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Comment by im_down_w_otp | Hacker News Reader

24/7 bombardment with conspiracy theories and partisan political nonsense through television and the internet has turned the relationships and bonds in my extended family into weird factions of outrage addicts that are basically impossible to interact with for any extended amount of time unless you similarly develop a fondness for their flavor of outrage or for their passive aggression for when you don't.

It's exhausting. I'm a co-founder and CEO, I have dozens of spinning plates to manage and keep track of most all the time. I'm also the father of two young children that I adore. Those are the things I decide to spend my energy on. What's fueling my estrangement is that I intentionally decide the kinds of BS that I'm willing to subject myself to, and the kind of curated insanity that tends to originate from my larger family doesn't make the cut.

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There's a lot of "Fox News robbed me of my parents" stories out there.

https://www.salon.com/2014/02/27/i_lost_my_dad_to_fox_news_h... (2014, situation has generally got worse!)

https://captainawkward.com/2020/12/09/1304-fox-news-stole-my...

I think the outrage culture is prevalent with pretty much all the news networks starting with CNN and on down the list. You can replace %foxnews% with any of them.

At family gatherings, find something else to talk about. I mean, people did have conversations 30 years ago, right?

For my part, in an effort to try to understand where the deterioration was coming from, I tried to trace the lineage of the different seemingly pre-packaged outrage nuggets. Trying to see if I could make sense out of the respective roles that things like 8Chan, weird PACs and foundations, Facebook, Twitter, email chains, online news, and television news were playing in ultimately crafting the "junkie" that used to be a person I could talk to about rafting, or skiing, or cars, or whatever. Where every possible topic of conversation would inevitably devolve into looking for any opportunity to inject some sound bite or meme. Anecdotally what I found was that the television media part of it was never the progenitor, it was always the legitimizer. A narrative was always seeded first through other preliminary means (e.g. Facebook or astroturfed email chain), and then eventually that narrative would be confirmed through some corner of television media, and then this acts as a legitimizing function seemingly due to the role that broadcast media used to play in their lives historically.

Eventually I gave up on trying to unpack it any further because it was clear I had no means to do much about it regardless of what I could unearth and understand about how it was happening or if I could get ahead of the curve on some facets of it by avoiding topics that could even incidentally be connected to upcoming "hot buttons".

> find something else to talk about

Not sure if you clicked on the links or have any first hand experience with this phenomenon, but that's exactly the problem: conservative family members always find a way to steer the conversation back to politics. They don't live in the real world anymore, everything relates back to their political outrage. And if you do anything but agree with them, they immediately become defensive and act like you started attacking them for no reason. The only option is to pretend you're in a room full of tourettes patients who can't help what they're saying and shouldn't be taken seriously.

Technically, from a strict neuroscience perspective, no one really lives in the real world. Rather we perceive and conceptualize reality through our senses and a complex "biological AI", where much of the processing is beyond our perception or understanding. Likely many things you consider normal or acceptable would be considered otherwise by reasonable people from other cultures, and they would perceive you as being the wrong one, although these things vary in magnitude and kind.

> conservative family members

That's a pretty gross generalization. I've been privy to my woke relatives just going on and on about Trump.

> find a way to steer the conversation back to politics

Being direct worked for me. Your mileage may vary. "Do you mind if we talk about something else? I'd rather not discuss politics."

I haven't even had close family members involved with this stuff. But of the now-ex-friends who jump into conspiracy-theory-politics, there's no finding neutral ground. They seek out the topics and things can't ordinary. I'd imagine families have the same problem.

30 years ago, we didn't have Fox News and the associated persecution-complex outrage machine (altho the 'silent majority' evangelical nonsense of the 70s/early 80s provided the manual)

...and therefore you can't have a conversation about something other than politics?

Is it really that hard to just ignore these things when your parents say them? I have Republican parents and I just smile and nod whenever they say something crazy. It's extremely easy.

That really depends on how persistent they are and/or who else is around when they say them.

Small Child, "I want to build a robot that helps sea creatures by keeping plastic out of the ocean."

Grandparent, "What's the point when Iran is just going to nuke us all anyway."

Parent, "Ugh." (spends 5 min. trying to verbally tap dance out of that 'conversation' and then later 30 min. explaining to the child not to listen to their grandparents without telling them to stop listening to their grandparents)

That’s fine and dandy if the “crazy” things they say aren’t directly attacking ones way of life or values. My parents seem to have viscerally negative physical reactions to even the sight of black people and gay men (lesbians seem to be fine!?) and it’s disgusting. If conservative news were just about foreign policy and taxes we could have our disagreements but it is more insidious than that because identity politics are strong and getting stronger. There isn’t any room in my life for bigotry against myself and my friends.

Or — relevant to this forum — personal attacks. It doesn't even have to be about normal identity politics stuff.

I get harassed by family about how awful I am for working in “tech” after both platforms axed Trumps accounts. (FWIW, I don’t work for a social media company. I'm extremely proud of my work. It saves lives. There is literally nothing controversial about what I do. But "tech bad" is now a News Max talking point.)

Coming to a thanksgiving near you.

Well I'd say straight up bigotry is something quite different. Dunno what I'd do in that case, sounds difficult.

You're describing the difference between treating them like a life-long friend and treating them like a dementia patient. Yeah, I can just nod and ignore them, but mentally I have to acknowledge that the person I once knew and understood so well is fading away or completely gone. This is not an easy acknowledgement to make.

My friend's mother won't hug him, or let him into her house because she thinks he took the COVID vaccine.

How would you recommend he ignore that?

MSNBC robbed me of an uncle :(

Explain?

I'm guessing OP is centrist or right-wing, and the uncle watches MSNBC and thus don't eat up the conspiracy theories that increasingly make up the right-of-center political sphere?

Or maybe the other way round, uncle lapped up the Fox News "MSNBC bad!" thing...?

It’s also totally possible to be to the left of MSNBC ;)

good point! :D

nvm

Can you name some of the left-of-center conspiracy theories? Genuinely interested.

Russiagate. Calling 1/6 an "insurrection." White supremacists.

Edit: Oh, and how could I forget? Systemic racism.

Russiagate convictions: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/2/20/17031772/m...

Jan 6 has seen a lot of criminal charges, including literally "conspiracy"! https://www.npr.org/2021/02/09/965472049/the-capitol-siege-t... (seems to refer to https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/371 )

And also a lot of "cut your Trump supporting parents" stories out there too.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-cutting-off-relatives_n...

https://www.nationalreview.com/2016/11/why-left-wingers-cut-...

Heartbreaking stuff: https://old.reddit.com/r/QAnonCasualties/

I just posted something very similar, and was surprised to see there were not more comments along this line. My family isn't red, but just in general dealing with them is kind of exhausting. The extended is fine to spend time with, but they are constantly in petty fights with one another and trying to align others to their "side" when I just want to find out who is coming for Thanksgiving and what I should bring. Some of them continue to make the same exact poor decisions over and over and then bitch about ~~the consequences~~ their lives.

There is only so much I can take, there are lots of other people in my life who I never view dealing with as someone I have to subject myself to but do not want to.

Yes, absolutely that's a constant component of the "factioneering" as well. My spouse points out that my family tries to use me as Switzerland to broker between their respective dysfunction whenever there's a crisis (e.g. death in the family, financial problems, etc.). There was a point in time where I took that on willingly and dutifully because I'd think, "Well, somebody has to do it." But, as they never took these moments as teachable ones to sort out their own issues with themselves and then consequently with others, I just hit points where I was sacrificing what I loved for what I didn't, and I stopped. It turns out that, nope... somebody actually doesn't have to do it. As long as you can get yourself outside the blast radius, life goes on. I suppose, unfortunately, that then becomes the goal and challenge... how to stay outside the blast radius. Hence, estrangement.

> I intentionally decide the kinds of BS that I'm willing to subject myself to

This was my experience, too. My father used to playfully needle me about our political differences, but after 2016 it was difficult to discuss anything without it becoming a rant. Finally he yelled at me because I said I agreed with mask mandates, and I decided I had had enough.

^^^ This.

My dad regularly shit-posts disproven right wing conspiracy theories on FB.

Whenever I call him I get the latest cliffnotes version of whatever Hannity or Tucker are lying about.

Last time he had to let me go because The Five on Fox was starting.

It's like losing him to a cult.

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