Oh hell yes, I am entirely here for this sort of shit https://twitter.com/Olivianuzzi/status/1329944174897078274

It's Friday night and your friendly neighborhood debunker is tired as hell and at the IPA again so let's talk a s t r o l o g y

I'm pretty open about my love for all things woo, which I am very resentful about because it's been shit up by fascists and MLMs. I read my horoscope every day, but only at the end of the day, to see how accurate it was.

Also, my astrological combination apparently is made up of things that everyone else likes to make fun of, so I have a history of leaving these sorts of discussions in a huff lol

Don't confuse my love for woo with believing it, btw. I think metaphysical stuff is great because it helps us figure out what we don't understand (I studied cogsci for a while) and I think that every culture has woo that helps us understand those cultures better

But I still love talking about that shit. I used to listen to Art Bell and at one point considered myself a conspiracy theory connoisseur. It wasn't until 2015 that I started to find out most of my most treasured urban legends were just the same stupid disinformation nonsense

Another interesting thing about woo is that I start writing long threads about shit like this when I'm on deadline 100 percent of the time hahahahahahahaha

I’m still thinking about this and figure now that I’ve sobered up a bit (lol) I should clarify the point I was trying to make. Well, points plural.

One is that my love for weird shit and conspiracy theories may seem contradictory in the context of my debunking work, but it’s

all part of my greatest love of all: the stories we all tell one another about ourselves and the world around us to make sense of things, to understand how we fit in, and how we live and what comes next in our lives. Literature, art, music. History and counterhistories.

Journalism. It’s why I won’t sneer at any belief system unless it is clearly harmful to the believer or others around them. I love learning about religions too. It’s all part of that same thing, making sense of ourselves and our world. So I’ve always naturally loved online worlds

And so I would lurk around these forums and just soak up all these stories everyone was telling each other.

But at some point a lot of these groups stopped being stories we all told one another and started being stories others told us. The tone changed everywhere

That’s when the corrosive, weaponized shit started to get in. That’s why I wasn’t surprised by the wellness communities turning authoritarian — it had been happening for some time, nudging the narratives into specific directions. That’s how the disinfo began to bloom.

That’s why I caution about keeping an open mind and not being skeptical across the board about things. Debunkers were so eager to toss out woo across the board in favor of rationalism that they missed those dark narratives coalescing right in front of them, tainting our stories.

And that’s how it happened. And that’s also why you can’t just fact-check disinfo away. You also have to be aggressive about pointing out weaponized narratives — in any community.

That means stepping up to spiritual leaders and gurus, to contradicting cults of personality, to showing what narratives are dangerous and why. It’s not easy, but it’s necessary. The alternative is... like... pastors preaching QAnon

Or politicizing masks during a pandemic. Or astrologers frothing about Nord aliens and repeating Nazi UFO myths. Those narratives have been seeded or invaded, and now they’re getting directed and weaponized against others. And it’s everywhere.

Anyway love that shit, hate the weaponization, resent that all my favorite escapes are now full of people creepily repeating the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in lockstep instead of talking about sunning their buttholes as the universe truly intended, the end