Hi everyone.
I'm a long-time lurker here, and finally decided to register. I probably won't post much, but I come here almost everyday.
Congratulations on running the most civil forum I've ever visited, on what is probably one of he toughest subjects to keep a cool head about. I'm impressed by this community, even though I've been using forums for 10 years (mostly digital art forums).
I arrived here upon researching chemtrails.
So, maybe 2 years ago, I came across this interesting speech by Gwinne Dyer on climate change geopolitics and geoengeneering, where he talks about future global-cooling techniques, including high-altitude spraying.
By a crazy coincidence as it always happens, the very next day, on my facebook feed, I saw one of those scary doomsday chemtrail montage pamphlets someone posted, linking to a local chemtrail awareness group, and I was VERY confused. I thought "so, is that stuff really happening? But these people seem mentally ill... but but these videos ARE scary, what is that stuff?". Something smelled very fishy. I started looking up and saw my fair share of stuff I'd never noticed before, like contrail skies turning to hazy gray overcasts, interrupted trails, a couple of halos, and even caught 2 airplanes headed south, one with a trail and one without. It was weird, those people seemed correct, but on the other hand, everytime I opened that page I went WTF??? at stuff like chembusters and nibiru talk. It was fascinating, but also extremely depressing, reading posts that sounded like paranoid delusions, often to the point people said they were physically ill, and who were closed at home digging themselves deeper and deper into a hole (this was not so long after I'd had a manic episode where I went pretty crazy myself for a while, so it really struck a stong chord to read some posts and reactions). But I also couldn't find a good explanation for what they were talking about.
Then eventually I found my way to contrailscience and this place, and it was a big relief, not only to read the debunks, but to be able to keep up-to-date on the fascinating subject of conspiracy theory, but on the "healthy" side of it. I mean I know it's not very nice to label people insane, but the more outlandish and sensational claims were... out there, to say the least (I'm talking Reptilian territory, David Icke stuff was being pasted everywhere).
Finally, I was kind of shocked when a friend of mine turned out to be a big believer in chemtrails. He had this very elaborate theory on the links to Monsanto aluminum-resistant crops and the Rothchilds' de-population plans, all of which I've seen discussed here too.
He's quite intelligent and articulate, and I'm very non-confrontational and get extremely uncomfortable talking to people who are full of certainties, so I couldn't really say much more when he went "I saw it with my own eyes, you have to NOT want to see it in order to miss it, etc." He didn't seem to be doing so great at the time, he' d talked non-stop about this for like an hour, seemed like he just really needed a friendly ear, so I didn't argue and moved on to topics we agreed on, such as the disaster of local politics. That conversation really stuck with me though, and it inspired me to write a short sci-fi story about confirmation bias.
Anyway, that's the story, hi!
