Covid and 5G signals - what were all that about?!

[Ferris]

From the general thread

I've not heard anything about it for ages, probably a year or so at this point. It's a rare (to my memory) example of obvious crankery collapsing under its own weight of ludicrousness.

I wonder why that is? It became a bit of an obvious punchline for the public, I wonder if that took the wind out the sails of adherents a bit. When Sue and Brian from the golf club are using your beliefs to sell a shitty gag about their vaccines, I can see quietly dropping it.

At the beginning of all this (March-June 2020 I'd guess), the "covid is a hoax/5G" people were out in force to the point were it became a well trafficked conspiracy in the anti-vaccine bullpen. Lots of reports of people dropping dead near 5G towers and it all being hushed up as covid or whatever.

It occurred to me last night I haven't heard anything about the conspiracy theory for ages, outside of people joking about it when getting their vaccines.

Has it died a death? Do people still see it out in the wild taken seriously? I suppose there will still be adherents out there, but I'm not googling them to find out.

[idunnosomename]

Dya remember people fightin over toilet rolls? What wer all that about eh?

[buttgammon]

This could be part of some half-remembered dream, but does anyone remember a mobile phonemast actually being attacked around the start of this, possibly in some grim corner of the English Midlands? This were before they banned white dog poo cos it weren't properly sanitised.

[Ferris]

5G towers were being attacked with some regularity all over the world I think?

At some point these people went from torching the things to quietly resigning their beliefs to a punchline. It's quite a turnaround in a few months, which is why I'm so fascinated by it.

It's an organic de-radicalization of ludicrous beliefs and I'm wondering why, and whether there are lessons for deconstructing other similarly mad mass-beliefs.

Though I might just be sheltered and not seeing the fruitcakes but they're still out there somewhere. Maybe they graduated onto more bonkers beliefs like anti masks or whatever and left the quaint 5G stuff behind.

[Sebastian Cobb]

They destroy towers but often they're not 5g.

I remember back when people used to pull down 2g towers because of bullshit fears. And a basic misunderstanding of field-strength (many of them still had mobiles themselves of course, and fewer towers = more radiated power on the handset).

[Fambo Number Mive]

Where are we with the 5G rollout? Could it be that some of these conspiracy people are actually benefiting from 5G and never really totally believed 5G was dangerous anyway, but just wanted the attention? Now they can download past episodes of Infowars faster they dont want to make a fuss about 5F anymore, especially as they have so many stickers to use up.

[Alberon]

5G's mind control rays are growing stronger with every new tower. Those fighting it have been brought back into the group mind.

OBEY!

[MojoJojo]

There were reports of masts/boxes getting smashed up, but there wasn't anything actually linking the vandalism to the conspiracy theories as far as I remember. The press just being a bit daft as usual.

[buttgammon]

I distinctly remember a big fuss locally when there were proposals to erect a mobile phone mast near my school. This would've been about twenty years ago, but the gist of it was that paedos and cancer would seep out of the mast and flood our soft, childish immune systems with their carcinogenic nonce rays.

[vanilla.coffee]

I live in South Bucks and have wasps in my garden etc. I have a 5G iPhone pro 12 thingy and the only area I managed to get a 5G signal was Doncaster.
Lots of fat lasses up that way, is that 'cos of the 5G?

[Sebastian Cobb]

Buzby has mentioned how some of his work's cellular stuff has gotten destroyed and someone I know who works for Vodafone has said similar about their masts being done. A lot of the masts aren't even 5g because the mobs don't really bother to check.

Yet they'll swallow videos of people showing phone apps that can detect 'em' radiation through the phone's compass right at the mast of course that's going to show noise. I guess nobody's willing to pay the couple of hundred quid it costs for a rudimentary spectrum analyser to definitively tell what band a mast is working on.

[Ferris]

I remember Buzby's post at the time, so at one point a group of people took this very seriously but they seem to have given up. Is that about right, or are they still torching random weathervanes?

[mothman]

I'm sure someone'll do a proper study at some point, mentions per day on Twitter, that sort of thing. And I'd really like to see what effect this, posted 13 June I think, had, because it's fucking glorious:

https://twitter.com/reneecdavis/status/1404151397529145344?s=21

[steveh]

The logic as I understood it from someone into this stuff on another board seemed to be a) nanobots are now feasible, b) some people have done experimental injection of tiny devices, c) 5G is being pitched as an Internet of Things technology for communicating with small devices, d) people on the left want to control the lives of everyone, ergo the vaccine is a mind control system running over 5G that will strip everyone of their freedom. There's a bunch of other interpretations around though too.

[Drygate]

I thought the 5G Causes Corona thing was started to discredit anyone who was skeptical about how was 5G was going to be used to beef up facial recognition surveillance separate from the pandemic.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmarkman/2019/09/27/facial-recognition-a-force-for-good-or-government/?sh=6889cd032154

Due to this, if anyone says they're a bit worried about how 5G is going to enable widespread facial recognition, you can safely mock them by labelling them as a 5G Corona Conspiracy Theorist.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

No, you can't.

[Kankurette]

The logic as I understood it from someone into this stuff on another board seemed to be a) nanobots are now feasible, b) some people have done experimental injection of tiny devices, c) 5G is being pitched as an Internet of Things technology for communicating with small devices, d) people on the left want to control the lives of everyone, ergo the vaccine is a mind control system running over 5G that will strip everyone of their freedom. There's a bunch of other interpretations around though too.

People on the left want to control everyone even though our government are not only Tories, but very right-wing Tories. The mind boggles.

[idunnosomename]

erect near school.

nonce rays.

ban this sick filth!

[buttgammon]

ban this sick filth!

If I remember rightly, they did!

[hamfist]

both my jabs were given while I was receiving a 5G signal. no WAY that's a coincidence.

[PlanktonSideburns]

Did it collapse as not having 5G is a bit of a pain in the arse? Give me convenience or give me death

Stated with a campaign of vandalism, pivoted into a lucrative sticker marketplace, then cashed out. Classic startup, move fast and break things, find your customer segments, pump and dump

[dissolute ocelot]

Didn't the nutters just move from "5G causes Covid" to vaccine conspiracy theories once the vaccine was available?[nb]Although how is the microchip in your vaccine going to control you? Not by 5G, the transceivers are far too big. They'll probably use 2G or something even shittier like Zigbee.[/nb]

[Ferris]

Didn't the nutters just move from "5G causes Covid" to vaccine conspiracy theories once the vaccine was available?[nb]Although how is the microchip in your vaccine going to control you? Not by 5G, the transceivers are far too big. They'll probably use 2G or something even shittier like Zigbee.[/nb]

Actually yeah that's probably the answer tbh

[mothman]

Perhaps it would have been EDGE, which would have been hilarious. Because they're.. edgelords..? Oh, fuck off, it's too hot to come up with decent material!