Art by Mrlovenstein

  • kamenLady.@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    5 months ago

    My dad was corrupted by social media. It’s getting a bit better, because he doesn’t have unlimited computer access anymore. But not long ago, his first sentence, after we hadn’t talked for a while, was: “What do you think about the woke agenda?”

    He really suspended his real life and was almost 24/7 online and got deep in the wrong meta neighborhood.

    My father was never like that before, i hope it’s not some state of perception that many of us are doomed to have sometime, because it’s age related.

    • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      5 months ago

      I’m sorry to hear that. I “lost” my father in the same way. He was always conservative (listened to Rush when I was a kid), but he went from casually conservative to full MAGA radicalized thanks to facebook and modern social media. I went to his facebook a few years back and saw some of the most hateful vitriolic content. I asked him how he could do that to people who helped raise me, that I had both LGBTQ and mixed race teachers, leaders, friends, all of whom have been incredibly important to me. It did not go well. I had to tell him to allow his hate speech would be a disservice to everyone else who had such a profound impact on me, and told him if he loses the hate we can have a relationship again.

      That was 6 years ago. Haven’t heard from him since.

      I hope your dad is doing better than mine. I’ve seen others confirm what you said, that just cutting out the source will see a return to semi normalcy - the propaganda depends on a constant drip. Just disconnecting them from the feed can have a huge positive impact.