She’s almost 70, spend all day watching q-anon style of videos (but in Spanish) and every day she’s anguished about something new, last week was asking us to start digging a nuclear shelter because Russia was dropped a nuclear bomb over Ukraine. Before that she was begging us to install reinforced doors because the indigenous population were about to invade the cities and kill everyone with poisonous arrows. I have access to her YouTube account and I’m trying to unsubscribe and report the videos, but the reccomended videos keep feeding her more crazy shit.
My mother‘s partner had some small success, on the one hand doing what you do already, unsubscribe from bad stuff and subscribe to some other stuff she might enjoy (nature channels, religious stuff which isn‘t so toxic, arts and crafts…) and also blocked some tabloid news on the router. On the other hand, he tried getting her outside more, they go on long hikes now and travel around a lot, plus he helped her find some hobbies (the arts and crafts one) and sits with her sometimes showing lots of interest and positive affirmations when she does that. Since religion is so important to her they also often go to (a not so toxic or cultish) church and church events and the choir and so on.
She‘s still into it to an extent, anti-vax will probably never change since she can’t trust doctors and hates needles and she still votes accordingly (which is far right in my country) too which is unfortunate, but she‘s calmed down a lot over it and isn‘t quite so radical and full of fear all the time.
Edit: oh and myself, I found out about a book “How to have impossible conversations” and the topics in there can be weird, but it helped me in staying somewhat calm when confronted with outlandish beliefs and not reinforce, though who knows how much that helps if anything (I think her partner contributed a LOT more than me).
Reading this makes me realize I’m not alone as I thought. My mother too has gone completely out of control in the last 3 years with every sort of plot theory (freemasonry, 5 families ruling the world, radical anti-vax, this Pope is not the real Pope, EU is to blame for anything, etc.). I manage to “agree to disagree” most of the time but it’s though sometimes… People, no matter their degree of education, love simple explanations to complex problems and an external scapegoat for their failures. These contents will always have an appeal.
Yeah you are not alone at all, there is an entire subreddit for this r/qanoncasualties and while my mother doesn‘t know it, a lot of this stuff comes from this Q thing. Like why else would a person like her in Austria care so much about Trump or Hillary Clinton or a guy like George Soros? Also a lot of it is thinly veiled borderline Nazi stuff (it‘s always the jews or other races or minority groups at fault), which is the next thing, she says she hates Nazis and yet they got her to vote far right and support all sorts of agendas. There is some mental trick happening there where “the left is the actual Nazis”.
Well she was always a bit weird with religion, aliens, wonder cures and other conspiracy stuff, but it really got turned towards these political aims in the last years. It feels malicious and it was distressing to me, though I‘m somewhat at peace with it now, the world is a crazy place and out of my control, I just try to do the best with what I can affect.
By now it is beyond apparent that corporations cannot be relied upon to regulate themselves. In the mindless dynamic they have set in motion, the mindless endgame is to keep us in a perpetual state of anguish.
How this type of vulgarly cynical content is not considered obscene and banned, is a failure of the highest magnitude.