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My cousin tried to convince me the moon landing was fake at a family cookout
We were in his backyard in Toledo last summer, and he pulled up a video on his phone about the flag 'waving' in a vacuum. I knew the basic science (the flag moved because the pole was twisted, not from wind), but I didn't have the specific Apollo 11 mission report details on hand. So I just said, 'Show me the NASA document that proves your point.' He couldn't, and the talk fizzled out. I learned that asking for the primary source paperwork shuts down a lot of these chats fast. What's your go-to move when someone hits you with a wild claim out of nowhere?
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kelly_hill1mo ago
Yeah, asking for the actual paper trail is the best move. I do something similar but I flip it and ask them to walk me through the logistics of the hoax. Like, with the moon landing, I'll say "Okay, so you're saying hundreds of thousands of people at NASA, contractors, and other countries tracking it all kept quiet for 50 years? How did they pay for that silence, and why has no one spilled the beans on their deathbed?" Making them explain the sheer size of the cover-up usually shows how silly it is.
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elizabeth4381mo ago
Love that approach from @kelly_hill, it's super effective. Just one tiny thing, the number of people directly involved was more like 400,000, not hundreds of thousands. Still a crazy huge group to keep quiet, which is exactly your point.
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