My friend keeps sending me unsolicited conspiracy theory material. Should I ask them to stop?
My friend has started sending me lots of links and articles on UAPs [unidentified anomalous phenomena, also known as UFOs]. I’ve tried to gently assert that I don’t find the sources reliable or credible and that I do not believe respectable news outlets are conspiring to conceal the truth but they still persist. Should I ask them to stop? I think these conspiracy theories are really harmful.
Eleanor says: One question is: can you stop your friend believing these conspiracy theories? Regrettably, almost certainly not, at least not without a huge investment of time and patience. People are free to think whatever they want and some of us put that freedom to the weirdest uses. At least we can be thankful the conspiracies your friend has latched on to are about objects in the sky and not, say, which reptilian species is secretly controlling things.
A different question is: can you change the norms of the relationship so you don’t have to engage with this? Happily, that’s a different mission.
Be careful not to confuse these questions or the strategies they recommend. The former requires a great deal of gentleness, buy-in, time and empathy. There’s a lot of interesting and important research being done on why people find conspiracy theories gripping. Often these beliefs don’t behave like regular beliefs; they don’t arrive by evidence, they don’t leave by it, and it often seems to be a kind of play or entertainment more than a bona fide commitment to truth. This makes slowly loosening the grip of a conspiracy theory a much more complex task than old-fashioned cognitive persuasion: you have to give a bunch of respect, time and emotional scaffolding.
Asking to change a relationship can be a lot more straightforward than asking someone to change their mind. You don’t need them to grasp “you’re wrong”. You just need them to grasp “I don’t want to talk about this”. It isn’t about litigating the facts out there, about the spinning objects in the sky and who’s setting the media agenda. It’s about the facts within your relationship – about what you want and will put up with. Luckily, it’s a lot easier to position yourself as an expert on what you want than as an expert on UAPs, so you have a lot more authority to say “no, because I said”.
If you do ask your friend to stop sharing this, try to stick with that area of expertise: say things about your own preferences and what you’re prepared to talk about, not who’s right about the issue. Aim to change the relationship, don’t aim to change the mind.
Laughter can be an effective social blocker for this kind of mission. When we’re in the persuasion game, we tend to display a lot of earnest seriousness and perform respect for one another. It’s the opposite when we’re telling people where not to tread: we need brisk and effective shutdowns. Laughter can be an efficient way to do that. It signals “nope!” without evincing hostility or inviting discussion. Maybe the next time you get a link from this friend, you just reply with “haha, that’s about enough of these links for me”.
Tonally speaking this is a world away from all the bowing and scraping of “I see your point, but with due respect, here’s some counter-evidence”. That’s because they’re trying to accomplish different things. One aims to litigate the case. The other aims to draw a boundary. Being clear about what you’re trying to do can help inform your strategy.
