My take on it is that the health care and work schedules are the blame. In other countries you don’t go to work if you have the flu, here people will actually work even if they have the flu, because they aren’t given enough sick days and they can’t afford to not work. Even before the pandemic trying to convince my staff to not work sick was always a challenge.
Dealing with Politics and Family
Frankly Dankly
Well-Known Member
Truth right there, this grease monkey can’t afford to take a sick day if I don’t have enough hours. And at the moment we’re being worked hard as hell, we’re the only shop in my area that didn’t voluntarily shut down.
Nobody I know has experienced any violence, not even a “go back to your own country,” the worst we personally have experienced is crazy people yelling at us that it was our fault, or at my wife because our autistic 3 year old wasn’t wearing a mask at the beach. But we know that look of disgust we see all the time and although I don’t live in fear, we know that somebody might flip at any moment. When you have people who have lost their jobs, trying to feed their families and barely holding their shit together, and then you have the president giving them the cause, it’s never a good thing. So when somebody says (and I’m not saying you said this, just flow of thoughts) that both sides are to blame for the discord in the country, sorry, they are dead wrong. So if your family are Trump supporters, they are mistaken and I hope that one day they can understand that.
Frankly Dankly
Well-Known Member
The odd thing here is he’s anti tech, he doesn’t even know how to text, lol. My fear is his home is the echo chamber because his wife is in his ear 24/7 with her bullshit. She’s a hard liner that loves dramatics.
Frankly Dankly
Well-Known Member
I did indeed say that both sides are to blame, and I’ll believe that till the day I die. Neither prominent party has much of anything to offer these days but, “the other side is wrong and crazy”. They all can miss me with that shit. They’ve both ramped shit up in equal amounts. Both sides ignore legitimate science in their quest for more power. Both sides drive fearful narratives. I hope this didn’t come off as combative, just furthering the exchange of views and mindsets.
The day the republicans can divorce themselves from Trump and his followers I might agree
hanimmal
Well-Known Member
Every family is under a reverb effect with this online attack man, so you are very likely right, but it will go both ways.
Do they have a computer? Being anti-tech doesn't mean much if he finds his way into a chat room.
I got confused for a second because you said mother in law was for Trump, I thought you meant his new wife or something was the Trump supporter. Is she online a lot/not a Trump supporter reason MSNBC is on a lot? I am not sure it matters man, you can ignore this part, I am just working things out as I am typing a bit.
I have no question it is very likely that they are in a information bubble. Everyone basically has been repeatedly nudged into one since at least 2014 regardless of 'side'.
Questions I would ask to figure out if they had been radicalized:
1. Were they Bernie/Gabbard supporters?
Actually that is about it really, those are the best ways to find out if they have been getting attack by the foreign military currently shown to be in a all out attack against our citizens.
If they say yes to that question, then they have something they log into I bet.
Ok, but in comparison since 2008 at the very least, the Republicans are the ones actively lying and making up conspiracies to maintain political power. Sarah Palin and the Tea Party can have a line drawn directly to the riots on June 6th 2021 and Trump.
Did you know that the Democrats have only had power to actually legislate 6 years since Carter?
Each Democratic president had 2 years before the rug got pulled out from under them at the very beginning of their terms and Republicans regained the ability to stop the Democrats from getting any legislation that they don't approve of through congress.
The Republicans have been playing the long game, against a new Democratic party that slowly has come to represent 100% of our nation's citizens and not just one demographic.
I am not sure of what you mean by 'ramped shit up'.
I don't see the Democrats actively inciting riots on our nation's and state's capital buildings.
I think this is where you may come at me with 'but Antifa', and I apologize if I am wrong. But if so I would point you to this thread:
https://www.rollitup.org/t/the-people-behind-the-violence-in-the-american-protests-of-george-floyd.1018871/
Feel free to call me out on anything you want there. I would appreciate having the conversation.
Science should not be politicized I agree fully. But I would also point to letting scientists recommendations lead the way in legislation is not necessarily politicizing it.
I would question how you know that the Democrats are driving fearful narratives/examples.
Not at all to me, I think it is as good a starting point as any in a online conversation.
MICHI-CAN
Well-Known Member
My baby brother I helped through life as he did me while enjoying our mutual interests, is now a stranger. As I am to him. Just being in the same room is tense. The very fabric of "family" has been desecrated for profit and power.
Here's to hoping people get a clue that they will never be presented living as they do.
Hope all are secure, healthy and trying to find a laugh.
Here's to hoping people get a clue that they will never be presented living as they do.
Hope all are secure, healthy and trying to find a laugh.
hanimmal
Well-Known Member
I really hope this attack on us gets sorted out really soon. It is tearing us apart.
Best of luck man.
Cookie Rider
Well-Known Member
Im no longer on speaking terms w a friend of 18 years due to him buying into the pedo ring conspiracy theories. Not by my choice.
I tried to understand where he got these beliefs, asked for links to facts
And such. Never could produce, only attack argue and gas lighting insults.
Went from a great chill guy to a paranoid racist over 4 years or so.
There's a lot of people that are new ish to tech and are eating up all these conspiracy theories and such. Normal people, your friends, family, peers and everyone in between.
Idk if they have been duped,
It's ok if we disagree on leaders and parties,
But this seems to be beyond that.
Brainwashing? Is that possible?
By following along online, are your views being altered over time.
Do you speak to your friends face to face the way some verbally assault each other's online?
We shouldn't be.
Not sure where I'm going w this, but it sucks and I know for sure there's more old friends that are now former friends just because they know we don't drink the same cool aid.
I tried to understand where he got these beliefs, asked for links to facts
And such. Never could produce, only attack argue and gas lighting insults.
Went from a great chill guy to a paranoid racist over 4 years or so.
There's a lot of people that are new ish to tech and are eating up all these conspiracy theories and such. Normal people, your friends, family, peers and everyone in between.
Idk if they have been duped,
It's ok if we disagree on leaders and parties,
But this seems to be beyond that.
Brainwashing? Is that possible?
By following along online, are your views being altered over time.
Do you speak to your friends face to face the way some verbally assault each other's online?
We shouldn't be.
Not sure where I'm going w this, but it sucks and I know for sure there's more old friends that are now former friends just because they know we don't drink the same cool aid.
hanimmal
Well-Known Member
That sucks about your friend.
And you are spot on about the brainwashing, it is what the Russian military has been using to attack us nonstop over at least the last 6 years.
https://www.rollitup.org/t/ap-cyborgs-trolls-and-bots-a-guide-to-online-misinformation.1005699/post-15310450
I also think this thread's videos cover a lot of the way that brainwashing happens:
https://www.rollitup.org/t/i-actually-think-this-guy-is-worth-listening-to.1032546/
A lot of information should be coming out about it soon I hope since Biden will be able to finally declassify the Russian attack on our (and every other nation) democracy through social media targeting using data driven AI and trolls.
https://www.rollitup.org/t/the-impeachment-of-donald-trump.997019/post-15173518
MickFoster
Well-Known Member
I have dis-owned one of my brothers, my father, and most of the rest of my racist family.
The way I figure it.........I wouldn't be friends or even talk to people like that if they weren't family........so why should I be friends with them?
The way I figure it.........I wouldn't be friends or even talk to people like that if they weren't family........so why should I be friends with them?
hanimmal
Well-Known Member
Kidney's?
jk, I really would like to help my family see through the fog that the Russian propaganda attack for Trump has created, but I didn't know about it until it was too late and don't know how to get a foothold back in long enough to overcome the drumbeat of trolling that they are experiencing.
Im really hopeful now that the social media companies seem to be stepping up they may have all those hate chemicals that their brain produce reduced to the point they sober up a bit.
MickFoster
Well-Known Member
I don't share your optimism.
I gave them a pass for voting for the traitor the first time.
But anyone who couldn't recognize what and who he was after 4 years and voted for him again.......I have absolutely no use for.
hanimmal
Well-Known Member
Im not even sure I share my own optimism.
a mongo frog
Well-Known Member
Meaning you don't deal with anyone that voted for Orange man? Not sure the no use for thing?
Justin-case
Well-Known Member
I know a Trumper that is so dumb he doesn't even know why his brother hasn't talked to him in three years.
hanimmal
Well-Known Member
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/interactive/2021/conspiracy-theories-qanon-family-members/
She bought ammunition, camping gear, a water purifier and boxes of canned food. Then, Tyler’s mother started wearing a holstered pistol around the house, convinced that 10 days of unrest and mass power outages were coming.
The chaos would culminate, she assured her son, in former president Donald Trump’s triumphant return to power on March 4, the original Inauguration Day before the passage of the 20th Amendment in 1932.
Tyler, 24, had been living with his mother an hour north of Minneapolis since he graduated college in 2019. The paranoia and fear that had engulfed his home had become unbearable in the months since Trump began to falsely claim that the 2020 election had been stolen from him.
“Any advice for dealing with a qanon parent who thinks ww3 will happen during the inauguration?” Tyler asked last month on r/QAnonCasualties, a fast-growing Reddit group for those whose loved ones have been consumed by the bizarre and byzantine universe of baseless conspiracy theories known as QAnon.
[From QAnon to WallStreetBets: The rise of the online mob]
To some it seemed as if the United States was gripped by an epidemic of conspiracy theories.
The anguish was playing out behind closed doors in therapists’ offices, where overwhelmed family members were seeking advice. And it was painfully clear on QAnonCasualties, the Reddit group where Tyler had turned for support.
The group offered a rough barometer of the growing turmoil. Since last summer it had grown from about 10,000 members to more than 130,000 in the days after Joe Biden’s inauguration.
Each day there was a flood of new posts:
A woman in Chattanooga, Tenn., was just days away from moving out of the house she and her partner bought five years earlier. “I feel like I’m in a twisted black mirror episode that’s lasting WAY too long,” she wrote. “I feel hopeless that we will ever get back to the beautiful life we shared in our lovely home.”
A woman in Palm Beach, Fla., had gone two weeks without speaking to her mother and was starting to wonder if the rift was irreparable. “I grieve for her every day as if she is dead,” she wrote.
A teenager in Annapolis, Md., worried that she no longer “knew” her father. “I’ve come to the breaking point,” she confessed. “My heart goes out to everyone else in this situation. It really sucks.”
Tyler, alone in his bedroom, read many of the new posts, hoping that they would help him make sense of his mother’s beliefs. Sometimes it felt as if every conversation with his mom and her new husband circled back to Trump-related conspiracies.
[QAnon reshaped Trump’s party and radicalized believers]
To protect his family’s anonymity, The Washington Post is only using Tyler’s first name. In an email, his mother blamed her son for the tension in the house, writing that he was disrespectful and refused to look for work after leaving his job earlier this year. She added that she “never even heard of Qanon until very recently” and doesn’t “follow it,” but declined to discuss why she had begun purchasing survival gear and whether she believed Trump would return to the White House in March. “My beliefs about Trump are actually none of your business,” she wrote.
Tyler said he and his mother discussed QAnon one time; a bizarre conversation in which his mother insisted that QAnon prophecies were the product of artificial intelligence. He described an atmosphere of growing conspiracy and fear that pervaded his home. “It started a month before the election,” Tyler said in an interview, “and it kept growing until it felt like she was preaching the Bible to me.”
The first QAnonCasualties post went up on July 4, 2019, some two years after the conspiracy’s unidentified online originator, known as Q, baselessly claimed that Trump was secretly leading a war against an elite cabal of pedophiles who controlled Washington, Hollywood and the world.
By that point, QAnon was no longer just an online phenomenon in which the group’s most fanatical adherents called for hanging traitors and waited for the “Storm,” an awakening that would reveal the true breadth of evil in America. Some followers had begun showing up at Trump rallies wearing T-shirts and holding signs advertising their cause.
[QAnon true-believers say their faith is unshaken, despite Biden inauguration]
“My mom has been into QAnon since it got started,” wrote the QAnonCasualties founder, who has since deactivated his Reddit account. “The ignorance, bigotry and refusal to question the ‘plan’ has only gotten worse over time. I’m always torn between stopping communication with her because it only seems to make me feel terrible, and feeling like it’s my responsibility to lead her back to reality.”
The founder described his experience with his mother as “exhausting, sad, scary, demoralizing” and invited members to vent or share coping strategies.
Other Reddit groups, such as r/Qult_Headquarters, were dedicated to discrediting and mocking the growing conspiracy. QAnonCasualties, the group’s founder wrote, was intended to be a “comforting place.”
Like many conspiracy theories, QAnon supplied a good-versus-evil narrative into which complicated world events could be easily incorporated. “Especially during the pandemic, Q provided a structure to explain what was going on,” said Mike Rothschild, author of “The Storm Is Upon Us,” which documents QAnon’s rise.
And it offered believers a sense of meaning and purpose. “We want to believe that we matter enough [that someone wants] to crush us,” Rothschild said. “It’s comforting to think that the New World Order would single us out for destruction.”
A big part of what made it novel was that it was interactive, allowing its followers to take part in the hunt for clues as if they were playing a video game. Social media algorithms, built to capture and keep consumers’ attention, helped expand the pool of hardcore believers by leading curious individuals to online groups of believers and feeding them fresh QAnon conspiracy theories.
Unlike other online conspiracy theories, it also had the blessing of some top Republicans, such as Trump, who embraced the movement in the hope that he could channel believers’ rabid, and sometimes violent, passions for political gain. “It’s a bet that they can control this insurgency and use it to defeat their opposition and retain control,” said Lawrence Rosenthal, chair of the Berkeley Center for Right-Wing Studies. “The bet is we can ride this tiger. And sometimes, as in Germany and Italy, you can get eaten by the tiger.”
Tyler held out hope that Biden’s inauguration on Jan. 20 might help ease tensions in the house. “It seems like my mom is returning to her old self,” he wrote on Jan. 21. “I mean, she’s still political, but now it’s not in my face 24/7. I’ll take that any day.”
The respite, though, didn’t last. Soon she was insisting that Trump would return to the White House in early March. Tyler said he decided to confront her.
“I told my mom everything,” he texted his biological father’s wife, Heather, on the morning of Feb. 3. Tyler’s father had lost contact with him when his son was a child, and they had only reconnected in recent years.
“Told her what?” Heather asked.
“That I don’t believe in Trump or any of her theories,” Tyler replied.
