There was a short segment on 60 Minutes (maybe?) back in 2020 before the elections where they interviewed someone who had deprogrammed himself from Qanon.
It was the same story. He had no friends IRL, no social support, he had turned his mom onto Qanon and she was still down the rabbit hole.
He said that was the part that kept him in it for so long, even once he started questioning things. All his “friends” and close relations were part of the cult and he would have to cut ties with everyone or worse, they would turn on him and attack him as a traitor.
It would be sad if these online-cults weren’t so damaging to society.
It’s hard to not sound snarky here, but you could play another system that’s not seen as a commodity to be passed around Corps for profit.
I switched a couple years back, and honestly couldn’t see going back even before their licensing drama. As a GM, their books are so hard to make work, and expensive for what you get. D&D became too much of a product, and the game has suffered. 3rd party stuff has always had better value and usability compared to WotC books (few exceptions), and other systems give much better support for GM’s to actually run the game.
The coolest shit you do in D&D is the stuff you’re group comes up with at the table, and you get that with any system. Tencent also can’t buy that, so there’s nothing stopping you just playing 5th Edition, and not 6th (or One, whatever Marketing ends up calling it).