I've also been lurking here for several months, and this thread inspired me to sign up because my story has a lot of similarities to what the OP described.
It has taken me a long time to get my account approved and activated, but here we are. Professionally, I'm an engineer, working in the field of powertrain R&D. I'm also a hobbyist musician, photographer, cook, and homebrewer.
Ontario, Canada is home.
My introductory tale will be a confession. There was a period of time when I strongly suspected that the moon landings were faked. I saw that Fox television special in 2001 when it first aired, and my mind was blown. I was CONVINCED. I'd argue with people about it at the bar or around the campfire. Heck, I even managed to convince a few people who to this day probably still believe it (shame on me).
The problem, of course, was that I was introduced to the superficially-compelling hoax idea at a time when my technical/historical understanding of Apollo was effectively nil. My engineering background definitely played a role in eventually snapping me out of it, but at the time that background consisted of school only (i.e. no real-world professional experience) with only rudimentary treatment of directly relevant topics. Not only that, but I hadn't yet developed a solid working knowledge of the technical side of photography, knowledge which would eventually play a large role in helping me spot the gaping flaws in photo analysis for which hoax believers are world renowned. Lastly - and this is a big one - I was definitely going through a phase in my early 20s where I found conspiracy theories "entertaining" for some reason, so there was this weird tendency to almost "prefer" them to be true rather than honestly arrive at the conclusion that they are.
Anyway, following the Fox special, I was extremely excited and intrigued to learn more, so, like ApolloEnthusiast, I turned to the pre-Youtube internet to see what I could dig up. I was fully expecting that the more and more I "researched" the fakery of Apollo, the more and more mind-blowing stuff I'd uncover.
But the hoax story never came close to living up to that promise. In retrospect, the Fox special might be the most misleading movie trailer I've ever seen.
After a period of searching, I was disappointed to find what amounted to - at best - a hollow shell of a narrative for the hoax idea. Actually, it would probably be more accurate to say I found multiple disjointed hollow shells. Conspicuously absent at every turn was any sense of cohesiveness or self-consistency tying it all together.
Still, I couldn't let it slide without being certain. If a decisive evisceration of the "official narrative" were possible, I wanted to find the pieces and assemble it. But it wasn't to be. It gradually became clear that the hoax case would never get any better or stronger, only more scattered and desperate.
I hopped on the tour bus to Hoaxtown expecting to behold a ponderous, ever-growing snowball of mutually consistent evidence barreling forth in support of a hoax, but what I found would more accurately be described as a disparate smattering of discrete snowflakes that would instantly melt on contact with the warmth of logic and facts.
Not only that, but that whole seedy underbelly of the internet where the rabid conspiracists lurk started to take on a superficial likeness to a cult, with everybody treading water on the same old tired points, and shamelessly dodging strongly-developed counterarguments without even attempting to take them head on. This irked me a lot.
The proverbial straw that broke the camel's back was probably the first time I saw a detailed technical rebuttal of some hoax claim (heck, it could have been from a member of this site for all I know), and the hoax believer's response was to completely ignore the technical rebuttal and accuse the other guy of being a "paid government operative" or something along those lines. This moment was very instructive; an apt demonstration not only of how readily "superficially compelling claims" can shatter like brittle glass with just a little bit of qualified critique, but it also underlined the ridiculous levels of desperation inherent in conspiracist debate tactics. To quote a tired internet meme, it's one of those things you can't "unsee." Following that incident it became very conspicuous just how often capricious expansion of the conspiracy was invoked in an attempt to nullify and parry attacks against it, and I think that was when my disillusionment with the hoax believer ethos crossed into a state of thermal runaway.
Thankfully, I was able to muster the wisdom to realize that paranoid speculation, denial, and conspiratorial innuendo can be fun to BS about, but they're not evidence of any sort, nor are they a rebuttal of any sort. If these things are the foundation of the case against the historicity of the moon landings - and they are - then, at least for the purposes of debate and discourse, the historical record stands. Period.
With the acquired wisdom of many more years, I look back with mild embarrassment at that time period. I can see now that it is absolutely impossible for intellectual honesty to co-exist with Apollo hoax belief. It just cannot be done; these two things are completely incompatible. On its face, it is highly irrational to disregard the warehouses full of documentation, testimony, photos, videos, and corroborative evidence for Apollo in favor of a disjointed hodge-podge of spurious claims set forth by hopelessly unqualified ignoramuses and predatory grifters.
Fringe ideas are not new, but if conspiratorial thinking is like a strain of bacteria, then Youtube has been a petri dish of historic fertility. It is the de facto architect of the rabbit hole. One cannot have an informed position when their intellectual diet consists primarily of unvetted conspiracy claims being piped into their swiveling eyeballs by Youtube's recommended videos algorithm. It is becoming increasingly clear that some people are hopelessly ill-equipped to sift through such a torrent of raw, unchecked information and process it in a responsible way. Throw in a climate where distrust in authority is at all-time high levels and boom, Apollo was filmed in a studio and the earth is flat.
An honest researcher needs to look at everything he or she encounters, even the dry details, both technical and historical, and make it a point to account for all of it. That which is beyond the understanding of the researcher must be acknowledged as such; for the relevance of such things is not contingent upon who understands them and who doesn't.
The "Apollo truther" mantra is always some variant of "Open your eyes! Do your research!" That is very funny, and here's why: like intractable 4 year-olds throwing tantrums when they're expected to eat their broccoli, the defining trait of the Apollo denier is his or her embarrassing and obstinate refusal to research anything at all. To wit, I present to you Exhibit A: the fool who believes that an astronaut making a single quote about "destroying the technology" constitutes a compelling argument in favor of the entire program being fake. The level of understanding needed to debunk this crap is laughably shallow, yet the deniers somehow manage to avoid obtaining it, despite all their claims of "doing research."
Lots of truthers like to say things along the lines of "I believed in the moon landings for decades, and I really want to believe they happened! But the evidence I have uncovered is overwhelming!" Presumably, this is an attempt to lend an air of innocence and wide-eyed curiosity to their pathological denialism and scientific illiteracy. But, transparently, it's just crank magnetism masquerading as intellectual honesty. Absolutely
nobody who actually has any depth of knowledge on Apollo suddenly starts believing it was a hoax, based on Youtube videos and memes. In other words, only clueless people are susceptible to falling for that stuff, like I did in 2001 when I was clueless about Apollo.
That's why, before going on the internet to belligerently spread trivially debunkable trash, I wish Apollo deniers would make an honest effort to learn some of the finer details about what the "official story" even says. It's downright alarming how many of them don't even seem to understand that "the moon landing" wasn't just a single, isolated event; we also have the vast history of Mercury, Gemini, Ranger, and the earlier Apollo missions that all culminate in the historical achievement of Apollo 11, which is then followed up by FIVE MORE successful landings, each replete with their own swaths of corroborative evidence, data, videos, photos, recordings, artifacts, rock samples, documentation, and testimony.
Don't get me wrong, it's very easy to see why many conspiracists can't be bothered to learn such details, no matter how readily available they are. The amount of Apollo information freely available might as well be bottomless, which is a great thing, but it necessarily means that it takes a certain level of curiosity and patience to wade through all of that information, process what you can, and begin to develop a nuanced appreciation for the story that it tells.
In contrast, hoax belief requires no such effort or time investment. The staying power of the hoax fairytale derives from the fact that its claims are typically understandable at a glance, and consumable in an "a la carte" fashion by the lazy-minded. There are no pre-requisites to understanding any of it; just click on the video with the most intriguing title, and enjoy.
The hoax talking points are figurative islands that need not respect the constraints imposed by co-existing claims and evidence. Thus, the feckless conspiracist is seduced by a mirage of effortless enlightenment. Whereas the honest Apollo researcher might spend several months - years, even - developing a decent "space-nerd-level" understanding of the Apollo technology and history, it is possible to become a veritable expert on the history of faking space missions simply by watching a few Youtube videos on your phone while riding the bus to work.
Just like a toddler picking through a box of Lucky Charms and only eating the marshmallows, the truther can summarily bypass that which is not palatable and devour only the tastiest zingers like the little morsels of intellectual junk-food that they are.
These days, I argue with people all the time on the internet about Apollo, this time on the side of verifiable reality. I'm not sure it brings out the best in me, and I often question whether it's good for my mental health, but I get so frustrated with the abject nonsense that I see and can't help myself.
With Apollo falling further and further into the rearview mirror of history, and with more and more people coming of age who can't recall a pre-Youtube world, I firmly believe that fighting against such misinformation is worth doing, and why sites like this need to exist.
