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Comment by pjc50 | Hacker News Reader

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’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.

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)

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?

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/

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 )

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