Stephanie Wittschier was once a firm believer in the Chemtrail theory. She was deep down the conspiracy theory rabbit hole for many years but was eventually helped out of it by a friend. Stephanie now runs the German website Die Lockere Schraube (The Loose Screw) where she uses her experience to help others.1 Her tale is a validation and inspiration for skeptics and for the friends of people seemingly trapped down the rabbit hole.
I asked her what it was that got her interested in the Chemtrail theory, and as usual it started with video.
The video I watched that got me into Chemtrails was a 2011 interview with Brigitta Zuber on Alpenparlament.tv a German New-Age alternative media site.2 Brigitta Zuber talks about Chemtrails, which can be seen for much longer than “normal” contrails. “Contrails disappear after a few seconds,” Zuber said. After seeing the interview, I looked out of the window and I saw contrails which didn’t disappear after a few seconds. They stayed there for several minutes. At that time I didn’t know very much about meteorology and so I thought that she could be correct and that there was something wrong.
Looking at the sky and seeing persistent contrails after watching a video about them is a surprisingly common thing. People don’t pay much attention to the sky other than looking to see if rain is likely, or if the Sun is shining. The persistent contrails have always been there, but people don’t pay them any attention until they are pointed out. If they trust the source that told them that contrails should not persist, then they believe what they are seeing is unusual, despite the fact that even in the conspiracy version it’s supposedly been going on since the 1990s and they never noticed until they watched a video about it.
Stephanie was very much predisposed to believe what Zuber was saying:
At that time, I had a tendency toward conspiracy theories. For example: I believed in the existence of aliens and that they visited us in the past and will visit us again. Also, I believed that spaceships and dead aliens were kept in Area 51 and that the government lies to us about that. When I was eleven years old, I was given a book about aliens and that stuff. Since then I have believed in that. Later I also believed in things like “Bigfoot” or “Nessie” and that the pyramids in Egypt were maybe built by aliens and that Stonehenge is also kind of mysterious. But that’s it. I didn’t notice other conspiracy theories. They didn’t really interest me.
Then, I think it was at the end of 2009 or at the beginning of 2010 (I can’t remember when it starts exactly) I saw a documentary about 9/11 together with my husband. There were some strange “facts” given and so I was curious, and I did some research on the internet about 9/11. Looking back, it was the dumbest thing I could have done. Because I discovered more and more about conspiracy theories. All of these theories have little connections and so automatically, especially on the internet, you acquire the knowledge of all these other theories.
Then I went to web pages about conspiracy theories, Kopp Verlag a German publisher of New Age books, Alles Schall und Rauch Sound and Smoke, the German equivalent of “Smoke and Mirrors”—a general conspiracy site, Alpen Parlament. Then, very quickly after that, I signed up to some online forums, which are about those theories. Of course, there was “Allmystery.de,” the biggest forum about conspiracy theories in Germany.
She got sucked down the rabbit hole, deep down. Just like me, Stephanie had a childhood interest in things like UFOs, monsters, and aliens. I think the fact that she found herself down the rabbit hole, and I did not, speaks to the sometimes-random nature of who gets sucked in and who steers clear. It can boil down simply to happening to watch a particular video or read a particular book.
Stephanie was convinced, she ventured down the hole, and it began to affect her life.
When my friends started to question me about this I think I was angry with them. I can remember a controversy with one of my friends. Then she unfriended me, which I can understand now. With my husband and my closest family members it was another kind of story, luckily. They didn’t search for conflict and they let me do my own thing, although they didn’t believe in those theories. If they didn’t do it this way, maybe I would have lost them all. That’s what happens to many of the conspiracy theorists. They lose their friends and families because of their beliefs.
And it turns out that not losing her friends and family was the key to her escape.
There was a certain turning point in my belief in conspiracy theories. I had a best friend in the conspiracy scene. We believed in the same things, had the same opinion and we were in the same forums too. But then, suddenly, she turned her opinion. At least I thought that it was sudden. In fact, she had done research for months and started to question all these theories.
She started to ask me and other conspiracy theorist questions that we had heard over and over again from the skeptics. She posted links to web pages from “paid disinformation agents” (in German we would say: “bezahlte Desinformanten”). I couldn’t understand why she did that. We exchanged some PMs and I asked her why she behaves like a skeptic now. I was very disappointed and then we had a serious conflict because my disappointment turned into anger. I thought she was some kind of traitor. We broke up completely and I didn’t get over that for months.
Because of that, I started to have a look at the skeptics’ side myself and eventually started to question the theories as well. You know, for conspiracy theorists it seems like you change your opinion in just one day. In fact, it is a process that took several months for me. The result was, that my friend was right. All of these theories I believed in were more than idiotic. I was shocked. You know, it’s a tough situation when you realize, that you made a goof out of yourself all these months. I really felt ashamed for my behavior. Today I couldn’t believe why I was so dumb.
It was not simply her friend’s prompting that led to this. There were also some events within her group that led her to be somewhat more open to their ideas. Much like Steve in Los Angeles, seeing her peers embrace things that seemed clearly on the other side of her personal demarcation line led Stephanie to question if she’d drawn the line in the right place.
Regarding the belief in Chemtrails specifically: When I read in a Chemtrail-group on Facebook, that they wanted to blind pilots with a laser pointer I was shocked. I thought: “You can’t do that. What about the other people on that plane? Why do they want to end so many lives?” That was the beginning of my freeing from the Chemtrail scene. Then I heard about a project. Someone in the group wanted to look at what was really in the Chemtrails. He wanted to give 200 Euros to a project investigating if Chemtrails were real and asked in our group who else wants to be a part of that project. Me and a few other users wanted to be a part of it. But other users were not very pleased, including an admin of that group. The result was that the thread was deleted and the users who wanted to be a part of the project were thrown out of the group. That was the second time, that I thought different about the Chemtrail scene. So, I started to look at the skeptic side and I started the research.
My friend told me at that time, that I should go to pilot forums and talk to pilots in person. After the two incidents I thought: “Ok, let’s do it.” So, I talked to the users there, I talked to meteorologists and to the skeptics I first hated so much. Bit by bit I discovered that the Chemtrail scene is more than idiotic and that I was wrong. And I discovered how dangerous that scene really is. E.g. Laser-Pointer-Attacks or MMS-enemas with children (to get out the “Chemtrail poison”). As I became fully aware of the situation I decided to “fight” against the Chemtrails scene and other conspiracy scenes. It needs to be observed, so that other people cannot be lost to it.
To get out is tough. When the other conspiracy theorists know about that, they start a smear campaign against you. From insults to death threats, anything can happen. Even today I receive death threats. You’ll be very happy that none of them live nearby or they could visit you, or something else. It’s a serious threat!
Conspiracy theorists think that they question everything. In fact, they just quote other theorists and mostly they receive their “knowledge” from YouTube videos. So did I, at that time.
I’m pretty sure that many of the “extreme” conspiracy theorists I know actually got to the point where they discover that they believed in nonsense. But they didn’t go the way I did. They stopped questioning things, turned around and went back to their beloved scene. They can’t admit that they behave like goofs and so they return to their feel-good zone. To be skeptical seems too hard for them I guess.
I did more research, like I said, otherwise I could have been in a psychiatric ward today. But I found the emergency brake. I did admit in public that I made mistakes. I apologized to the skeptics and to my former best friend for my behavior. We put our differences aside and became friends again.
I asked Stephanie about the language of conspiracy theories and de-bunkers.
We say: “die rote Pille nehmen,” “take the red pill,” which is similar to “going down the rabbit hole.” Some conspiracy theorists think that The Matrix movie is not fictional, it’s some sort of documentation and it shows how things really are. Another phrase I use is “im Verschwörungswahn” or “Verschwörungssumpf sein.” It means that you are so deep in the conspiracy scene (or the conspiracy swamp), that you believe everything and that you are unable to see that all you believe in is just idiotic. The way out of it seems impossible and you don’t listen to anything skeptical anymore.
Besides the help from her friend, Stephanie found guidance in other places.
Sites like “Contrail Science” or “Metabunk” did help me to get out of the “conspiracy madness” and to get more knowledge about reality. The skeptics on AllMystery.de did help me very much through my thinking process. They were very patient and finally I really understood their answers and wanted to hear them.
This is quite heartening for skeptics like me who spend time explaining things online. It often seems like a Sisyphean task, as the explanations just bounce off the conspiracist’s wall of “evidence.” But what Stephanie’s case illustrates so well is that it takes time, and every little bit has some effect. You just can’t fully see that effect until the person emerges into the light. We should expect that our seemingly logical and fact-based points will initially be rejected, the important thing is to keep the discussion going.
Another interesting thing is the role of conspiracy forums. While there’s obviously some great debunking going on in the skeptics forums like InternationalSkeptics.com and Metabunk.org, there are also a large number of skeptics who like to post in the lion’s den. In the US there is AboveTopSecret.com. AllMystery.de is essentially the German equivalent. Much valuable debunking occurs directly on these sites, and people’s lives have been changed for the better because of it.