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Dealing With Friends Who Become Conspiracy Theorists
How do you deal with someone in your life who goes off the edge?
Long before Drew became a high flying accountant, we were just fellow bachelors here in Tampa, living carefree and loving it. He was a blast to hangout with, always funny, and up for anything. We spent weekends bar-hopping in Ybor City, going to the gym, or just kicking back and talking about everything and nothing. Politics was confined to rare and brief mentions.
As the years went on, we both realized we couldn’t live like eternal bachelors. Drew went off and married a nice lawyer lady, had two kids, and fell into parenting duties. Somewhere along the way things changed.
We were sitting in beach chairs in the white and warm sands of St. Petersburg Beach. Suddenly, he brought up weird questions about vaccines and how they were of malicious design, and microchips being implanted in us. He mentioned stories and theories I’d never even heard of.
Confused, I said, “Do you have any evidence for this stuff? It sounds a bit far fetched.”
He nodded, “Oh yeah. I was listening to this podcast.” Then named an extreme political ideologue.
I was shocked. Drew is an otherwise brilliant guy. It wasn’t even a subject that I had strong…