Can Corona deniers be fooled with completely absurd and freely invented misinformation? Apparently, yes. This is what a Swiss YouTuber demonstrated in a Corona experiment. Even medical staff fell for the absurd theories.
Actually, Sasha publishes Spongebob parodies and Twitch videos with funny accents on his YouTube channel "Sputim". But this year, when he posted in various Telegram groups with sometimes 20.000 Corona deniers, he was amazed at how gullible the people there were.
Because while on the one hand these people are extremely skeptical of common scientific knowledge, on the other hand they are extremely gullible when it comes to completely absurd conspiracy theories. The more absurd, the more likely these people seemed to believe the theories – and spread them massively. This gave Sasha an idea!
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Simply any "thin shit" invented
The Swiss YouTuber first starts describing made-up Corona vaccine symptoms in his videos, "Sputim disease," symptoms he also shares with Telegram groups.
So he also describes how in the U.S. an "enormous number of children" would cough up a white-yellow sputum (sputum) a few hours after the Corona "GEN vaccination". This, he said, points to a viral-related infection in the lungs. He then backs up this freely invented thesis with a series of medical expressions that he simply puts together wildly.
To further substantiate these claims, Sasha is starting a blog, lichtmacher.info, on which he further elaborates the Sputim theories. But to make sure that not only his "thin shit" appears there, the Swiss YouTuber also posts Corona claims of the bizarre American Quanon movement, which he simply chases through the Deepl translator.
To crown it all, he then writes a news text in which the "Sputim symptoms" already spread by him are taken up again.
"Fabricated bullshit" shared hundreds of thousands of times
In it, he claims in the best conspiracy manner that these side effects of the Corona vaccine are being deliberately concealed by governments and big pharmaceutical companies. In a first version from 22. August, Sasha shares the article with a Telegram user, who also shares it minutes later.
Later that same day, he adds even more details. So he mentions a very adventurous effect, where body parts or even the brain can explode or the children vanish into thin air. This version then goes viral two days later.
So hundreds of thousands of vaccine-skeptical Telegram users spread his "fabricated bullshit article" around the web. And that’s without "even checking to see if any of the retarded shit that was written there was true," as Sasha later reports in his disclosure video.
Swiss YouTuber: Corona lies shared even by medical association
Group members from Germany in particular seem to be sharing the article. For example, the AfD shared his article, as did conspiracy theorist Xavier Naidoo. He even fooled a Corona-skeptical medical association, Doctors for Enlightenment, with his medical fable.
Incidentally, the organization later even officially apologized for sharing the article.
In part, it’s obvious that the people sharing the article online couldn’t have read the text at all, as they were already forwarding it just minutes after sharing it in the Telegram group. So fast hardly someone reads an article of scarcely 900 words. And anyone who even glanced at it, Sasha says, would actually have to immediately realize from the fairy tale text that something can’t be right here.
Especially bitter: many people believe such claims and even donate money to questionable causes. Alone in a Telegram group are so 15.000 US dollars in Bitcoins have been collected.
Sasha decided to take the fake article offline again at the end of September because it was getting hundreds of daily visitors and shares, as he told BASIC thinking Explains.
Social media benefits from anti-Corona groups
In a social media analysis, the Swiss YouTuber also shows how social networks in particular benefit from Corona lies. Because it is precisely these false reports that spread rapidly on social media and thus ensure high engagement figures.
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This is not an isolated phenomenon. Various studies have already shown in the past that false reports and lies spread much faster on the net than the truth.
However, Sasha does not believe that he has made the lateral thinking movement think with his experiment. His conclusion: "The very people who call themselves skeptics and question everything will believe anything as long as it fits their unhinged and paranoid worldview."