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I was looking at old forum posts and realized I've argued about flat earth for 100 hours
I was cleaning up my browser bookmarks and saw a folder for old debate threads. I added up the timestamps from my replies in just one forum, and it came to over 100 hours total. That's more than two full work weeks. It hit me that I've spent all that time trying to prove a basic fact to people who just wanted to argue. Why do we even do this? Has anyone else ever added up their time on a single conspiracy debate and been shocked?
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karenw905mo ago
That 100 hour number really makes you stop and think. I once tracked a week of my own online debates about moon landing hoaxes. It was almost 20 hours, which felt insane for something settled 50 years ago. What gets me is how the goalposts always move. You show them satellite photos, they say Photoshop. You bring up astronauts, they say crisis actors. At what point did you realize you were just providing them with more material to twist instead of changing any minds?
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wyatt_green5mo ago
The real cost isn't just our time, it's the mental space it takes up rent-free afterwards. You'll be doing dishes and still mentally arguing about flag fabric in a vacuum. What finally clicked for me was seeing these debates as performance art for an audience of lurkers, not a real conversation. The conspiracy person is putting on a show of "doing their own research," and every fact you give them is just another prop. The goal isn't truth, it's looking like the smartest person in a fake argument. You're not changing the actor's mind, you're just feeding their script.
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scott.mia4mo ago
performing for an audience of lurkers" hit kinda hard tbh. I read somewhere that these debates are basically just roleplay for the conspiracy side, like theyre testing how much they can gaslight you before you crack. Once i stopped taking the bait and just started replying with "mmkay" or a link to NASA's website, i got way less stressed.
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