the worst of late night commercials and check out line tabloids (just trying to use references she might get, substitute whatever else she’d scoff at believing).