This is so awful, I'm glad I've never been on Instagram. I just deactivated my Facebook account yesterday so I'm off social media, it was driving me crazy. I'd felt my anger building for a while and the last straw was when my best friend's husband who is terrified of the vaccine, because of all the misinformation he's been absorbing, wrote a post talking about his frustrations with the Auckland lockdown and then went on to compare the vaccine passports to oppressive regimes such as Nazi Germany (of course!). I responded after about 30 minutes when I'd calmed down to say that it is disrespectful and offensive to use that comparison and it wasn't ok. Then some stupid friend of his (who I don't know) responded to my comment with "Open your eyes and turn off the TV, you'll change your opinion". Well, let's just say I lost it and responded with this: "Holy shit! I didn't realise Facebook and Youtube were such reliable sources of information. I stand corrected. Fuck all of those scientists that spend years studying their specialised subject, what do they know?! Why should we trust them when there are so many experts who've attended Google University? Thank you for opening my eyes." I don't even know if he responded because I deactivated my account pretty soon after that. I need a break from seeing friends fall for this bullshit.
Thanks. I still find the conspiracy stuff interesting so appreciate that I can read about it on here without having to see friends making stupid Facebook posts! I thought I'd feel tempted to go back but haven't felt that at all, it's like a weight has been lifted off my chest.
I hear you. I have recently had similar painful discussions with a life long friend. She also used the nazi germany comparison which left me questioning her sanity. She is a university educated and, normally, level headed person. What the heck is going on out there?!
Panic? Fear? Safety in terrible Facebook groups they find themselves in? But mostly I honestly go back to this - fear of a changing world for privileged people: https://www.webworm.co/p/fearofachangingworld
Total abject fear, I suggest. Fear of the unknown, fear that what you once thought right is now wrong, and wanting to be OK, so joining the "I'm OK Club". The OK Club has a few very loud voices putting their loud points of view, and frightened people get swayed by them. Not governed by their intelligence, but by their fear.
I read somewhere that intelligent people can be more susceptible to these conspiracies and whatever because they're used to doing their own research... But I guess it depends what sources you're getting your research from 😏😏😏
If you've had success in other areas, you tend to think you'll be successful in new ones. So there's that strong confidence of the novice (Dunning-Kruger effect), add in strong confirmation bias, and you've got someone who's "done their own research". Also why there are anti-vaxx doctors, nurses, and even people working in vaccine research.
It's pretty easy to find information to balance any of the rubbish they are spouting. The pregnancy/miscarriage statistics going around are from an actual study but they are cherry picking the results. Shortcut with my own numbers: 100 pregnant women in the trial as of March 1st. As of April 1st 30 women have given birth. 15 had a miscarriage (sadly the normal statistics in everyday life). 55 are still pregnant. The anti-vaxx brigade are spouting the results but leaving out the 55 still pregnant. They are then saying that 1/3 of women in the trial suffered a miscarriage. I'm sure that it would be pretty scary if you're pregnant or wanting to be pregnant.
You're right, you just need healthy skepticism and to read the whole study, not rely on Influenzers (that's what I'm calling them from now on 🤣) to get your facts 😓 I honestly do have so much empathy for anyone struggling with any of this.
Your contempt and outrage here are both completely warranted but also somewhat hilarious.
Honestly I've never understood "influencers" (I think I'm a bit too old for it), but I'm now a little mad that I didn't make any money off my vaccine side effects, which I've alluded to on here before. I had 5 days of an untouchable migraine unlike any headache I've experienced, as well as 10-14 days of altered mental status. I remember almost nothing from those two weeks. So I'm a little bummed that I'm so anti-capitalist that it didn't even occur to me to make money off that shit. Damn.
Anyway, the thing about the vaccine side effects is that they're just *symptoms.* There's no disease actually destroying your body; it's simply an immune reaction that will resolve itself within days, usually.
I saw that Newsweek magazine has a cover this week with a photo of a sad child and it says "would you give this child a vaccine?" Which reminded me that I once injected a newborn who was literally less than 24 hours old with the hep B vaccine. To protect his life. This fear-mongering bullshit in the msm had got to stop. It's absolutely unethical.
I might be an idiot but I just don't understand all this panic (genuine people on the street not the shills just trying to cash in, they're pretty obvious) about the vaccine! Even if you do feel a bit shit after your vaccines at least you're not STRUGGLING TO BREATHE OR BASICALLY LIVING ON A VENTILATOR WITH A 50/50 CHANCE OF DEATH IN A HOSPITAL. A ventilator doesn't just help you breathe more oxygen! It literally bypasses your bodies natural respiratory functions to breathe for you! Scarring and pneumonia are potential complications from being on a ventilator. Sorry for yelling but, I was pretty scared of getting covid (even though I live in qld and the risk was pretty low) so I worked quite hard to get my jabs. My partner is vulnerable and my best friend is immunocompromised so I also wanted the added protection for them (they got their jabs early)
So I understand fear... Of a horrible disease, not of a VACCINE TO POTENTIALLY SCUPPER SAID DISEASE. Aaaaand I'm yelling again.
Totally understand the fear! I fear people I love getting sick or dying, or living with long covid, and I would also fear contracting it myself. But sabotaging people’s fear into fearing the thing that will help end this pandemic is bonkers!!!!
Right!? It's like the mmr vaccine, I remember getting mine at intermediate during the school day, there was no question of if you believed in vaccines, you just got your jab and went back to class 🤣 Now its a right of passage for kids to get measles? WHO WANTS TO GET MEASLES!!?
I remember getting the meningitis one at school and the only kid who didn’t was a boy in my year who freaked out because he was afraid of needles. I was also scared of needles but way more embarrassed to freak out in front of my classmates. But no controversy over it!
Some people are so terrified of needles! But ultimately, a little jab or a horrible disease 🤷🏻♀️😅 It was that study published in the lancet by Andrew Wakefield (not peer reviewed 😒) that started the whole anti mmr thing but it's all been thoroughly debunked since! People don't deserve free will sometimes 😒
Yeah, we've been vaxxed forever. But again, the disinfo puts people off - ideas like it was developed too quickly etc. People read a misleading headline like that and they read it 1000 times a day on social media and BOOM - fear and anti-vax sentiment.
This is unrelentingly awful. And I have no doubts that these people are grifters. But here’s what I keep thinking: the nocebo effect is real.
Everyone on social media that has become exploited by this shit is now bombarded by these stories of symptoms.
These stories aren’t real but the nocebo effect is. I’m not surprised that people might get crazy symptoms after a vaccine. They’d get it from a saline shot too.
It’s not Pfizer making people sick, it’s Zuckerberg. Mass hysteria, snake-eating -it’s-own-tail, dystopian nightmare.
And of course there are profits to made. To quote the ‘You’re Wrong About’ podcast, it was capitalism all along.
Given the claims circulating in the anti-vaxxer communities, you're dead right that they are risking something bigger, especially since it's a pandemic of the unvaccinated and you'll soon have *real* COVID symptoms in there too which people will attribute to 'vaccine shedding' or something equally nonsensical.
Thanks for all this Paul. I'd be curious for some doctors to weigh in on this at some stage. I've also been reading a lot about mass hysteria (after revisiting Havana Syndrome again recently thanks to Tony's Totally Normal WW piece) and this all fits that bill eh
Interesting, researchers were theorising about this possibility almost a year ago, given many historical localised outbreaks of psychogenic illness around vaccines. Now we have a globalised social-media powered outbreak unfolding.
Raising public awareness of the known reality of mass psychogenic illness is one of their recommendations.
It’s not the first social-media driven case of psychogenic illness either. There has been a recent spike of Tourette’s-like ‘illness’ in teens linked back to a popular Youtuber.
Mass psychogenic illness can show as ‘contagious’ physical behaviours, like dancing manias in the Middle Ages, sometimes also attributed to ergotism and the two factors wouldn’t be mutually exclusive.
Oh, I'd say the anti-vaxxer community is playing out mass psychogenic illness before our very eyes. Interestingly, past instances have often centred on women too but I think that's largely due to sexist myths i.e. men are more ashamed to express vulnerability, in this case, fear, and socialised to express it as anger instead.
Just to underscore this, here are the classic symptoms of mass psychogenic illness:
symptoms that have no plausible organic basis;
symptoms that are transient and benign;
symptoms with rapid onset and recovery;
occurrence in a segregated group;
the presence of extraordinary anxiety;
symptoms that are spread via sight, sound or oral communication;
a spread that moves down the age scale, beginning with older or higher-status people;
a preponderance of female participants.
We can tick *all* of these off here.
Women influencers (higher social status) on instagram (moving down the age scale i.e. instagram vs. facebook) and antivaxxers becoming an increasingly segregated group both due to vaccine mandates and social shunning, experiencing extreme anxiety due to fear of the vaccine and now financial ruin due to job loss.
What a slap in the face to the medical system as well. I have a friend who experienced a 1 in a few million chance side effect and was treated with nothing but the utmost care and caution from the medical system here in NZ. They'll be thankful my friend is a trained scientist and thus understood the rarity and how it likely means they would be super at risk of covid itself. Also this stuff seems scarily common https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-57928647 David, did you manage to uncover if these women were being paid for their bullshit?
I don't imagine any of them are being paid - but they gain thousands of followers which is the equivalent for them - as when they offer a discount code for something, they get more referrals and more $$$
The endless pursuit of money has lead humans as a species to this apogee of awesomeness: making insane shit up and or overplaying mild symptoms to get money. I mean the whole constantly documenting your #bestlife (filters can’t fix hollow smiles below soulless eyes) is in itself sad and pointless symptom of hyper capitalism driven by techbros overly simplistic lens of social interaction with the aim of scraping data and monestising every single interaction.
I think you’ve done it David. I think you’ve broken me.
Just over the whole thing! I literally go on Instagram (I don't even bother with Facefart) for 1 minute and quit out 😒 I'd delete the app but I use the messenger part 🤣
Who wants to be rich when your existence is so hollow? Blech
If anyone is after an alternative messaging app to Zuckerburg products you should consider Signal. A free, open source end-to-end encryption service and as far as I have looked, they don't even mine metadata (which Facebook openly admits to doing, and secretly also probably listens to the content of messages).
Agree, Sarah. After years of complaining about Facebook, once I started learning about Mark Zuckerburg I decided I could no longer stomach contributing to his billions. His indifference to the millions suffering and a few dying all for the sake of the dollar is well known. So, I warned my friends I was planning to delete anything to do with Fuckerturd (Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp) and signed on to Signal. I did it in stages to wean myself like an addict. Initially, I signed out of the apps every time after being on, to deleting the apps off my phone and only checking when on the computer, to then only checking in once or twice a week, to deactivating and checking in once or twice a month. I then completely deleted. It took about a year, all the while reminding friends my intention. Too often we complain without realising we can do something about it. After all, why would Zuckerburg change the model that's working for him? Ka-Ching!
This is the kind of shit that is making some people in my family have breakdowns. Wanting spouse to quit his job instead of getting vaxxed, and looking genuinely unwell due to the stress of people saying she needs to get vaccinated. She’s petrified and almost impossible to talk to without her flipping out.
I didn’t realise how bad it was until other family members saw them the other day. I’d love to try and have a calm conversation but I don’t know if it’s possible.
Also - there is no talking them out. Facts won't do much. I mean - they may seed doubt, but there won't be a "I've found God! moment. Just be understanding and try and not get angry! This may be one to revisit? https://www.webworm.co/p/how-to-talk-to-people-stuck-in-a
I will revisit that - the only thing is that she literally won't be able to see our Great-Aunt due to the rest home rules about vaccination (very valid rules!) and she's getting really old and is ready to go. I can't imagine her deciding never to see her again, but then again...none of this is rational.
Hi! I know I am mighty late to this conversation but seeing such an intelligent and helpful comment section and community here, I thought some others may have some insight to help me.
I did some serious exploring down the rabbit hole recently (ADHD hyperfocus for the win) as I think part of me really, REALLY wants to understand how so many people I care about have got lost in the anti vaxx/ conspiracy mess. A lot of what I have seen recently has been in regards to “mY rIgHts hAvE bEeN iNfrInGed” and screenshots of NZBORA etc. As a lawyer, quite frankly it has pissed me off. I even emailed a rant to David about some of the shoddy legal advice going around. That people are lapping up. Yes, we have got to a place where people are taking legal advice from FB.
ANYWAY. After reading one too many comment sections and researching alternative points of view, I emerged more confused and quite frankly really sad. My mental health has taken a beating. So here are the things I do and don’t understand and wondered if anyone has some answers/ resources/ psychological understanding.
Points of view I do see merit in;
- In any other situation, except, I don’t know a global pandemic, the lockdown orders would be seen as arbitrary, and a rights infringement. Same as the vaccine being needed for employment.
- There will undoubtedly be some people who have received some adverse effects to the vaccine.
- The emergency legislation and the power of the government in these circumstances is something we haven’t seen used like this before. The NZBORA has the same status as any other law, and judges don’t have the ability to strike down legislation- like say, Canada. Parliament does have a lot of power in NZ.
- I understand uncertainty and fear. I also understand the distrust of big pharma (although this has always been an issue).
- The changes in the pandemic - and delta- then the subsequent move from elimination to suppression has meant that the government has gone back on statements said last year etc etc re. govt response.
Keeping all that in mind/ this is what I can’t for the LIFE OF ME UNDERSTAND:
- How have those who have gone from being hesitant about the vaccine, gone so quickly to the radical side of believing our government is corrupt, communist and part of a global conspiracy.
- If rights infringement is a genuine concern, how is a protest whilst in lockdown going to help? Shouldn’t it mean that we all do our bit, protect each other, get out of lockdown, and then make some proper submissions. Or rather vote differently?
- How come every person that identifies any vaccine/ media/ rights infringement issues (that i’ve seen) isn’t able to provide a better alternative. If the government is the problem-then perhaps another political party would have done better, however ALL believe that national wouldn’t have handled this well.
- How the hell is it so damn easy for some to go from avid supporters of our covid response last year to being certain of government corruption/ Jacinda’s evil agenda. Isn’t the virus the problem? Many still believe that Covid doesn’t exist. I just…
- Why is there such a cult mentality? Anti vaxx seem to be always engaging in argument, connecting personally with those that believe the same, and are utterly consumed by it? It reminds me of MLMs. I don’t spend my whole day chatting with my friends about vaccinations, bonding over it , trying to find more vaccinated friends.
Sorry, I know this was long. But I have been so desperate to see sense in the way that others think as I don’t want to believe that people I care about are stupid/ ignorant/ selfish and that susceptible to radical views. It’s hurting my brain and soul.
BOTTOM LINE: How can the most ridiculous, wild explanations logically gain so much support?
Also- the intersect between the far left and far right is interesting and terrifying. There was a great guardian article about this that showed how the far right has adopted liberal lefts language. Seeing Brian Tamaki side by side with some of the most liberal people I know is wild. Note- I do know that not all people hesitant about the vaccine have gone full conspiracy theorist, but shit, so many have changed lanes, so fast and so fucking vocally.
Okay Emma - going to level with you: The speed and extreme stance is a mystery to me to. I understand hesitancy, fear, and "asking questions". I do not understand how you go to screaming about made up legal systems and harassing dead kids families: I just don't know.
Hi Emma. If you've not found that already in David's extensive and ever-growing conspiracy 'back catalogue', there are some helpful interviews that might offer you some psychological insight and solace.
And know that it's not just you struggling with all this and desperately wanting to understand and to make sense of it. It is truly crazy-making having people close to us go 'down the rabbit hole' so FAST and be SO certain about a radical new worldview that doesn't really overlap with your own any more.
I’ve come to comments section a few times since reading todays post and each time I’ve left again as I simply don’t know how to say how disgusted I am with these people and their fake, like-driven lives. I’ve read the post twice (with a long bout of staring out the window in between). So I guess that’s what I’m here to say - I don’t understand these influencers, and I find the actions of those in your examples totally inhuman. I really appreciate you writing this David, and I can see from the comments that I’m not alone in my thinking (or yours), so I’d consider myself the one who is “blessed” on that basis alone.
I don't fully understand it either. I really don't. Except to say that social media - and how "personal" it feels - gets people confused with honesty and trust.
Yep. The short version is that since we're social primates and emotion (attachment) evolved well before reason (and collective reason is still a decidely social process), 'Belonging is stronger than Facts"
I've never seen so much bullshit in one influencers post (however I'm not on Instagram to protect myself from bullshit)! I'm no medical expert but having the ability to call an ambulance while having a 1.5hr seizure, being sent home from hospital after having a seizure for 45 mins, partner sitting there watching a seizure for over an hour and not getting help, staying calm while having lock jaw and heart palpitations. God those details made me laugh and I call lies of the most nefarious kind.
Just when you think people can't go any lower, boom there it is, some 'natural' MLM shite they are peddling.
Must get myself some pine bark elixir for next time one of those pesky heart attacks wakes me at night. 🤯
The thing that got me is the stories were just TOO FAR. Look - they probably presented with *something* at the hospital (be it panic attack for some kind of reaction.. or just all bullshit) but the caption just goes toooo far.
But that was the thing that made me the most *facepalm*: the tens of thousands of people who buy it.
Im off social media at the moment cause I just couldn't deal with the anti Vax stuff showing up more on insta and seeing people constantly breaking the rules, (Vic, Australia) and feeling like I'm judging everyone for it.
Also have family members who are anti vax and it's so disheartening to see them go down this rabbit hole deeper and deeper to the point were there "mission" is more important than everything else. Missing out on important family events (christening/baptism thing) because they have a weekly anti Vax meeting.
Also after hearing my husband had the second vax he was told they have something he could take to detox from it. FFS.
Anyway I appreciate your newsletter but I might start skipping the covid related ones as it's all bumming me out.
Mate, I feel you. I have a cousin on the GC who is waaaaay down all the anti-vax rabbit holes. I am still trying to keep in touch as we’ve been close since childhood but it’s hard hearing the terms she uses, many of them Trumpisms - she likes to talk about the “plandemic”, “china virus”, “big pharma”, “poison jab”, “mask-wearing sheeple” and so on. I don’t have the answer to what you’re going through, but I’m so sorry it’s happening. Stay off the social and focus on what’s real in your life ❤️
Covid certainly has become an all consuming topic. I'm moving way from it. I have reached the point that idiotic comments just make me mad and life's too short.
I totally get it Michelle. I've been off insta since July and I recently went back and dipped a toe and the third post was some vaccine sceptic bullsh*t from someone I used to respect. I just unfollowed and closed the app. So totally understand bowing out of the whole covid related content 😰💗
The bio under the first person, Valerie’s account says “blessed” which shows how ridiculous social media and the use of that term has become. Reminds me of my quasi nephew in law. He would go into Taco Bell and take a photo of his meal, post it on Instagram with “#blessed” as a way to mock what that term has become.
The influencer thing is just bonkers. Valerie and her fellow influencers don’t have that many followers because they haven’t bothered to pay for them. There’s a great documentary, Fake Famous (it streams on HBO here in the US), about the absurdity of influencers and social media. Bots and fake followers are bought and oftentimes the comments they produce have nothing to do with the posts themselves. There’s a great scene that shows how people fake flying on a jet to some exotic locale. They stand in front of a tv with footage of the locale, place a toilet seat behind their head (it looks like an airplane window) and have their photo taken. Voilà, people think that they’re flying to Tahiti.
So I wonder, are these photos of these anti vaxxers in the hospital staged? If they’re influencers they always have their camera phones ready to document the smallest event in their lives. Why weren’t they documenting the actual 1.5 hour fit, etc? 🤔
I'd say they're in hospital - for what reason I dunno, maybe they had a panic attack, or did have a particularly rough reaction to the vaccine - but the caption tells another story (ie heart attacks).
I think it was very likely to be a largely self-induced panic attack. While some panic attacks last 5-15 minutes, they can last for up to an hour, especially if the situation and your thinking keeps feeding the fear and the fight-flight response.
Since many of the physical symptoms and sensations are similar, people who experience panic attacks often believe they are having a heart attack - which only increases their terror.
A panic attack would also fit with how she was reportedly treated by (possibly exasperated) primary care workers who didn't think she was having seizures or a heart attack but couldn't convince her otherwise.
Are they in hospital though? Those pictures look like they could just as likely be in a GP clinic. I've been to my GP for chest pain before (which turned out to be stress related) and the first thing they do is hook you up with a whole lot of wires to an ECG machine to check your heart. I'm purely speculating but I wouldn't put it past a soulless influencer to go to their GP complaining of fictional chest pain/palpitations just to get a selfie with bunch of wires attached to them.
If it was a severe panic attack (and I believe it likely was), the chest pain and palpitations weren't fictional, just misunderstood - as is common with panic disorder. She does talk about 'all her heart attacks' so she might actually have panic disorder.
Since you don't put an ECG dot on your clavicle to measure heart rate, it's possible she might have moved the ECG dot herself to make it show up in the selfie photo better and support how 'serious' it all was.
Also, it's even possible an exasperated (or well-intentioned) health care worker applied a bogus ECG dot to try and calm her down. We just don't know.
You're a much nicer person than I am, Paul! Perhaps I'm too cynical but I don't believe that she had any symptoms at all. She could just as easily have turned up at the hospital complaining of chest pains where she would have been in an emergency department hospital bed for hours while she was assessed, lots of opportunities for selfies! Influencers are so self-absorbed I don't think she would have thought twice about wasting hospital resources to make her "vaccine reaction" story more believable. The selling of dodgy products afterwards is extremely suspicious.
Hah - I don’t know about being nicer. I had an outraged, cynical sarcastic reaction initially too. Anger is our normal emotional response to unfairness and injustice. Now, I didn’t share much of that beyond a snippy one-liner about narcissism since I didn’t think it would add that much to the conversation.
As I was saying to Jo, psychopathic levels of narcissism - making up the whole thing - is actually (thankfully) rare. Working yourself up into a self-absorbed panic attack is way more common.
Narcissistic individuals have a core of denied anxiety about worthlessness lurking inside them, and that feeding an undiagnosed case of panic disorder is something I’ve personally witnessed with clients, trips to the emergency room and all.
Now, I’m not saying they didn’t make it all up, they could have. We don’t and, absent an fMRI during the episode, can’t know. But it’s just statistically unlikely.
Question, why do so many people consider Insta a 'nicer place' than Facebook? My take, platforms may be engineered for engagement, but it is who you choose to engage with that makes the real difference.
I think Instagram used to be nicer.. but since it's turned into a similar "comments section" to Facebook - and the way people carry out convos and @ other people - it's just as bad. Toxic breeding more toxic, and quickly. And a nice post can be swarmed by, say, anti-vaxxers super quick.
For me, it's because what I see in my feed on Insta isn't affected by the people I follow. Like if someone I am Facebook friends with comments on a post on Facebook then it pops up in my feed pretty much no matter what. But my Instagram feed is more under my control.
It definitely used to be nicer - more about sharing photography in the very beginning. And then the wheels fell off and it became all about selfies, influencers and who is living their best life #blessed 🤣
This is so awful, I'm glad I've never been on Instagram. I just deactivated my Facebook account yesterday so I'm off social media, it was driving me crazy. I'd felt my anger building for a while and the last straw was when my best friend's husband who is terrified of the vaccine, because of all the misinformation he's been absorbing, wrote a post talking about his frustrations with the Auckland lockdown and then went on to compare the vaccine passports to oppressive regimes such as Nazi Germany (of course!). I responded after about 30 minutes when I'd calmed down to say that it is disrespectful and offensive to use that comparison and it wasn't ok. Then some stupid friend of his (who I don't know) responded to my comment with "Open your eyes and turn off the TV, you'll change your opinion". Well, let's just say I lost it and responded with this: "Holy shit! I didn't realise Facebook and Youtube were such reliable sources of information. I stand corrected. Fuck all of those scientists that spend years studying their specialised subject, what do they know?! Why should we trust them when there are so many experts who've attended Google University? Thank you for opening my eyes." I don't even know if he responded because I deactivated my account pretty soon after that. I need a break from seeing friends fall for this bullshit.
VERY GLAD you are off Facebook. My heart sings for you!
Thanks. I still find the conspiracy stuff interesting so appreciate that I can read about it on here without having to see friends making stupid Facebook posts! I thought I'd feel tempted to go back but haven't felt that at all, it's like a weight has been lifted off my chest.
I hear you. I have recently had similar painful discussions with a life long friend. She also used the nazi germany comparison which left me questioning her sanity. She is a university educated and, normally, level headed person. What the heck is going on out there?!
Panic? Fear? Safety in terrible Facebook groups they find themselves in? But mostly I honestly go back to this - fear of a changing world for privileged people: https://www.webworm.co/p/fearofachangingworld
Total abject fear, I suggest. Fear of the unknown, fear that what you once thought right is now wrong, and wanting to be OK, so joining the "I'm OK Club". The OK Club has a few very loud voices putting their loud points of view, and frightened people get swayed by them. Not governed by their intelligence, but by their fear.
It's also comes from so much privilege. Essentially a toddler throwing their toys because they don't get something they want!
I read somewhere that intelligent people can be more susceptible to these conspiracies and whatever because they're used to doing their own research... But I guess it depends what sources you're getting your research from 😏😏😏
I've heard this too but as soon as someone starts spouting conspiracy/anti-vax crap I can't help thinking they're a dumbass.
If you've had success in other areas, you tend to think you'll be successful in new ones. So there's that strong confidence of the novice (Dunning-Kruger effect), add in strong confirmation bias, and you've got someone who's "done their own research". Also why there are anti-vaxx doctors, nurses, and even people working in vaccine research.
It's pretty easy to find information to balance any of the rubbish they are spouting. The pregnancy/miscarriage statistics going around are from an actual study but they are cherry picking the results. Shortcut with my own numbers: 100 pregnant women in the trial as of March 1st. As of April 1st 30 women have given birth. 15 had a miscarriage (sadly the normal statistics in everyday life). 55 are still pregnant. The anti-vaxx brigade are spouting the results but leaving out the 55 still pregnant. They are then saying that 1/3 of women in the trial suffered a miscarriage. I'm sure that it would be pretty scary if you're pregnant or wanting to be pregnant.
You're right, you just need healthy skepticism and to read the whole study, not rely on Influenzers (that's what I'm calling them from now on 🤣) to get your facts 😓 I honestly do have so much empathy for anyone struggling with any of this.
Strugglers yes. Complete inluenzers no.
What the heck indeed...I definitely question their sanity.
I stormed out of the smoko room last week after a Nazi comparison came up. I won't stand for it.
The talking points are all the same, right?
OMG I'm so on board with your response 🤣 Google University 😆
Your contempt and outrage here are both completely warranted but also somewhat hilarious.
Honestly I've never understood "influencers" (I think I'm a bit too old for it), but I'm now a little mad that I didn't make any money off my vaccine side effects, which I've alluded to on here before. I had 5 days of an untouchable migraine unlike any headache I've experienced, as well as 10-14 days of altered mental status. I remember almost nothing from those two weeks. So I'm a little bummed that I'm so anti-capitalist that it didn't even occur to me to make money off that shit. Damn.
Anyway, the thing about the vaccine side effects is that they're just *symptoms.* There's no disease actually destroying your body; it's simply an immune reaction that will resolve itself within days, usually.
I saw that Newsweek magazine has a cover this week with a photo of a sad child and it says "would you give this child a vaccine?" Which reminded me that I once injected a newborn who was literally less than 24 hours old with the hep B vaccine. To protect his life. This fear-mongering bullshit in the msm had got to stop. It's absolutely unethical.
Glad you got some laughs too - that was the intent! If you don't laugh, you cry, right?
That sounds horrible Alex. I bet at the time you weren't even thinking of making money; you would have been too genuinely sick.
Well all i can say is that 3 weeks later i went back for dose 2, because it was worth it!
I might be an idiot but I just don't understand all this panic (genuine people on the street not the shills just trying to cash in, they're pretty obvious) about the vaccine! Even if you do feel a bit shit after your vaccines at least you're not STRUGGLING TO BREATHE OR BASICALLY LIVING ON A VENTILATOR WITH A 50/50 CHANCE OF DEATH IN A HOSPITAL. A ventilator doesn't just help you breathe more oxygen! It literally bypasses your bodies natural respiratory functions to breathe for you! Scarring and pneumonia are potential complications from being on a ventilator. Sorry for yelling but, I was pretty scared of getting covid (even though I live in qld and the risk was pretty low) so I worked quite hard to get my jabs. My partner is vulnerable and my best friend is immunocompromised so I also wanted the added protection for them (they got their jabs early)
So I understand fear... Of a horrible disease, not of a VACCINE TO POTENTIALLY SCUPPER SAID DISEASE. Aaaaand I'm yelling again.
Totally understand the fear! I fear people I love getting sick or dying, or living with long covid, and I would also fear contracting it myself. But sabotaging people’s fear into fearing the thing that will help end this pandemic is bonkers!!!!
Right!? It's like the mmr vaccine, I remember getting mine at intermediate during the school day, there was no question of if you believed in vaccines, you just got your jab and went back to class 🤣 Now its a right of passage for kids to get measles? WHO WANTS TO GET MEASLES!!?
I remember getting the meningitis one at school and the only kid who didn’t was a boy in my year who freaked out because he was afraid of needles. I was also scared of needles but way more embarrassed to freak out in front of my classmates. But no controversy over it!
Some people are so terrified of needles! But ultimately, a little jab or a horrible disease 🤷🏻♀️😅 It was that study published in the lancet by Andrew Wakefield (not peer reviewed 😒) that started the whole anti mmr thing but it's all been thoroughly debunked since! People don't deserve free will sometimes 😒
I don't like needles and didn't feel the vax either time.
Neither 😂 the first time I looked to see if she was about to start and she was already done!
Yeah, we've been vaxxed forever. But again, the disinfo puts people off - ideas like it was developed too quickly etc. People read a misleading headline like that and they read it 1000 times a day on social media and BOOM - fear and anti-vax sentiment.
A lot of white privilege. Being told what to do. People who aren't used to that react badly. But I know it's so, so complex. So many reasons.
The disinformation en masse certainly doesn't help.
Yell into the void with us, Paula.
This is unrelentingly awful. And I have no doubts that these people are grifters. But here’s what I keep thinking: the nocebo effect is real.
Everyone on social media that has become exploited by this shit is now bombarded by these stories of symptoms.
These stories aren’t real but the nocebo effect is. I’m not surprised that people might get crazy symptoms after a vaccine. They’d get it from a saline shot too.
It’s not Pfizer making people sick, it’s Zuckerberg. Mass hysteria, snake-eating -it’s-own-tail, dystopian nightmare.
And of course there are profits to made. To quote the ‘You’re Wrong About’ podcast, it was capitalism all along.
You're so right that it's not just the nocebo effect they're risking.
When people get anxious enough, you can get actual somatic symptoms.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somatic_symptom_disorder
The body and the mind are not separate like Descartes claimed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind%E2%80%93body_dualism
The reality is way more subtle and complicated. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychoneuroimmunology
Given the claims circulating in the anti-vaxxer communities, you're dead right that they are risking something bigger, especially since it's a pandemic of the unvaccinated and you'll soon have *real* COVID symptoms in there too which people will attribute to 'vaccine shedding' or something equally nonsensical.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_psychogenic_illness
Thanks for all this Paul. I'd be curious for some doctors to weigh in on this at some stage. I've also been reading a lot about mass hysteria (after revisiting Havana Syndrome again recently thanks to Tony's Totally Normal WW piece) and this all fits that bill eh
Interesting, researchers were theorising about this possibility almost a year ago, given many historical localised outbreaks of psychogenic illness around vaccines. Now we have a globalised social-media powered outbreak unfolding.
https://www.auckland.ac.nz/en/news/2020/12/10/dont-let-psychogenic-illness-undermine-the-covid-vaccine.html
Raising public awareness of the known reality of mass psychogenic illness is one of their recommendations.
It’s not the first social-media driven case of psychogenic illness either. There has been a recent spike of Tourette’s-like ‘illness’ in teens linked back to a popular Youtuber.
https://academic.oup.com/brain/advance-article/doi/10.1093/brain/awab316/6356504
Mass psychogenic illness can show as ‘contagious’ physical behaviours, like dancing manias in the Middle Ages, sometimes also attributed to ergotism and the two factors wouldn’t be mutually exclusive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_mania
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergotism
Oh, I'd say the anti-vaxxer community is playing out mass psychogenic illness before our very eyes. Interestingly, past instances have often centred on women too but I think that's largely due to sexist myths i.e. men are more ashamed to express vulnerability, in this case, fear, and socialised to express it as anger instead.
Just to underscore this, here are the classic symptoms of mass psychogenic illness:
symptoms that have no plausible organic basis;
symptoms that are transient and benign;
symptoms with rapid onset and recovery;
occurrence in a segregated group;
the presence of extraordinary anxiety;
symptoms that are spread via sight, sound or oral communication;
a spread that moves down the age scale, beginning with older or higher-status people;
a preponderance of female participants.
We can tick *all* of these off here.
Women influencers (higher social status) on instagram (moving down the age scale i.e. instagram vs. facebook) and antivaxxers becoming an increasingly segregated group both due to vaccine mandates and social shunning, experiencing extreme anxiety due to fear of the vaccine and now financial ruin due to job loss.
HARD AGREE.
What a slap in the face to the medical system as well. I have a friend who experienced a 1 in a few million chance side effect and was treated with nothing but the utmost care and caution from the medical system here in NZ. They'll be thankful my friend is a trained scientist and thus understood the rarity and how it likely means they would be super at risk of covid itself. Also this stuff seems scarily common https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-57928647 David, did you manage to uncover if these women were being paid for their bullshit?
I don't imagine any of them are being paid - but they gain thousands of followers which is the equivalent for them - as when they offer a discount code for something, they get more referrals and more $$$
Repeat after me: capitalism 👏 is 👏 bad.
The endless pursuit of money has lead humans as a species to this apogee of awesomeness: making insane shit up and or overplaying mild symptoms to get money. I mean the whole constantly documenting your #bestlife (filters can’t fix hollow smiles below soulless eyes) is in itself sad and pointless symptom of hyper capitalism driven by techbros overly simplistic lens of social interaction with the aim of scraping data and monestising every single interaction.
I think you’ve done it David. I think you’ve broken me.
What he said. Also - I broke ages ago. Welcome to the club :)
Just over the whole thing! I literally go on Instagram (I don't even bother with Facefart) for 1 minute and quit out 😒 I'd delete the app but I use the messenger part 🤣
Who wants to be rich when your existence is so hollow? Blech
If anyone is after an alternative messaging app to Zuckerburg products you should consider Signal. A free, open source end-to-end encryption service and as far as I have looked, they don't even mine metadata (which Facebook openly admits to doing, and secretly also probably listens to the content of messages).
Agree, Sarah. After years of complaining about Facebook, once I started learning about Mark Zuckerburg I decided I could no longer stomach contributing to his billions. His indifference to the millions suffering and a few dying all for the sake of the dollar is well known. So, I warned my friends I was planning to delete anything to do with Fuckerturd (Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp) and signed on to Signal. I did it in stages to wean myself like an addict. Initially, I signed out of the apps every time after being on, to deleting the apps off my phone and only checking when on the computer, to then only checking in once or twice a week, to deactivating and checking in once or twice a month. I then completely deleted. It took about a year, all the while reminding friends my intention. Too often we complain without realising we can do something about it. After all, why would Zuckerburg change the model that's working for him? Ka-Ching!
Yep - Signal is getting very usable now, and isn't the tech geek product it started as.
When your existence is hollow, being rich is the only joy you think you might find. Of course, people invariably find that it doesn't fill the void.
Shitty lesson to learn the hard way.
24h after I started using Instagram I experienced a clammy heart, periperi sores and lockbrain. Look at my chest!
GET OUT THE DEFIBRILLATORS
Do you have a discount code for those Peri Peri Sores? They sound great! #sponsoredpost
HA!
This is the kind of shit that is making some people in my family have breakdowns. Wanting spouse to quit his job instead of getting vaxxed, and looking genuinely unwell due to the stress of people saying she needs to get vaccinated. She’s petrified and almost impossible to talk to without her flipping out.
This is so sad. I'm so sorry.
I didn’t realise how bad it was until other family members saw them the other day. I’d love to try and have a calm conversation but I don’t know if it’s possible.
Also - there is no talking them out. Facts won't do much. I mean - they may seed doubt, but there won't be a "I've found God! moment. Just be understanding and try and not get angry! This may be one to revisit? https://www.webworm.co/p/how-to-talk-to-people-stuck-in-a
I will revisit that - the only thing is that she literally won't be able to see our Great-Aunt due to the rest home rules about vaccination (very valid rules!) and she's getting really old and is ready to go. I can't imagine her deciding never to see her again, but then again...none of this is rational.
😣💗
Hi! I know I am mighty late to this conversation but seeing such an intelligent and helpful comment section and community here, I thought some others may have some insight to help me.
I did some serious exploring down the rabbit hole recently (ADHD hyperfocus for the win) as I think part of me really, REALLY wants to understand how so many people I care about have got lost in the anti vaxx/ conspiracy mess. A lot of what I have seen recently has been in regards to “mY rIgHts hAvE bEeN iNfrInGed” and screenshots of NZBORA etc. As a lawyer, quite frankly it has pissed me off. I even emailed a rant to David about some of the shoddy legal advice going around. That people are lapping up. Yes, we have got to a place where people are taking legal advice from FB.
ANYWAY. After reading one too many comment sections and researching alternative points of view, I emerged more confused and quite frankly really sad. My mental health has taken a beating. So here are the things I do and don’t understand and wondered if anyone has some answers/ resources/ psychological understanding.
Points of view I do see merit in;
- In any other situation, except, I don’t know a global pandemic, the lockdown orders would be seen as arbitrary, and a rights infringement. Same as the vaccine being needed for employment.
- There will undoubtedly be some people who have received some adverse effects to the vaccine.
- The emergency legislation and the power of the government in these circumstances is something we haven’t seen used like this before. The NZBORA has the same status as any other law, and judges don’t have the ability to strike down legislation- like say, Canada. Parliament does have a lot of power in NZ.
- I understand uncertainty and fear. I also understand the distrust of big pharma (although this has always been an issue).
- The changes in the pandemic - and delta- then the subsequent move from elimination to suppression has meant that the government has gone back on statements said last year etc etc re. govt response.
Keeping all that in mind/ this is what I can’t for the LIFE OF ME UNDERSTAND:
- How have those who have gone from being hesitant about the vaccine, gone so quickly to the radical side of believing our government is corrupt, communist and part of a global conspiracy.
- If rights infringement is a genuine concern, how is a protest whilst in lockdown going to help? Shouldn’t it mean that we all do our bit, protect each other, get out of lockdown, and then make some proper submissions. Or rather vote differently?
- How come every person that identifies any vaccine/ media/ rights infringement issues (that i’ve seen) isn’t able to provide a better alternative. If the government is the problem-then perhaps another political party would have done better, however ALL believe that national wouldn’t have handled this well.
- How the hell is it so damn easy for some to go from avid supporters of our covid response last year to being certain of government corruption/ Jacinda’s evil agenda. Isn’t the virus the problem? Many still believe that Covid doesn’t exist. I just…
- Why is there such a cult mentality? Anti vaxx seem to be always engaging in argument, connecting personally with those that believe the same, and are utterly consumed by it? It reminds me of MLMs. I don’t spend my whole day chatting with my friends about vaccinations, bonding over it , trying to find more vaccinated friends.
Sorry, I know this was long. But I have been so desperate to see sense in the way that others think as I don’t want to believe that people I care about are stupid/ ignorant/ selfish and that susceptible to radical views. It’s hurting my brain and soul.
BOTTOM LINE: How can the most ridiculous, wild explanations logically gain so much support?
Also- the intersect between the far left and far right is interesting and terrifying. There was a great guardian article about this that showed how the far right has adopted liberal lefts language. Seeing Brian Tamaki side by side with some of the most liberal people I know is wild. Note- I do know that not all people hesitant about the vaccine have gone full conspiracy theorist, but shit, so many have changed lanes, so fast and so fucking vocally.
Okay Emma - going to level with you: The speed and extreme stance is a mystery to me to. I understand hesitancy, fear, and "asking questions". I do not understand how you go to screaming about made up legal systems and harassing dead kids families: I just don't know.
Hi Emma. If you've not found that already in David's extensive and ever-growing conspiracy 'back catalogue', there are some helpful interviews that might offer you some psychological insight and solace.
Debunker, Mick West:
https://www.webworm.co/p/how-to-talk-to-people-stuck-in-a
TikTok Science Educator, Abbie Richards:
https://www.webworm.co/p/i-talk-to-the-creator-of-the-conspiracy
SF author, Sonny Whitelaw
https://www.webworm.co/p/the-attraction-of-sloppy-nonsense
Researcher, Tina Ngata:
https://www.webworm.co/p/why-are-conspiracy-theories-dripping
And even a couple from me, speaking as a psychotherapist:
https://www.webworm.co/p/a-therapists-view-of-conspiracy-theories
https://www.webworm.co/p/a-therapist-on-conspiracy-theories
And know that it's not just you struggling with all this and desperately wanting to understand and to make sense of it. It is truly crazy-making having people close to us go 'down the rabbit hole' so FAST and be SO certain about a radical new worldview that doesn't really overlap with your own any more.
I’ve come to comments section a few times since reading todays post and each time I’ve left again as I simply don’t know how to say how disgusted I am with these people and their fake, like-driven lives. I’ve read the post twice (with a long bout of staring out the window in between). So I guess that’s what I’m here to say - I don’t understand these influencers, and I find the actions of those in your examples totally inhuman. I really appreciate you writing this David, and I can see from the comments that I’m not alone in my thinking (or yours), so I’d consider myself the one who is “blessed” on that basis alone.
I don't fully understand it either. I really don't. Except to say that social media - and how "personal" it feels - gets people confused with honesty and trust.
Yep. The short version is that since we're social primates and emotion (attachment) evolved well before reason (and collective reason is still a decidely social process), 'Belonging is stronger than Facts"
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/07/world/asia/misinformation-disinformation-fake-news.html
Then count me in as a non-belonger!
I've never seen so much bullshit in one influencers post (however I'm not on Instagram to protect myself from bullshit)! I'm no medical expert but having the ability to call an ambulance while having a 1.5hr seizure, being sent home from hospital after having a seizure for 45 mins, partner sitting there watching a seizure for over an hour and not getting help, staying calm while having lock jaw and heart palpitations. God those details made me laugh and I call lies of the most nefarious kind.
Just when you think people can't go any lower, boom there it is, some 'natural' MLM shite they are peddling.
Must get myself some pine bark elixir for next time one of those pesky heart attacks wakes me at night. 🤯
The thing that got me is the stories were just TOO FAR. Look - they probably presented with *something* at the hospital (be it panic attack for some kind of reaction.. or just all bullshit) but the caption just goes toooo far.
But that was the thing that made me the most *facepalm*: the tens of thousands of people who buy it.
Man this sucks. People suck.
Im off social media at the moment cause I just couldn't deal with the anti Vax stuff showing up more on insta and seeing people constantly breaking the rules, (Vic, Australia) and feeling like I'm judging everyone for it.
Also have family members who are anti vax and it's so disheartening to see them go down this rabbit hole deeper and deeper to the point were there "mission" is more important than everything else. Missing out on important family events (christening/baptism thing) because they have a weekly anti Vax meeting.
Also after hearing my husband had the second vax he was told they have something he could take to detox from it. FFS.
Anyway I appreciate your newsletter but I might start skipping the covid related ones as it's all bumming me out.
Hey Michelle - fair. You will be glad to know I have my next two lined up and they are a FUN escape!
Mate, I feel you. I have a cousin on the GC who is waaaaay down all the anti-vax rabbit holes. I am still trying to keep in touch as we’ve been close since childhood but it’s hard hearing the terms she uses, many of them Trumpisms - she likes to talk about the “plandemic”, “china virus”, “big pharma”, “poison jab”, “mask-wearing sheeple” and so on. I don’t have the answer to what you’re going through, but I’m so sorry it’s happening. Stay off the social and focus on what’s real in your life ❤️
Covid certainly has become an all consuming topic. I'm moving way from it. I have reached the point that idiotic comments just make me mad and life's too short.
I totally get it Michelle. I've been off insta since July and I recently went back and dipped a toe and the third post was some vaccine sceptic bullsh*t from someone I used to respect. I just unfollowed and closed the app. So totally understand bowing out of the whole covid related content 😰💗
The bio under the first person, Valerie’s account says “blessed” which shows how ridiculous social media and the use of that term has become. Reminds me of my quasi nephew in law. He would go into Taco Bell and take a photo of his meal, post it on Instagram with “#blessed” as a way to mock what that term has become.
The influencer thing is just bonkers. Valerie and her fellow influencers don’t have that many followers because they haven’t bothered to pay for them. There’s a great documentary, Fake Famous (it streams on HBO here in the US), about the absurdity of influencers and social media. Bots and fake followers are bought and oftentimes the comments they produce have nothing to do with the posts themselves. There’s a great scene that shows how people fake flying on a jet to some exotic locale. They stand in front of a tv with footage of the locale, place a toilet seat behind their head (it looks like an airplane window) and have their photo taken. Voilà, people think that they’re flying to Tahiti.
So I wonder, are these photos of these anti vaxxers in the hospital staged? If they’re influencers they always have their camera phones ready to document the smallest event in their lives. Why weren’t they documenting the actual 1.5 hour fit, etc? 🤔
I'd say they're in hospital - for what reason I dunno, maybe they had a panic attack, or did have a particularly rough reaction to the vaccine - but the caption tells another story (ie heart attacks).
I think it was very likely to be a largely self-induced panic attack. While some panic attacks last 5-15 minutes, they can last for up to an hour, especially if the situation and your thinking keeps feeding the fear and the fight-flight response.
Since many of the physical symptoms and sensations are similar, people who experience panic attacks often believe they are having a heart attack - which only increases their terror.
https://www.bidmc.org/about-bidmc/wellness-insights/heart-health/2020/01/panic-attack-vs-heart-attack
Learning that panic attacks aren't deadly is actually an important part of the treatment protocol for Panic disorder. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_disorder
A panic attack would also fit with how she was reportedly treated by (possibly exasperated) primary care workers who didn't think she was having seizures or a heart attack but couldn't convince her otherwise.
Are they in hospital though? Those pictures look like they could just as likely be in a GP clinic. I've been to my GP for chest pain before (which turned out to be stress related) and the first thing they do is hook you up with a whole lot of wires to an ECG machine to check your heart. I'm purely speculating but I wouldn't put it past a soulless influencer to go to their GP complaining of fictional chest pain/palpitations just to get a selfie with bunch of wires attached to them.
The medical gas supply hookups in the background look hospital grade and not GP clinic to me. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_gas_supply
If it was a severe panic attack (and I believe it likely was), the chest pain and palpitations weren't fictional, just misunderstood - as is common with panic disorder. She does talk about 'all her heart attacks' so she might actually have panic disorder.
Since you don't put an ECG dot on your clavicle to measure heart rate, it's possible she might have moved the ECG dot herself to make it show up in the selfie photo better and support how 'serious' it all was.
Also, it's even possible an exasperated (or well-intentioned) health care worker applied a bogus ECG dot to try and calm her down. We just don't know.
You're a much nicer person than I am, Paul! Perhaps I'm too cynical but I don't believe that she had any symptoms at all. She could just as easily have turned up at the hospital complaining of chest pains where she would have been in an emergency department hospital bed for hours while she was assessed, lots of opportunities for selfies! Influencers are so self-absorbed I don't think she would have thought twice about wasting hospital resources to make her "vaccine reaction" story more believable. The selling of dodgy products afterwards is extremely suspicious.
Hah - I don’t know about being nicer. I had an outraged, cynical sarcastic reaction initially too. Anger is our normal emotional response to unfairness and injustice. Now, I didn’t share much of that beyond a snippy one-liner about narcissism since I didn’t think it would add that much to the conversation.
As I was saying to Jo, psychopathic levels of narcissism - making up the whole thing - is actually (thankfully) rare. Working yourself up into a self-absorbed panic attack is way more common.
Narcissistic individuals have a core of denied anxiety about worthlessness lurking inside them, and that feeding an undiagnosed case of panic disorder is something I’ve personally witnessed with clients, trips to the emergency room and all.
Now, I’m not saying they didn’t make it all up, they could have. We don’t and, absent an fMRI during the episode, can’t know. But it’s just statistically unlikely.
Question, why do so many people consider Insta a 'nicer place' than Facebook? My take, platforms may be engineered for engagement, but it is who you choose to engage with that makes the real difference.
I think Instagram used to be nicer.. but since it's turned into a similar "comments section" to Facebook - and the way people carry out convos and @ other people - it's just as bad. Toxic breeding more toxic, and quickly. And a nice post can be swarmed by, say, anti-vaxxers super quick.
I suspect it was nicer before Facebook bought it too.
For me, it's because what I see in my feed on Insta isn't affected by the people I follow. Like if someone I am Facebook friends with comments on a post on Facebook then it pops up in my feed pretty much no matter what. But my Instagram feed is more under my control.
It definitely used to be nicer - more about sharing photography in the very beginning. And then the wheels fell off and it became all about selfies, influencers and who is living their best life #blessed 🤣
I suffer Instafluencer Trauma. Can I get an exemption for this?