Art by Mrlovenstein
My dad was corrupted by social media. It’s getting a bit better, because he doesn’t have unlimited computer access anymore. But not long ago, his first sentence, after we hadn’t talked for a while, was: “What do you think about the woke agenda?”
He really suspended his real life and was almost 24/7 online and got deep in the wrong meta neighborhood.
My father was never like that before, i hope it’s not some state of perception that many of us are doomed to have sometime, because it’s age related.
I’m sorry to hear that. I “lost” my father in the same way. He was always conservative (listened to Rush when I was a kid), but he went from casually conservative to full MAGA radicalized thanks to facebook and modern social media. I went to his facebook a few years back and saw some of the most hateful vitriolic content. I asked him how he could do that to people who helped raise me, that I had both LGBTQ and mixed race teachers, leaders, friends, all of whom have been incredibly important to me. It did not go well. I had to tell him to allow his hate speech would be a disservice to everyone else who had such a profound impact on me, and told him if he loses the hate we can have a relationship again.
That was 6 years ago. Haven’t heard from him since.
I hope your dad is doing better than mine. I’ve seen others confirm what you said, that just cutting out the source will see a return to semi normalcy - the propaganda depends on a constant drip. Just disconnecting them from the feed can have a huge positive impact.
Very sorry to hear that, i hope there’s a near future in which you can come together with your father again.
What gets me every time, is the similarities in all stories i hear. It got really bad one time with my father, when we had a LGTBQ related discussion. I’m always shocked when i hear Anti-LGTBQ discussion points. It’s like, they would rather kill 'em all, than to just live their own live and give a fuck who is fucking who.
As long as it’s all consensual adults …
Society should rather look at the sexual activities in their own circles. Most children are abused by relatives. While i have never heard of a transgender person abusing a child, i constantly hear about priests abusing children.
I live in another country than my parents and sometimes I’m grateful for that. I don’t know how i would have handled it, if we had constant contact and am somehow happy i didn’t have to. The distance is hard enough, everyone is getting older and i would love to be able to sit with my father in the garden and watch birds, like in the long ago times.
I opted to evade discussion and to try not to discuss anything politics with my father. I don’t want to spend the limited time we have together, fighting with him over such an absurd take on everything alive.
Think about it, the older they get, the less they’ll change. I figured that I’ll have to ignore that, talk about others things. It’s the only way, if i want to keep our relationship alive. There’s no more time to let grass grow over it or to let time heal things.
Snap. My dad was always conservative but generally a pretty accepting person. Brexit and COVID really sent him down the conspiracy theory rabbit hole and he’s gone full blown racist nut job. There’s a huge amount of topics which are just off limits with my family now in the efforts of retaining some sort of relationship. Fortunately they live 6 hours away so we don’t see them that often.
It’s strange, it’s like they also put these topics above family.
I was like: “Dad, let’s not talk politics” and he didn’t understand why.
This is something that took hold on people worldwide.
For my dad it was COVID and Bolsonaro, the brasilian ex-president was his hero. I live in Germany and friends have told similar stories, about their relatives.