Vaccines And Flat-Earthers And Q, Oh My!

I work at a call center for a phone company.

Caller: “You need to take away the 5G!”

Me: “Pardon me, sir? What do you mean?”

Caller: “The 5G! I saw it on Facebook! It causes autism!”

Me: “Sir, I can absolutely assure you that isn’t true.”

Caller: “But I saw it on Facebook!”

Me: “Sir, you shouldn’t trust everything you read on Facebook. It’s not really a news site.”

Caller: “Get me your manager! You sound like you’ve been brainwashed by the media.”

I’ve been brainwashed?!

Me: “Yes, sir.”

I call the manager over and explain the situation. He looks at the account information, rolls his eyes, and takes over.

Manager: “Yes, sir, I heard you’re worried about the 5G causing autism. Well, don’t worry, the 5G doesn’t cause autism. The 5G towers are just placed strategically to spray lots of vaccines into the air. These vaccines contain the microchips that cause 5G, and they’re simply for government spying, not autism. Autism is just what the media wants you to think is the problem, so they can keep on spying. Okay, thanks for calling, and bye!”

He hangs up while I just stare at him in shock.

Manager: “Next week is the annual manager’s conference. We’re having a competition to see who got the nuttiest conspiracy theorist and who best shut them down. Last year, [Other Manager] won by getting a Flat Earther who was worried he would lose his signal the closer he got to the ‘edge’. I was hoping to get one of these this week, so thank you!”

Sadly, my manager didn’t win that next week. That went to a caller who thought we were all acting against “QAnon” and wanted to cancel their contract for patriotic reasons.