Ask Lemmy

Countless times throughout my life. In fact, a big part of my life is slowly deprogramming from years of propaganda. Whether it is religion or politics the amount of misinformation is enormous as it is prolific.

Even something very personal like relationships is fraught with tons of negative cultural issues around control and love. Most of what society teaches is a lie designed to perpetuate things like the Patriarchy.

Edit: After reading a lot of these I would like to offer an alternative to what a lot of people have said.

I learned about a conspiracy back in the early days of computing that was essentially that the US was intercepting all emails and all phone calls around the world.

There was a lot of good evidence including a spy pact with Canada where we had an installation on their soil and they had an installation on ours so we could spy on our own citizens without breaking the letter of the law.

Also good evidence that AT&T and other providers had let the government access their major server trunks to install their own hardware.

Well Snowden proved it was all real. This was probably the biggest conspiracy theory of my lifetime.

Used to believe that humanity would inherently self-improve, especially the more easily information became accessible.

People couldn't read and write at first, and didn't know much about the world, and now we have instant communication and access to vast repositories of knowledge.

I believed that people were naturally curious, and wanted to learn and figure things out. Education systems sucked, but with improvement it could foster that curiosity in everyone!

Turns out that was incredibly naive. Humans have an inherent ego that tries to make themselves more than reality. Their problems are more real than another's. Their inconveniences are more important than anything bigger-picture. I thought religion were old dinosaur structures of primitive belief systems that lasted for too long, but humans will literally make shit up or believe in some made up shit from someone else if it helps them ignore the inconveniences of reality.

COVID-19 really helped sink that in.

I believed the USA was a liberal democracy full of concerned citizens. I also had faith in the financial system at one point!

If you work hard, are honest, and moral, you will get ahead in life.

It was embarrassingly late in life before I realized how much of a farce that was.

I ran 5 km every day and ate very low fat, mostly plants. Ended up with non alcoholic fatty liver.

Pizza party, soccer practice, Christmas, whenever it's served really

I believed that I had to be certain way in society or I was fundamentally flawed and bad.

I dropped that belief, acknowledge that to some point it's convenient for me to follow societal norms but trying to fit in makes me mostly miserable. I naturally don't want to do things that bother other people but I also don't really want to be around them so why should I try to be likeable to them any more than is normal to me. This way people who like me, are sure to like me as I am. If I like them enough, I'll naturally also want to be considerate of them, even if I have to occasionally behave a little different.

I somehow made it very complicated with just beating myself up for being bad/stupid/ugly/broken because I kept believing people who I don't even like.

Kony 2012, not the genreal idea of raising awareness about Joseph Kony, but that it would actually lead to his capture.

I was raised evangelical Christian in the Bible belt. I was a "true believer" I call it now. I literally believed there was a hell that people were going to. I'm glad I'm out of that.

Mine have generally been mentioned. In my early 20s in the early 2000s. Got into the ancient aliens stuff briefly.

Believed in supernatural and past life stuff for a good bit.

By the mid-2000s, having "pulled myself out of poverty" (I didn't do it on my own; I had help and support for family after having been homeless at one point) and gotten a salaried job, started listening to rightwing radio hosts. Thought I just needed to work a bit harder and success would come. All the other people were lazy and social programs were bad with the possible exception of something like WIC. Nah, I was just fairly lucky to have survived some stupid situations, had help from family, and was generally just way too entitled and thinking I was special. I was fairly insufferable for a good while.

I voted for Ralph Nader in 2000

Once thought that Google eas a great company and earnt evil.

In college I fell pretty deep into the nopoo conspiracy, that shampoo manufacturers get you addicted to the cycle of stripping off your hair's natural sebum and replacing it with conditioner that attracts dirt... literally rinse, repeat.

I think I was frustrated that I couldn't figure out how to take care of my scalp and hair, and here was this social group with an explanation and a scapegoat.

I still think that shampooing every day is probably too much for me, and embraced mechanical cleaning, but I've relaxed the conspiracy thinking.

I used to be a bit of a Microsoft shill, after the first known knowledge of “Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.”

I saw them as an underdog in topics like the phone market, gaming, and a few other subjects, and wanted the competitors to try a bit harder instead of controlling market dominance. I’m still sad MS lost out with their HTML5 engine and went to WebKit - even if I root Firefox, having more competitors against WebKit is a good thing.

What shifted me over was first, them firing the team that made Hi-Fi Rush, Xbox’s ONLY claim to GOTY, and then learning how much they lick Netanyahu’s boots. My PC runs Linux now.

9/11 truther. Missile pods on military jets and fed reserve gold heist. WTC7 got me in. But I was also a welder and I'd been making thermite for fun since I was a teenager so I knew that jet fuel didn't have to melt steel beams to significantly reduce its tensile strength, just several hundred degrees was enough to weaken steel. And I know the difference between thermite products and liquid aluminium pouring from the buildings, thermite looks like straight up lava, and in any case, you need way, way more thermite to melt through a steel girder than you might expect from watching movies. It takes at least half a kilo just to melt through the hood of a car, let alone and engine block like the anarchist cookbook would have you believe, I know because I did it.

Apple products through the 2010s.

I'd watch their WWDC presentations online religiously

I used to believe in god about 45 years ago, does that count?

Antitheism and egalitarianism (read anti-feminsm). I was an ubsufferable cunt. Not to excuse my cuntness, I was raised Mormon: condescending hatred of all those not like me was all I knew.

Not sure I got sucked into anything like conspiracy theories, but as far as "I swear this is my life now" I have quite a few. I have ADHD and with it comes the usual fleeting obsession with hobbies. It gets expensive and I always end up abandoning it for something else. Then I feel sad because I spent a ton of money that ultimately didn't result in anything permanent.

When I was going hard with ham radio I dug a huge trench in my backyard and installed a grounding system connected to the house ground, now I barely use my radios. Same with the KX3 I bought. It's an eye-wateringly expensive portable radio. My excuse was it was a reward for passing a difficult certification exam and I would use it all the time in the park near my house. That turned out not to be the case.

I actually genuinely believed for awhile as a kid/young adult that ADHD was a gift and that society wouldn't try to strangle and kill me for having it in a million ways.