My parents have always been left-wing hippies and entertained the odd conspiracy theory, but during the pandemic they got lost down YouTube rabbit holes and bought into Q-Anon and anti-vax ideas. They still don’t believe Covid is real (even though they blatantly had it…).
We’ve just kind of agreed not to talk about it anymore, but they’ve steadily become more and more batshit and I think they believe I have been brainwashed.
Anyone else’s familial relationships changed forever?
For us, the topics just changed. After Covid, they started to talk Pro-Putin bullshit, probably Q-Anon related. It’s honestly shocking to see people who I once thought of as intelligent turn brainwashed. We rarely talk anymore, and if we do, it’s very superficial.
My parents would watch a channel that had little pro Russia news segments thrown into commercials. The damage this constant little poking with misinformation does is not easily undone. They didn’t even notice how their opinion was formed by those few lines in-between their favorite shows. Then suddenly they had issues with their satellite dish and when I fixed it somehow, for some totally unknown reason that channel was no longer there. Woops. They found other shows to watch and don’t support the war anymore.
I wish it was that easy. That part of my family is a bit more remote, so I don’t see them that often. Still, I hurt thinking about how this misinformation was able to divide us like that. There’s also little point in arguing with them. We simply don’t talk much anymore, and if we do, we keep the topics light and refrain from politics and/or other world-news topics such as climate change. (Which is not really a thing, if you ask them, but I think you get the idea.)
Ribbit
Intelligence doesn’t seem to have much correlation with belief in propaganda. In my experience, intelligent people can be more susceptible to being hoodwinked, since they assume they’re “smart enough not to fall for it.”
Once they adopt a belief, their conception of themselves as intelligent, rational actors causes them to invent all kinds of post-hoc rationalizations, and it’s extremely difficult to admit that they didn’t actually use the logical part of their brain at all when forming the belief.
My observation during Covid was that once they are “hooked” on a certain conspiracy, they go out of their way to discredit/ignore any facts that state otherwise. My assumption is that the longer this goes on, the harder they are fighting to stick to “their truth”. They rather accept obvious false news than accept that they were wrong initially.
Why? Because they would need to go back and acknowledge being wrong, " loosing their face" in front of a lot of people. They may have had angry conversations over the conspiracies with loved ones and may have even cut ties. (Experienced that first-hand with family.) The further down the rabbit hole they go, the higher the “costs” of going back up.
Is their pro-Putin stuff something like “If we push Putin it might start a nuclear war?” or more like “He’s so swashbuckling manly we ought to be glad he’s invading Ukraine”?
I tried to avoid going into details, but they started to say something among the lines of, “Well, things are not like your media wants you make believe…” (aka “The press is lying to you/us”).
They seem suspicious of mainstream media. How they find their Telegram channels to be more competent is beyond me.
It’s a bit extreme to claim the news is all lies and no effort to convey the truth, but it’s not crazy to think that the news is spinning things into propaganda, and sometimes even presenting falsehoods.
I don’t think it’s as prevalent as some people think but I don’t lose much respect for a person if they think it’s more widespread than I think it is.
Like I think it’s not gonna rain this afternoon, someone else thinks it will rain, that difference in perceptive conclusion doesn’t bother me.
I’ve got an uncle who’s super fucking cynical. To him all politicians are nothing but crooks. I see it more like there’s some good ones and some crooks. He and I get along no problem and I love hearing his theories.