You know, when I see fictional characters who repress all their emotions, they're usually aloof and very blunt about keeping people at a distance, sometimes to an edgy degree—but what I don't see nearly enough are the emotionally repressed characters who are just…mellow.
Think about it. In real life, the person that's bottling up all their emotions is not the one that's brooding in the corner and snaps at you for trying to befriend them. More often than not, it's that friendly person in your circle who makes easy conversation with you, laughs with you, and listens and gives advice whenever you're upset. But you never see them upset, in fact they seem to have endless patience for you and everything around them—and so you call them their friend, you trust them. And only after months of telling them all your secrets do you realize…
…they've never actually told you anything about themselves.
A little advice from someone studying extremist groups: if you’re in a social media environment where the daily ubiquitous message is that you have no hope of any kind of future and you can’t possibly achieve anything without a violent overthrow of society, you’re being radicalized, and not in the good way.
IMO you can't say anything coherent about most US-based right wing conspiracy theories without understanding how seriously the diehards in these movements believe in The Devil
the obvious question, "who benefits from maintaining this elaborate lie," does not stop people like Flat Earthers because many of them are young earth creationists who believe in powerful spiritual forces whose only goals are
1. convincing people that Christianity isn't true
2. the proliferation of largely symbolic Evil, which they enjoy tricking you into supporting
"tricking" people into believing the earth is round is enough of a goal for The Devil to go to all that trouble. if people don't believe in God's perfect little flat earth then they're also free to believe in things like evolution and the big bang
practicality and material concerns are usually irrelevant. the lie is worth maintaining because The Devil has near unlimited time, resources, and human servants, and his top priority is Getting You