They lost their families to conspiracy theories. Now they’re finding others just like them on TikTok

Having a family member get involved in conspiracy theories can be like losing them altogether. Alex Ford/Insider Having a family member get involved in conspiracy theories can be like losing them altogether. Sam Morris lost his mother to conspiracy theories after she became obsessed with QAnon.

  He is one of many creators who turned to TikTok to find a community that makes them feel less alone. Sam Morris became particularly close with his mother in his 20s, developing a caring dynamic of what he called the “gay son and super liberal mom. ” People would describe her as an over the top hippy, but someone who never judged anyone.

“She was always just very open and fun,” Morris said. Morris always felt his mother, father, and three younger sisters were compassionate, loving people — “a great family. ” But at the start of this year, a visit to his parents turned out to be one of the most traumatizing experiences of his life.

The mom he used to know, the woman who was always the “life and center and soul of a party,” was gone. In the months before the start of the pandemic in early 2020, Morris’ mother had gotten sucked into the world of QAnon. She now believes “everything” conspiracy related, Morris said, from the dangers of chemtrails, to anti-vaccine narratives, to how Hollywood elites drink the blood of children.

When Morris went to visit, his mother was sitting up in bed, “like something from the Exorcist,” he said, “screaming conspiracy theory stuff, abusing me, and insulting me. ” He said he cried for two straight weeks afterwards. “The saddest thing for me was I saw her as a victim of it,” he said.

“That was the hardest thing for me — I didn’t look at her and think like, ‘you fucking bitch. ‘ I thought, ‘I just wish you hadn’t read that shit. ‘”Morris, 34, is an author, artist, and performer who lives in London.

He’s had a big social media following for a number of years, but found a new audience on TikTok when he started documenting his experience of losing his mother to QAnon. He is one of several creators turning to the app after losing loved ones to the conspiracy movement. On TikTok, Morris and others have found a community that makes them feel like they’re not alone.

The sprawling impact of TikTok can help people recognize how widespread conspiracy theories reachMorris kept his story to himself for about a year and a half. But it got to a point where he felt so “attacked” by the “no holds barred assault” on him by his mother on her public Twitter account, that he decided to start talking about it on TikTok, where he now has 163,000 followers. On his mom’s account, which Insider viewed, Morris’ mother shares his posts from Twitter and Instagram, and complains she has lost him to a “covidian cult” because he got vaccinated.

“He is trying to drag the rest of my family down with him,” she wrote. “I don’t know what else to do to save him. “Morris started sharing his story with a dark joke about spending Christmas alone because his mom had disowned him for QAnon, to see how people would react.

“The more people that reached out to me on there with similar stories, that’s when I was like, okay, I’m not the only person doing this,” he said. “It felt easier for me to then open up more. “Sam Morris wishes his mom had never fallen down the conspiracy hole.

Sam MorrisThere’s a growing online community of people whose parents have gotten obsessed with QAnon — the far-right conspiracy movement that revolves around the belief that an international cabal of liberal pedophiles run the world and former president Donald Trump has a plan to stop them. On TikTok, children of QAnon conspirators share conversations they have with their parents, and use the app as a way to connect with others for advice and solidarity. Morris recently posted an eight part series about how his mom became radicalized in the first place.

She was always interested in things that were outside of the ordinary, he told Insider, and just before the pandemic, she got into the cannabis and CBD movement in a big way. So much so, she came off of her antidepressants and tried to replace it with CBD oil. This was a “disaster,” Morris said, and when the coronavirus pandemic hit in March 2020, her mental health deteriorated further.

Morris remembers receiving links on Facebook messenger in the first week of lockdown in the UK, to websites about the dangers of vaccinations and masks, and how the powerful elites in the world are harvesting the chemical adrenochrome from children to lengthen their lives, and ate babies on Jeffrey Epstein’s island. He tried to respond, telling her she sounded “unhinged” and “unintelligible. “”It got to the point where you couldn’t talk to her because every single thing that came out of her mouth was some sort of conspiracy theory,” he said.

Morris now has no contact with his mom, saying that at some point she started seeing him as an enemy — one of the “child eating elites” who has “reptile blood. ” On her birthday last year, Morris wrote a letter and sent her flowers, only to see that she tweeted about spending the day with her “surrogate son” — another QAnon conspiracy believer she met through the internet. When Morris began to post about his experiences on TikTok, he was shocked to see how many others had similar stories and how familiar they felt.

“It’s been giving me chills reading messages from people who have lost their mom or their dad or their auntie or their grandma,” he said. “I was just like, ‘Jesus Christ, what is going on here?'”Joe Pierre, a professor of health sciences at UCLA who has specialized in delusion-like beliefs and conspiracy theories, told Insider QAnon has many hooks that draw people in. It’s a big tent conspiracy that includes pro-Trump and populist sentiment, Christian Evangelism, the #SaveTheChildren movement, anti-vaccine claims, and wellness culture.

The reasons people fall down these holes differ from person to person, Pierre said, but in general, there is usually a combination of mistrust of authoritative sources and seeking out misinformation to “support their mistrust and suspicions about the world or about specific sources of informational authority. “Belief in conspiracy theories also tend to be associated with several other behavioral traits, such as the need for certainty, closure, and control, a need for uniqueness, and tendency to use intuitive thinking over analytical thinking. “These quirks are present to some degree in everyone,” Pierre said.

“But people who believe in conspiracy theories tend to have them in greater amounts than those that don’t. “Social media can provide support where in the real world it may be lackingBeckett Arnold has found TikTok a “sanity saver” during the pandemic, with many family members who refuse to wear masks or get vaccinated. Her mother was always susceptible to conspiracies, she told Insider.

Growing up, Arnold would hear her mother talk at length about the nefarious and secret government uses of fluoride in the water and chemtrails from airplanes poisoning the population. “Year after year, it’s gotten worse with the conspiracy stuff,” Arnold said. “She expects me to respect where she’s coming from, but she won’t afford me the same benefit of the doubt.

“Just after the election in 2020 was when Arnold started thinking she might have to distance herself from her parents, aunts, and uncles, because they were “on all the telegram channels and listening to Lin Wood,” and thinking Trump was going to be reelected. “For one thing, no, that’s not gonna happen,” Arnold said. “But for another thing, you would want them to actually throw out the will of the people? That’s not democratic.

That’s not freedom. What are we even talking about here?”A protester holds a Q sign as he waits in line with others to enter a Trump campaign rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. AP Photo/Matt RourkeArnold said her mom’s influence caused her to almost fall down the conspiracy theory hole herself a few years ago, thinking that “9/11 was an inside job.

” But she was brought back to reality by her followers on TikTok, she said, when they challenged her. Now she uses the app, where she has 77,000 followers, as a creative outlet, using humor to share her experience with having a family who believes in conspiracies. “If we don’t laugh, we just cry,” she said.

“It has really kind of helped me keep not only my sanity through all of this, but also build a community of people who are similarly minded to me. “Pierre told Insider people have turned to internet sources, such as Reddit groups, for solace after their family members get wrapped up in conspiracy theories and disappear. “Those cut off can often experience a palpable sense of loss,” he said.

“But also a lot of frustration associated with feeling helpless about rescuing their loved one or frustrated that they can no longer connect without being urged to come down the rabbit hole too. “Watching parents descend into alternate reality filled with fearThe reasons people get involved in QAnon and other conspiracy theories are wide-ranging and complicated, but there are patterns that often emerge. Fear is a big driver for many.

Morris believes the fear of the unknown that came with the pandemic and the lack of control that came from her children all being in different places contributed to their mom trying to find answers on the internet. Her mental health was already in a rocky place, he said, and she ended up soothing herself with the explanations she found in conspiracy theories. “She started trying to make up answers for what was actually going on in her reality,” Morris said.

Rebekah connects her parents’ views to the fear they inherited from the culture they were brought up in. Rebekah, who Insider is only identifying by her first name for her family’s privacy, grew up as part of an evangelical fundamentalist Christian church in the southern US — what she now describes as a “cult. ” She doesn’t disclose which church she was a part of publicly, but has shared some of her story on TikTok of how she and her husband left in the Spring of 2020.

Rebekah mom, like other QAnon followers, believed that Trump was still the president after President Biden was sworn into office in 2021, she said. “They think Trump is a hero and a God, and they’ll send me things about how he’s like the savior of all the trafficked children,” she said. Rebekah also turned to TikTok as a place to share her story, after her therapist said it could be a helpful part of her healing journey.

A conservative fundamentalist society can be a bubble, she said, and if you break out of it it can feel very isolating. “You can be made to feel stupid by those still in the bubble and made to feel rebellious,” she said. “I just hope that talking about things like this, talking about our experiences makes people feel less alone.

“Rebekah said she wishes she had a closer relationship with her parents, but she’s had to put in a lot of boundaries, such as muting the family’s Facebook messenger group, and telling her parents to not send her anything political anymore. “I love my mom. I love my parents, but they are so far into this,” she said.

“We’re not operating in the same reality. “Some of the messages on Rebekah’s family chat. RebekahLearning to let go can be the hardest part, because there are always glimmers of hopeArnold isn’t sure what the future holds for her and her mother’s relationship.

For now, Arnold sees herself as a voice of reason, and sticks around to expose her parents to her own opinions. “If I’m not there to help give a different perspective, they’re not gonna be exposed to it at all,” she said. Pierre said it is certainly possible that people can return to their families after becoming obsessed with conspiracies, but how likely that is depends on “how far down the rabbit hole they’ve fallen.

“”Often the best we can do as loved ones is to maintain contact and connection with someone so that there’s always something to come back to if they decide to climb out of the rabbit hole, even if just for a peek,” he said. Morris hopes that sharing his story sheds light on just how widespread conspiracy theories have spread all across the world, and the damage getting wrapped up in the hysteria and absurdity hurts individuals and rips families apart. At the beginning of 2021, Morris’ mother came to stay with him for six weeks.

One day near the end, something shifted and they had a long conversation in his kitchen for six or seven hours, without any food or breaks. Morris said he felt like he broke through to her, telling her she was just scared and searching for answers in a scary world. He said it was a moment where his mom seemed like herself again.

She cried and told him he was right. They hugged and said they loved each other. But the next day, his mom left his house and went back home to tell the rest of their family he had berated her for being a terrible mother for six hours.

It was “bewildering,” Morris said, because it felt like everything they had achieved had been undone. But it was still a glimmer of hope, he said, which lingers. “I don’t want to live a hopeless life,” he said.

“What she lives is a hopeless life. “Read the original article on Insider.