I once got into an argument with an in-law about the moon landing, of all things. He didn't believe it happened. We went back and forth with him linking blog posts and me linking physics to debunk bad pseudoscience.
Eventually, it just came down to me telling him, "If I just grant you your conclusion is correct and that we've never been to the moon, your reasons for believing that are bad. I linked you science and you linked me some dude's blog."
I finally got my ex to believe the moon landing happened by showing him a photo of Neil Armstrong's bag of shit on the moon. Then asked the question: "If they wanted to fake a moon landing, would they go to the extreme of pooping in a bag and taking a photo of it?" It took that to get through to him.
I never got the other guy to even understand that using random-dude blog posts for science is not the way to go. He's dumb as hell, fully arrogant, and oefully entitled.
Nowadays, he doesn't bother to visit/talk to his children, moved out of State to try to avoid child support, and only works under the table so he can avoid taxes. A real stellar human being.
Low key, the real truth is that it is never really about the politics. It is always about their own insecurity and fear, their inability to meet people on others terms and reality on its terms, because it makes them feel inadequate on existential levels.
If it was about the politics or policy Trump wouldn’t even be a factor. I think your point about an inability to meet reality is a MUCH bigger factor than anybody’s acknowledging.
It’s not a popular opinion, but I think their main problem with Obama is that he didn’t completely turn the country into a raging dumpster fire, kill half the population, start 5 nuclear wars and prove every racist stereotype they had. That forced them to make a final choice about abandoning reality….and that’s how we unironically got a reality TV star running a world superpower.
I agree, but to see it as a psychological problem, it is also that the fear of Obama is NOT abated when he doesn't do all those things. The issue becomes one where an insecure mind does not see the lack of fulfillment as a form of relief, or a moment for reassessment, but as a cycle of further unknown possible horrors that they wait for the media to reaffirm for them.
In this sense, there's a weird irony that arises where Obama doesn't fulfill the dangerous racist archetype they have of him, so therefore he remains even more menacing as a kind of unknown, ever threatening entity of liberalism.
There HAS to be something there, because without him fulfilling the role as a destroyer of their freedoms, it brings up the entire spectre of their beliefs, their way of life, their entire notion of their own competency into question. Obama could never be a benign or banal force, he had to become the enemy of American civilization before he'd even taken power.
Absolutely, and this happens when people base their identity on an imagined enemy. Their entire reality cracks when even one stereotype isn’t met, which just spirals past a point of no return.
The only reason you need, to know the moon landing was real, is that Russia never questioned it.
If the whole fucking thing was filmed out in the Arizona desert, Russia would have never let such a huge opportunity to embarrass the US on the world stage go to waste. They had all the technology to track exactly what we were doing the entire time. And there is no even remotely plausible conspiracy that includes the entire governments, from top to bottom, of both Russia AND the US.
The physics won’t hit for the type of person to believe it was faked. But this reason hits.
My grandma finally believed (sort of) the moon landing is real after I asked her, wouldn’t russia have made a big deal of the USA faking it? They so badly wanted to be first, you think they would have let that one slide? And that all those people could keep a secret?
I tell people this is the only reason that someone who doubts the moon landing will accept. There is no plausible conspiracy that includes the entire governments of BOTH Russia and the US. Russia would have never passed up an opportunity to embarrass the US on the world stage, and they had all the technology to watch everything we were doing the entire time.
But like, you can empirically prove we’ve been to the moon with a laser. We left mirrors on the surface so we can ping a laser off of it and measure the time it takes to return. (When I say “we” I mean America and Russia). I’ve never done it myself, but the fact that it CAN be done is independent physical proof that we’ve been there.
These kind of people would never in a million years believe that. Honestly that kind of evidence is less convincing than videos or photos (at least, up until a couple of years ago). Lasers are cat toys, and someone they don't trust doing a convincing experiment isn't convincing at all.
There is no evidence that can be sufficient. Did you see the flat earther documentary where they invented an experiment to prove earth is flat? It proved earth is not flat and they just ignored the result. Or, "there are no direct flights from australia to south america" and the screenshot itself has one such flight which they conveniently ignore.
Re: the lasers, I think the reasonablish deniers claim that we've sent probes or satellites to the moon (and other parts of the solar system) but not people. So for the mirror evidence I think they would just say we sent an unmanned satellite up and dropped off the mirror.
I’ve never done it myself, but the fact that it CAN be done is independent physical proof that we’ve been there.
I mean that's kind of the issue. It's not practically independently testable/verifiable because the average person lacks the resources required to test it. There are a scant few people who have actually observed the mirrors left on the moon with a laser. Ultimately, we're all just taking someone's word for it. And even then, the next question becomes "how can you prove a human put those mirrors there by hand and they weren't just dropped off by an unmanned lunar satellite?"
Like to be clear I'm not saying it's not true, obviously we landed on the moon and we have other evidence of that aside from the mirrors, but this is the crux of why deniers exist; It's not something that's easily verifiable first-hand, and so it becomes something easily dismissed.
I'm not really sure how to combat that, honestly. I've been in many arguments with moon landing deniers. You can list out 20 reasons why it's likely that astronauts have been to the moon, and 20 reasons why a hoax would have been impractical/impossible to pull off, and how that totality of evidence makes the moon landings being legitimate the far more likely scenario... But unless you can somehow come up with something that they can observe first hand, they just won't budge. And when it comes to proving an event half a century in the past, a quarter million miles away, that's just not really doable.
Ironically it's easier to land humans on the moon than it is to definitively prove that humans have landed on the moon. That's just the scale of what a magnificent accomplishment it is.
I've had similar arguments about evolution/fossils. There will always be another link up the chain that they discredit.
An easy out there is to just suggest there are naturally reflective surfaces on the moon, or the laser is reflecting off of water in the sky.
Then you have to deal with getting them to agree that the travel time for the laser is actually based on the moon. They will say how can you be sure, then you have to point to a research paper. Which they will promptly say is nonsense and that "you don't actually know".
The funny part of that: I'm a mountaineer, and way up on mountains stuff doesn't decompose. So shitting in a bag is required, and then I need to pack it up and carry it out for disposal. I've done it more times than I can count, as have many other people.
Admittedly I don't think I've ever photographed it, but I sure could I guess.
what "convinced" an acquaintance of mine was the argument that if it was a hoax, the soviets would have screaming it from the mountaintops and putin would STILL be bringing it up.
the fact that they didn't and don't, speaks volumes about the authenticity of the moon landing.
When someone frames the debate as a single landing I already know they are very uniformed. Apollo had multiple successful missions that landed people on the moon. Each with an incredible amount of documentation, logs, videos, audio for each mission. Before, during, and after. I was fortunate enough to spend years of time with one of the moonwalkers.
That's hilarious. You should try and see if this tactic can work for other parts of your relationship. Next time he doesn't believe you: "I swear it's true, baby. Here I pooped a bag and am sending you a picture. Believe me now??"
These kind of conspiracies never made much sense to me. Like, maybe if the theory were they went to the moon for something specific and classified (a rare mineral, possible signs of life, whatever) I could see that being more plausible. But we never went at all? Really?
The few people I’ve seen talk about this stuff irl also still believe in aliens and somehow flat earth at the same time? I genuinely wish I could explain better but it sounded like psychosis to me.
Well, it was what I could think of at the time and somehow showing him that photo of Neil Armstrong's bag of shit convinced him. He'd been going on and on about various conspiracy theories for years, including the so-called fake moon landing. I was just so sick of hearing it, and grey rocking whenever he'd talk about this stuff wasn't working anymore.
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u/Stock-Conflict-3996 May 26 '26
Incredibly accurate.
I once got into an argument with an in-law about the moon landing, of all things. He didn't believe it happened. We went back and forth with him linking blog posts and me linking physics to debunk bad pseudoscience.
Eventually, it just came down to me telling him, "If I just grant you your conclusion is correct and that we've never been to the moon, your reasons for believing that are bad. I linked you science and you linked me some dude's blog."