One question is: can you stop your friend believing these conspiracy theories? Regrettably, almost certainly not, at least not without a huge investment of time and patience. People are free to think whatever they want and some of us put that freedom to the weirdest uses. At least we can be thankful the conspiracies your friend has latched on to are about objects in the sky and not, say, which reptilian species is secretly controlling things.
A different question is: can you change the norms of the relationship so you don’t have to engage with this? Happily, that’s a different mission.
This seemed like good advice to post here because I know a lot of people are wanting to maintain friendships with such people (or family relationships for that matter) despite their nutty beliefs.
My mom has been spamming my email almost everyday for years with links to conspiracy sites. It’s all anti-vax nonsense, “chem trails”, creationist, pro-Trump stuff, etc. I’ve asked her to stop several times. She does…for a few days…then she starts it up again. I created an email rule that just shoves all her messages into a folder so I don’t have to see it everyday.
I had an uncle who did that. I’d reply with “LOL”.
He stopped, but YMMV.
