Archi/Noah/Terry

“And we loved it, we were all having a great time, but then he saw my sister and I, and he just got this - this look in his eyes, and then-”

She hesitated, worrying the coarse material between her fingers. “Things got pretty bad after that,” she muttered. “I know it’s silly, but I try to keep - her - comfortable. We don’t know if she can still hear us, or see us, or if she’s even still in here, but I like to think she is. I talk to her when I can, I leave music on when I’m out of the house. I tried to convince my parents to bring her with us when we went to Disneyland, but they didn’t - didn’t really take that well.”

Me: I am literally just doing my job. Everyone else is slacking off.

invisible

never explained

always a different size

you have to guess the size

The kid was picked up by an ambulance 30 minutes later.

Now as an adult working in security I get SO MANY folks- upper-middle aged mostly- coming to me to 'rat out' people they think are faking it.

I was once sent into a bathroom because a client demanded that the "fucker won't get out, so go drag them out"- I was NEVER going to do that, so I did a wellness check instead. You know who it was? A person recently released from the hospital after a car accident. They had a hole in their skull and major hearing loss. They couldn't answer the owner because they couldn't HEAR the owner.

Another time about a homeless man who got around town by kicking the ground from his wheelchair. "You know he doesn't actually need that thing, his legs work fine, it's just for pity points"- Oh, so he's not paralyzed, his wheelchair is performative? Funny story Dale, I actually know that guy, he was backed over by a truck and has chronic pain from his shattered pelvis. But sure, let's make him stand up and walk everywhere so nobody feels too bad for him and tries to help him or something.

"She doesn't need that scooter, I've seen her get out of it."

"Look how fat he is, because he just rides around and refuses to get up."

"She doesn't really need that cane- she comes here without it all the time"

her family’s gofundme!!

I often talk about reality checking and going along with it when helping someone deal with delusions, but I felt as if I didn’t really make it clear to what I meant when I said it.

First box: Have they asked you to give them reality checks when they have a delusion. Green “yes” leads to a green box reading: Reality Check. Pink “no” leads to a pink box reading: Let it be / Go Along With It. Black “no, but im still worried” leads to a box reading: Have you asked if you can give them reality checks and they said?

Green “yes” leads to a green box reading: Reality Check. Pink “no” leads to a pink box reading: Let it be / Go Along With It. Black “they said no but im still worried” leads to box reading: Have you asked if there is anything else you can do instead.

Green “yes” leads to green box reading: Do that instead. Pink “no” leads to a pink box reading: Let it be / Go Along With It.

Image #2: Pink box with text reading: What Letting it Be / Going Along With It Is Not: (red “X” bullet points)

adding new information to the delusion / trying to send your friend deeper into the delusion

“that must be scary to believe something that isn’t real”

“keep that to yourself, the more you talk about it the more you’ll encourage yourself”

dismissing your friend’s delusions, saying “everyone thinks like that once in awhile.”

trying to distract your friend from their delusion or act as if it’s a game

What Letting it Be / Going Along With It Is: (blue checkmark bullet points)

allowing your friend to vent or express themselves ( sometimes just talking about their delusions out loud can help them question it )

“I’m so sorry that you’re going through that”

encouraging your friend to express their delusions through poetry, song, art, or other non-harmful things they enjoy

“If that becomes too over whelming for you, you can call me and ask for comfort or a distraction”

allowing your delusional friend to feel safe around you, allowing them to healthily express themselves

Image #3: Green box with text reading: What Reality Checking Is Not: (red “X” bullet points)

“Snap out of it, it’s just a delusion.”

“That’s impossible.”

“Think about it for a second, then you’ll snap out of it”

forcing your friend into the hospital

calling the police on your friend

trying to fix or stop the delusion

What Reality Checking Is: (blue “checkmark” bullet points)

“Could you describe the evidence you have for your belief?”

“How firm are you with this belief? Would you be okay with other suggestions on what could be happening?”

“You’re going to be okay, what you’re fearing won’t hurt you.”

“Can we take a step back? Is what you’re going through effecting those around you?”

“Has what you believe happened to anyone else? What is the likeliness of this being real?”

Helping your friend question the delusion or become aware of how the delusion is affecting them.

So, just out of curiosity a few years back I clicked on a headline for like an annual day of remembrance for tiannemen square, and it included a video so I wanted to see if they would play the full clip.

That clip stopped at the same point that the clip is always stopped when used in news stories, but the article linked a source about tiannemen square for further reading.

I clicked on that source, and it was very similar to the first article, roughly 2-3 short paragraphs of declarative statements, the same clip edited to cut off before it shows "tank man" climbing on top of the tank shortly before walking away unharmed, and another link to a source for further reading about the events at tiannemen square.

At that point I wanted to see if I would ever get through this chain of an attribution of an attribution down to any primary sources or even a single article that just showed the full, unedited clip at the very least.

Every link I clicked on had the same exact structure. It was an article from a major publication, they all featured either the singular famous still frame of Tank Man standing in front of the tank or they showed the edited clip that is cut before the clip shows him walking away safe and unharmed in order to imply that the tank ran him over, they all had a short summary of events and then the "source" provided if a reader wanted to verify the facts of the article was just another article repeating the same thing which linked to another article repeating the same thing which linked to... and so on and so on.

I probably went a few dozen links deep and never found a single article that used any primary source documents or historical analysis or investigative reports as a source for any of the claims made in the article. The only primary source to be found was the singular video that every article refused to show in full.

And to be clear, this isn't just some odd quirk of this specific event. This pattern is exactly how most modern propaganda makes its way into the public consciousness. When a claim or accusation is made and the source making the claim is of dubious veracity (such as when the US state department, intelligence agencies, and various affiliated NGOs make claims about states or groups that are targets of US aggression and intervention), then going through this process of publishing hundreds of articles that amount to little more substance than saying "BBC reported that NYT reported that The Sun reported that WaPo reported that The Guardian reported that an anonymous state department official said something happened" serves two purposes.

The first purpose that this process serves is that the original source that is of dubious or sometimes completely discredited veracity is now buried from scrutiny under and attribution of an attribution of an attribution of an attribution.

The second purpose this process serves is that it creates the appearance of academic, journalistic, and/or scholarly consensus even though this large volume of reporting ultimately traces back to a singular source.