What do I do about my conspiracy theorist friend?

Post date: 2020-10-20 16:33:12
Views: 86
And old friend has gone down the conspiracy theory rabbit hole and i'm not sure whether I should continue that friendship.

I have a friend that I used to be close to years ago when we lived in the same city. We've kept in contact via facebook and occasional texts. While I always knew her to be into things I consider "woo" it wasn't until 2016 that I realized that she was an anti-vaxxer. Then later, I saw posts about chemtrails. Then recently stuff that aligns with QAnon conspiracy theories (although she's socially progressive and doesn't follow conservative ideologies, she really hate the Democratic Party).

I don't know where to go from here. She doesn't live in a battleground state so i never worried much about her voting habits and she doesn't have, and doesn't plan on having, kids so I never worried about how she'd be raising them. But I can't decide if I should keep her in my life, even in this small way.

I'm pretty conflict avoidant so outright unfriending her on fb seems aggressive and I worry about how she might react if she realizes it. I unfollowed her quite awhile ago but can't help checking her profile occasionally to see what she's up to. But then I'll see a post that just brings me down and I end up wasting a lot of mental energy on it. I almost never engage with it. Clearly, i haven't been good at preventing myself from seeking out her posts, though, which is why I'm even considering unfriending.

To be clear, she doesn't really bring up her conspiracy theories much with me directly and I think she more or less understands that I don't believe these kinds of things. So it's not as if we've been having any kind of antagonistic interactions. I'm mostly just feeling anxiety at doing something that could cause that to happen because it's not like we're roommates arguing over taking out the garbage. It would be old friends arguing over beliefs and fundamental world views.

If she was someone that was an active part of my life, then it's possible we could have had conversations earlier on and maybe i could have helped her not fall into this rabbit hole. But it seems that a lot of people are having loved ones go down the conspiracy theory path, so maybe there's nothing i really could have done to prevent it. But I know that lots of people who fall into that lose friends and family which can further isolate them into that world making them feel even more strongly that they're the only ones who can see the "truth."

But what's a good course of action for me here? Keep maintaining this distant friendship that I have with her so that she still has connections outside of her conspiracy world? Or do I cut off the friendship completely because i've sure wasted a lot of mental energy on this? Or is there another option?
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