Will it still be necessary to respond to online conspiracy theorists in 2022?

CHRONICLE / It has been seen everywhere this week: the sudden death of filmmaker Jean-Marc Vallée has shocked Quebec and the rest of the world. On the networks, all the admirers of this great man are posting their expressions of grief. Some Internet users seem to have found the cause of his death.

I manage our Facebook page. Since this morning, I had to delete four comments saying that JM Vallée had died "because of the vaccine".

To be honest, I was already optimistic. Conspiracy theories and anti-vaccine comments were still circulating, but their volume had decreased considerably with the relaxation of health measures. But you can't be stupid, we are starting to know the song. More cases = more measures = more pandemic violence and misinformation online. 

For my part, the observation is the same as my Radio-Canada colleague. Last week I posted the diary of my ten days of isolation after hiring COVID. According to the first two comments on Soleil's Facebook page, I am a "conase" (it's even more concise when misspelled), but mostly a vaccinated sheep. 

As I sorted through the almost daily comments on our articles and sighed a little, I wondered if we had missed something. Should we still be concerned about these Internet users in 2022? Should we ignore them, engage with them or address them? My friend Alexandre Moranville-Ouellet, a journalist at QUB radio and host of the podcast Ce n'est qu'une théorie, tells me: "We should not stop informing and educating people, but confrontation almost never works. In this project, the author debunks several conspiracy theories and compares them with the work of several experts. Let's put it this way: he knows conspiracy theorists very well.

He says: "As long as you believe that the earth is flat or that the elites of this world sacrifice children to drink their blood, you are willing to believe anything [...] you have accepted that they have the truth. You don't know them and when you confront them, you prove them wrong," he added. 

Thanks to listeners' comments, Alexander knows he has managed to dispel from some people's minds any doubts or wild ideas about the 9/11 attack or even about the efficacy of vaccines. This is proof that education remains the key to success in this seemingly never-ending battle. However, for those who firmly believe in it, the issue is quite different. 

In the fall of 2020, when I had just started moderating networks, I attempted to respond to some comments on Facebook with facts and verified sources. I received a staggering number of insults and quickly became mentally and emotionally exhausted.

Setting the record straight

On the other hand, I have been fascinated by Patrick Lagacé's Twitter account since the pandemic began. On a regular basis, La Presse's lead columnist shows daylight to the accounts of conspiracists who insult him or share misinformation about his publications. I've often wondered what he gets out of it. Is the Twitter court doing its job in this case? So I called him. 

"Yes, hello, Lea? It's Patrick." At that moment, my young home columnist was writhing on the floor. After a few minutes of conversation and 2-3 stutters on my part, we got to the heart of the matter. When the pandemic started in early May 2020 and I still hadn't written a line about the conspiracy theorists, I opened the other file on my Messenger that I hadn't opened in months. And there I came across the rants of these people who were writing to insult me." 

To those who say that the media contributed to the radicalization of the conspiracists, he replies, "They did not use our harsh words to radicalize. The proof is that he incurred the wrath of these people long before he wrote about it. So he did what we've all wanted to do sometime when we're angry: from time to time, he revealed the identity of his harassers. The only problem is that when he exposes his stalker, he runs the risk of getting *high school flashback* thrown in his face.

Well, he doesn't expose everyone either. He deals with the most radical and brutal. "What happens regularly is that the person who did it apologizes on bended knee because all of a sudden there are consequences," the columnist tells me. Your boss calls you, the people who assign you tasks call you. They don't like it when you threaten journalists on your own time.  

I told her, 'But I have to admit, sometimes I see you doing these publications on Saturday morning and I think, Pat, it's the weekend. I told her (the girl who assumes too much). He told me he had more time on Saturdays and admitted that, in a way, it was an outlet for him. When I do this, I often expect someone close to the person to call and say, "Come on, you've fallen on your head, do you want to go for coffee, do you need to talk?" 

When I talked to Patrick, what I had seen as pure revenge turned into a much more benevolent act than I thought. When Alexander returns home, he decides to take a break from conspiracy theorists. Spending his work days on neo-Nazi, QAnon or anti-vaccine forums is exhausting enough. "I can take weekends off, which is not the case for a lot of people I've talked to about different projects. They, these are their parents, their kids, their best friend. These are broken families and friendships," he laments. 

In both cases, my two advisors didn't have THE definitive answer to my question. But they taught me the importance of being benevolent and respecting each person's boundaries. After years of experience in this field and numerous online threats, Patrick Lagacé does not know if his way of dealing with social networks is the right one. On the other hand, he knows that threats should not be taken lightly.

In any case, I will try to enter 2022 calmly, and I wish you the same, whatever you believe.