Well, history is full of examples of demagoguery via media. So in that sense this conspiracy theory situation /should/ be an old hat. Except this time it's far

Well, history is full of examples of demagoguery via media. So in that sense this conspiracy theory situation /should/ be an old hat. Except this time it's far weirder and more chaotic, because it's not some coherent political entity pushing a long term agenda (although there might be some meddling), but rather a mostly crowdsourced fantasy world made up on the spot. Feels somewhat like a fever dream with its frantic twists and turns and absence of anything but short-term memory. And starting from just a few "trolls"* and internet crazies on message boards/social media it has developed into this huge trainwreck. Must be disturbing to have relatives like this. I probably would have intervened early and installed web filters / parental controls (this acquired an entirely new meaning) combined with education about the medium where I could. Naturally this is no longer feasible for those too far gone. At any rate, hope this gets fixed soon. Move fast and... have society break itself. * At this point this really has become a euphemism