This week, we chatted with Abbie Richards, a former stand-up comedian turned content creator dominating TikTok as a researcher, focusing on understanding how misinformation, conspiracy theories and extremism spread on the platform. She also is a co-founder of EcoTok, an environmental TikTok collective specializing in social media climate solutions. We talked with Abbie about finding emotional connections with audiences, the responsibility of social media platforms and more.

First off, what’s the wildest conspiracy theory that you have seen online?

It’s hard to pick the wildest because I don’t know how to even begin to measure that. One that I think about a lot, though, is that I tend to really find the spirituality ones very interesting. There’s the new Earth one with people who think that the earth is going to be ascending into a higher dimension. And the way that that links to climate change — like when heat waves happen, and when the temperature is hotter than normal, and they’re like “it’s because the sun’s frequency is increasing because we’re going to ascend into a higher dimension.” And I am kind of obsessed with that line of thought. Also because they think that if you, your soul, vibrate at a high enough frequency — essentially, if your vibes are good enough — you will ascend, and if not, you will stay trapped here in dystopian earth post ascension which is wild because then you’re assigning some random, universal, numerical system for how good you are based on your vibrational frequency. Where is the cut off? At what point of vibrating am I officially good enough to ascend, or am I going to always vibrate too low? Are my vibes not good? And do I not bring good vibes to go to your paradise? I think about that one a lot.