Losing parents to right-wing media?

7 comments

1. My parents aren’t at that point but they still do surprise me with the lack of critical thinking when it comes to the media and a failure to see the stereotypes in movies & tv shows.
   Also the triggering thing is when they have to mention someone is black or a nurse was Indian when it was not an important part of the story or relevant in any way.
   I think there is a level of these right-wing views that area natural to the people who get swept up in them, not normal but natural. Either that, they’re a full blown racist or they’re the same thick’s who go to anti refugee protests while their kids are out being scumbags.

2. The best quote on this that I’ve heard is “24 hour news channels and facebook did to our parents what they feared playing computer games would do to us”

3. Yeah, the father is well gone, not entirely sure but started with some horrible things that happened to him in the last year or two before covid, coupled with lockdown meant way more drinking plus down the conspiracy hole before.

   Nothing to be done with it really, the mother eventually got him to quieten down with the shite but the past three months he’s been getting worse, not direct talking about it but would sit in the sitting room after dinner blaring the bullshit from his phone.

   If I’d my own place I’d have cut contact, but unfortunately can’t afford my own place. Don’t talk to him much now but that’s partly because I always have to do mental gymnastics to not bring up something related to the conspiracy shit and he’d rather talk to his conspiracy friends than his family, or just relax and watch TV, or play games, or throw on tunes if he’s the one doing dinner like he used to.

   For context my folks would be about 10-15 years younger than yours.

4. My parents do have a bit of that going on. They’re both smart and educated people but for some reason, they do not question stuff they find on the internet at all. I suppose they treat the Google news page like they would’ve treated reading the papers way back when, not a second thought where the articles they see come from. Neither of them even have social media, it really is even just that Google start page doing the damage. Does my head in if I’m honest and I’ve at least shown them how to block the shite sources from their feed, but then you’ll just get different shite sources at the end of it.

5. They are probably scared, my feed is often very far right and it’s relentlessly fearmongering. Its often Ben shapiro squaking about some old shite that leftist have done, or Jordan Peterson saying how I need to master myself before some great trial of life comes and snaps me like a twig. I think its normal that people adopt conservative views when the world feels uncertain and nothing makes a person click an icon like fear.

6. Plug out the wifi and turn off their data, best thing you’ll do all year.

7. My parents are ok , but I had an awful experience with a college lecturer during 2020/2021 she was a lady in her fifties/sixties and I was going to college studying psychology.
   She went absolutely insane during a lecture over zoom and it was terrifying. She started saying cancer was made up covid was made up and that all these famous people were lizards
   Several of us reported her and she disappeared
   However I heard she was online spouting dangerous crap and stays up all night to speak to her American “associates “it was awful scary and a complete misuse of her position as a lecturer