I was catching up with an old friend earlier (been almost a year), this dude was a stout voice for Dems... after some pleasantries were shared he went into conspiracy after conspiracy, so I was like, dude, this doesn't sound like you! He then informed me that he's no longer a liberal, and proceeded to blame Biden for everything he could, even after I reminded him about the GOP failures... needless to say the call & friendship ended with a "block"
sigh - I just don't get what caused him to flip
@ceorl well the worst part of it all was he became a typical conservative Republican not letting me say a word and I didn't even object anything he was saying I was trying to process it but he just kept going on and on and on
"Spewing" is one of the symptoms :)
@duglop It is a memetic contagion. It works like a virus, except instead of being made of DNA/RNA, made of concepts.
A person might be open to or unprotected from dangerous ideas, especially due to lack of practice at critical thought, or emotional bias.
Once part of the idea system creeps in, if unchecked, it becomes a program running on the brain's hardware and starts altering other ideas around it to make room.
Fear, Dunning-Kruger, selfishness, hurt, they can all provide vectors.
@duglop If someone doesn't have any mental order, mental hygeine, like you can get from critical thought, logic, emotional intelligence, knowledge of your moral compass, et al, they're far more vulnerable to cognitive biases, and manipulation of their biases and instincts.
People often seem like "nice folks" but they were really just running some program based on what they _think_ their band expects of them, but because they have no character or mind of their own, it's easy to change.
@duglop
It's rather like a mind or thought virus.
Very contagious, even though it makes no sense that it would work.
Funny that the opposition talks about a woke mind virus, which we know is nonsense.
Maybe more projection from them.
It is distressing when friends or family come down with it anyway.