He went from just your bog standard Obama lib to Andy Ngo-worshipping Nazi. How do we reeducate folks like this? I think my old friend might be gone forever :(
my guess is it's the obsession with being contrarian and the most logically correct one. andy ngo has lots of "gotcha" "footage" and people eat that shit up. reminds me of the early 2000s atheists who became libertarians.
actually, i just blame south park.
I've noticed this trend with a few people in my life as well. I think it's built off of a type of fear and targeted hatred.
Center-left gay friend had a dramatic shift to alt right literally the day after the Pulse Night Club Shooting. Went from Hillary supporter to Trump supporter. Now he thinks that COVID-19 is a conspiracy.
I never thought he was a particularly good person, he was quarrelsome and always acted like he was being personally targeted. A little self centered and definitely not empathetic.
Pulse did the same thing to me but I pushed the hate onto the attacker, it was like a lightswitch, one moment peaceful demsoc, next moment I wanted to lynch chuds and burn their corpses to carrion. Attacks do weird shit to people.
When 9/11 happened there was tons of pissed off yorkies that wanted to beat the living shit out of whoever did it. Its a lizard-brain thing, probably.
Depends if your friend is a sociopath or not. How much time you want to sink into it. I don't have the answer since I'll cut these people out of my life.
Yeah I'll admit this is going to be the likely play. Guess I'm just in denial about it all lol
I mean you don't have to do what I did. It's harder to try and convince and argue or what ever the method is. But it's not your job to change this person. You can just be yourself and cut out the bullshit.
I ended up deleting Facebook after I got tired with arguing with people. Essentially I died like Heidi Turner did in South Park when she deleted her Twitter. Not living in your home town our state also creates a huge distance so I don't interact with any of my older friends in person.
I kind of have a don't ask policy with family. I don't want to hear your views I just want to get through dinner, talk about the weather until we're at each other's funeral.
I ended up deleting Facebook
I actually ended up going back over to facebook for a minute to hook up with some local organizing, and I swear I nearly disassociated reading some of the shit on there after not using it for 10 years.
Like, dealing with chuds on twitter is one thing, but seeing all these people not just aligning with with the fash, but professing it -- with their real name and identity attached to the posts -- is like a whole other level of "In the Zone" that I was not prepared for.,
I had to do it to my brother. Dude is just way too far gone to reason with. Prior to Trump he was 100% apolitical. Now he spends all of his time watching fash youtube to the point his girlfriend left with their son to live with her mom. Imagine losing your family because you watch too much praeger u videos. smfh
Yeah I reacted the same way. Once I realized he was knee-deep in ngos shit I immediately thought "oh God he's too far gone."
I think you're right about debate being dead.
The positions have been argued for centuries, new people are born every day.
I reconnected with an old friend from high school yesterday. He was always a Jesus freak who didn’t believe in science and debating him was always a futile endeavour, just infuriating. Wouldn’t you know, he thinks covid is a hoax and the media is lying to us. I got really frustrated as I always do when I interact with him, but I realized that I don’t owe him shit and the only thing I have in common with him is that we are from the same town and both play guitar, so I just told him that what he said was complete idiocy and left it at that. Life is too short to spend it debating people who don’t act in good faith.
How far gone are they? And are they a genuinely good person?
If they are still a decent person under all the shit, the best thing to do is just continually being their friend, while always challenging their PoV. I have seen people come back from the ledge on these sorts of things just by hearing alternatives. I think a lot of people get sucked into this shit not because they are intrinsically hateful but because they feel the world has kinda left them behind and they fear the future. So if you just cut him out, ignore his arguments, push him away, he will end up falling deeper into this shit. it will reinforce the view he is seeing, that the left is intolerant of everyone else. So make sure he feels heard and loved, while also refuting him and forcing him to actually think beyond his narrow minded view.
And if that doesnt work, bash the fash.
He used to be a decent caring person but I genuinely think he fell into a bunch of incel shit because he's never been able to hold down a relationship for longer than a few weeks in his adult life. I think that made him really jaded about humanity in general which sent him down a dark path which slowly pushed him rightward. We live in separate states now (tbh most of our college group is so spread out I'm not sure he has many friends locally anymore period so that can't be helpful for him). Anyways it's not like I see him all the time. When I do see him I just try to push back on the talking points. I'm just worried it's too late.
I don't have a lot of it on hand but Ngo has been caught lying multiple times and is really clearly a propagandists maybe just try taking that angle? Ignore talking points just attack Ngo get him off of that and then idk what
The separate states bit is hard, but I'd just keep talking to him I guess. Maybe not even about politics, just about whatever shit you guys used to have in common.
