I’m a firm believer in avoiding the popular narrative, and so here’s my advice—you are becoming a conspiracy theorist. You just linked to a literal conspiracy theory with regards to face masks, one that has been torn apart as misleading and riddled with factual errors. As just one example, Cochrane’s review specifically did not evaluate “facemasks”, it evaluated “policies related to the request to wear face masks”. Compliance to the stated rule was not evaluated, and it is therefore a conspiracy theory to go from an information source that says “this policy doesn’t work” and end up with the takeaway “masks don’t work”. As other commenters have pointed out, it is physically implausible for facemasks to not work if they are used correctly.
The definitionally correct term to use for you is “conspiracy theorist” so long as this is a thing that you, after conducting your own research, have come to believe. Take your belief in the facemask thing as concrete evidence that your friends and family are correct and that you are indeed straying down the path of believing more and more improbable and conspiratorial things.
asserting that people are conspiring to cause some bad outcome
Some studies say masks work, some don’t. If you incorrectly evaluate the evidence and believe that they don’t work… how is that related to accusing people of conspiring? You’ve just analyzed the evidence wrong, but you haven’t made any claims relating to any people, or plans, or schemes.
I’m a firm believer in avoiding the popular narrative, and so here’s my advice—you are becoming a conspiracy theorist. You just linked to a literal conspiracy theory with regards to face masks, one that has been torn apart as misleading and riddled with factual errors. As just one example, Cochrane’s review specifically did not evaluate “facemasks”, it evaluated “policies related to the request to wear face masks”. Compliance to the stated rule was not evaluated, and it is therefore a conspiracy theory to go from an information source that says “this policy doesn’t work” and end up with the takeaway “masks don’t work”. As other commenters have pointed out, it is physically implausible for facemasks to not work if they are used correctly.
The definitionally correct term to use for you is “conspiracy theorist” so long as this is a thing that you, after conducting your own research, have come to believe. Take your belief in the facemask thing as concrete evidence that your friends and family are correct and that you are indeed straying down the path of believing more and more improbable and conspiratorial things.
How are these the same thing?
believing data which turns out to be wrong
asserting that people are conspiring to cause some bad outcome
Some studies say masks work, some don’t. If you incorrectly evaluate the evidence and believe that they don’t work… how is that related to accusing people of conspiring? You’ve just analyzed the evidence wrong, but you haven’t made any claims relating to any people, or plans, or schemes.