[polishdude20]

Similar with my father but he's got a dumb phone and browses on his laptop. When we have conversations with family he seems to always tune out after a few minutes and goes on the computer. His whole world view has been flipped upside down by conspiracy and hoax content. We've talked to him about not mentioning that stuff while we're over but it seems to be affecting his happiness nonetheless.

[1270018080]

Mine too. It seems like every old father has fallen into the right wing conspiracy cesspool that has warped their mind. An entire generation lost. I really wonder what makes them so susceptible to that content. Internet illiteracy? Old age? It's just who they are? In other words, they want the conspiracies to be true, they want a reason to hate Fauci, Greta Thunberg etc.?

And even more, I wonder if it can be cured. I think it ties into how socially isolated men are, especially old men. Once you retire and your work social network is gone, their only social ties are online. They need to identify with a community, and I guess there is something appealing to being in a conspiracy in-group. It's just impossible to pull them out, because you have to replace that group with something else. And there's just nothing there for them.

[polishdude20]

Maybe a life of manual labor, always feeling like you can't get ahead in life. Then a group of people tell you it's because of some simple reason that you need to get angry about. Obviously it's something that you can't actually do anything about. So it makes you feel worse and makes you feel like you're at least doing something when you consume the content and spread it to others.

[galfarragem]

> It seems like every old father has fallen into the right wing conspiracy cesspool that has warped their mind.

Unfortunately this is not an age thing. Youngsters just have the tendency to embrace different manias (e.g. woke movement).

[skinnymuch]

Left and right politics aren’t equal. Just because they are on opposite sides.

[hnuser847]

But the extreme ends do have similar features (hatred of certain ethic/racial groups, black and white thinking, desire to destroy the existing political order instead of reform it, conspiratorial thinking, etc.). The fact that you don’t think they’re equal is just because you have more sympathy towards one end of the spectrum over the other.

[skinnymuch]

Why would the extreme left have hatred of certain ethnic/racial groups? Which ones would that even be? I hope this isn’t some the left hates white people thing. Bigotry of superficial things doesn’t make sense for what the hard left is about.

Conspiratorial thinking for the hard left is nothing close to what it is like for the alt-right. They are basically not similar at all. The alt-right is about Q, saying Trump lost a rigged election, or thinking moderates are grooming children and molesting kids. What is the equivalence with the hard left?

The black and white thinking is also super simplistic. How do moderates not have black and white thinking in comparison to the extremes? IE a moderate would say don’t vote or spend time on any one but the two main party candidates in the US. In other countries, they’d say focus on who has a proper chance of being elected. Black and white thinking and self fulfilling.

> The fact that you don’t think they’re equal is just because you have more sympathy towards one end of the spectrum over the other.

Or maybe I know they aren’t equal because they aren’t. Perhaps it says more about you and only you, that you jump to such an assumption and conclusion without knowing me.

[Viliam1234]

> Why would the extreme left have hatred of certain ethnic/racial groups? Which ones would that even be? I hope this isn’t some the left hates white people thing.

I think Asians are considered privileged (so almost as bad as whites), and there was something wrong with Israel, too.

> saying Trump lost a rigged election

Some people on the left said similar things when Trump won the 2016 election.