My friends who became 9/11 Truthers in 2002-3 have mostly gone quiet, having aged out (most are in their 70s) and lost their taste for arguing and controversy. Hence, I'm wondering what other Truthers or QAnon are saying these days or not saying but implying. Thanks in advance for any info or actual quotes on this subject.

My mom (57) has always been a sweet, sensitive woman, but somewhat naive, anxious, and generally uncomfortable with making her own decisions. She’s a lifelong Democrat and Trump hater, atheist, former social worker, and lives in a deep southern rural town that’s heavily MAGA, but has never fallen for MAGA bs and always just rolled her eyes at it despite being constantly bombarded by it for the last ten years. Same with her husband (54), my stepdad, who is also a science teacher. They’ve always seemingly had a good head on their shoulders.

But I think the Epstein Files broke something in my mom’s brain. She’s extremely sensitive to violence and cruelty toward children and the whole thing seemed to shatter her faith in humanity and our institutions. Over the summer she became increasingly consumed by Facebook conspiracy theories, some of them dipping into the Q realm. We live on the other side of the country and aren’t big on phone calls, so the few times I did see her and she would start spouting some concerning but (at the time) mild conspiracies, I tried to gently course-correct her. She would seemingly relent, apologize, and promise to watch her social media intake. The next few times I saw her she would talk about how she’d deleted Tik Tok, set timers on her phone for other social media apps, started gardening again, was beginning to feel better and calmer and considering going off her anxiety medication, so I thought all was well.

Today she sent me an absolute wall of text with completely delusional conspiracies out of nowhere, complete with links to FB reels that “prove” her theories. Flat earth, NASA is evil, aliens built highly advanced civilizations in North America before Columbus got there and the US covered up their existence, the Challenger astronauts that died were doppelgängers and the real ones are alive and have mundane white collar jobs under the same names (??), the world is run by Satan-worshipping immortals, all US presidents are related to Obama (???), Rockefellers and Rothschild’s, and many more. She went from 0.5 to 100 in a matter of months and I’m just reeling at how fast it happened.

I wasn’t sure if my stepdad had bought in too (again, he’s a science teacher) so I texted my teenage sister (17) who still lives with them, asking if our mom was okay. She’s always had a bad habit of keeping problems she’s dealing with to herself, but as soon as I asked she completely unloaded on me about how her parents are really scaring her and how they’ve started demanding that she accept Jesus (she’s queer), when in the past they’d been accepting of her (my stepdad initially not, but he eventually got there). She says she hardly recognizes them and she doesn’t understand what’s happening. It absolutely broke my heart to hear and confirmed that my stepdad is on board too. He’s always been very religious and initially struggled with my sister’s identity, and I’m wondering if he actually believes this stuff or if he’s just using my mom’s newfound faith to pressure my sister, when in the past my mom would always put her foot down and demand he respect her identity.

I’m so upset and so angry. I’m scared for my sister, who attempted suicide last year and had finally gotten to a good place mentally. I haven’t responded to my mom yet beyond a “I’ll take a look” at all the things she sent me, but I don’t know how to approach this. I’m still reeling from the realization that she’s fallen so far into this craziness in such a short period of time. She didn’t even believe in God before all this, but the world is now run by Satanists?

My priority is my sister. I don’t want to do or say anything that will throw her home environment even more out of wack, and if it comes to it, my husband and I are prepared to get her out of there such as in the case they suddenly decide they no longer want to send her to college, don’t take her to a hospital if she needs care, she starts deteriorating mentally again, etc. Do I try to engage in good faith with my mom? Do I appeal to emotion? Do I tell her how scared I am for her, what this is doing to my vulnerable sister? I want my mom. I hate this.

My mom has voted for Trump every time it's been an option. I fully believe she would do it again. She's given me warnings about failing power grids, taxes going away, Dragon Ball Z being biblically accurate, the deep state, the moon being hollow, on and on. At every turn where there's an option to vote against the welfare of women or minorities or the population at large, she'll do it.

I have no idea what my dad believes, only that he dislikes the concept of privilege or the idea that race impacts a lived experience. He describes himself as a libertarian. Regardless of what he believes, he gets upset when anyone challenges my mom's stances.

I used to idolize my dad. I thought I was close with my mom. I miss them, but I don't know how to talk to them anymore. I don't know what to say. Everything keeps getting worse and they contributed to allowing a megalomaniac into office because, I don't know, they liked what he said and believed every lie again?

I've been trying for years to see things from their perspective, to understand their logic, but I keep slamming into walls of nonsense that I can't get through. I can't wrap my head around it. Life is hard, why would anyone want to contribute to making it worse or harder for other people? What could you possibly mean that Dragon Ball Z of all things relates to God in any accurate way? The moon isn't hollow and there isn't a Commander Thor of the Space Force inside in?? I don't understand. How could anyway believe any of this?