My conspiracy-obsessed coworker went quiet for a week after the flat earth meetup in Reno
So my buddy Dale at the warehouse has been deep into flat earth stuff for like 8 months now, and 2 weeks ago he drove all the way to Reno for some meetup with 40 other believers. Monday he comes back and he's totally normal, no rants, no videos on his phone at lunch, nothing. Tuesday and Wednesday same thing, just eats his sandwich and reads the sports page. By Thursday I finally ask him what happened and he says "I can't do it anymore, they argued for 3 hours about whether the sun is a spotlight or a lamp." Turns out half the room thought airplanes can't fly over the ice wall and the other half said they totally can, and it got so heated that a guy knocked over the snack table. Dale said he drove home at 2 in the morning and hasn't opened the forum since. Now he's into UFO stuff instead, which honestly seems way more chill. Anyone else ever watch somebody get talked out of a theory by the people who believe it?
My cousin went through something like that with a group that was sure bigfoot lived in a specific county in Oregon. They had monthly campouts and everything until one trip where two guys got in a screaming match over whether bigfoot was a leftover neanderthal or an alien. Split the whole group in half, and he just stopped going. Now he's super into growing peppers, which he says is way less drama.