This is definitely a real thing for the boomer brainworm crowd. They scream that anyone to the left of Marco Rubio is a pedophile and then are shocked—shocked!—that their kids don't want to expose their grandkids to that.
My boomer parents are wisely playing both sides. For example, they brag that their grandkids are getting homeschooled. They get Facebook Social Credit from their friends who are so happy that these kids will be avoiding the Woke Agenda. (Ha, haha, ahahahahahahaha)
You're doing fine work and I'm proud of you. Raise them kids right. (or raise them left, rather?)
It's strange isn't it. Did I grow in up absolute privilege or have things changed that much? By privilege, I mean, all my grandparents were normal people. They likely had some crap takes and we had mild disagreements over the years. But they didn't go around swearing and using slurs (not just not in front of children) and there was a consensus that Nazis are bad and maybe racism and bigotry are bad too (albeit couched in liberalism).
It's crazy to see what western material conditions from circa 1950–2003 did to western minds. For anyone who needs evidence of the overdetermination of the economic base, this might be it.
Yeah I genuinely lack the imagination to picture parents who aren't saying slurs every other word. It seems like every white person around my parents' age is like that with incredibly rare exceptions.
I've seen it come in two varieties, ambient and active. My dad is ambient. He'll complain about black people and the state of the world, but it's incoherent and when pushed on it, he'll shut up, but it's still there in him. My mother is active, every 5 minutes she has to complain about the existence of Latino people or how Trump should be king of America. She'll bring it up no matter what is going on. She taught me the n-word before I had ever seen a black person for the first time. Actually deranged people.
"my kids became adults, realized im a shit human, and now i can't see my grandbabies! and that angers the narcissist in me because I only had children for selfish reasons."
my kids became adults, realized im a shit human, and now i can't see my grandbabies!
I mean, I wish this was more the case. But as often as not, its simply because the Millennial generation has needed to move across the country to find good work. I know more than a few chud grandparents who get plenty of grandkid time purely on the basis of free childcare being worth its weight in gold. I know more than a few based woke grandparents who never see their grandkids simply because they live on the east coast and the grandkids live out west. Increasingly, you'll see grandparents move halfway across the country to be closer to family. Or you'll see kids moving back in and forming extended households, entirely because of the cost of real estate.
Even the worst politics can be forgivable, even the best negligible, when material conditions are a concern.
i was just working off the meme and the grandparent who made that probably is a shit person if they have to "make up" with their kids. Obviously there are other reasons a grandparent can't see their kid for valid or geographical reasons. My own parents are stupid as fuck conservative catholics but they aren't complete twats about it so they see their grandkids and kids with no problems. Their debates they would have with me(the only commie) would anger me in the past, but now it just makes me laugh.
My adoptive parents bought me so my adoptive mother would have control over my wedding/baby shower and what children I have and she wouldn't risk being alone on holidays when her biological children (all sons) get married.
They've been so much worse to me after I told them I'm not having kids because now they wasted money on buying and raising me
"Transactional" thinking, such as seeing people they're supposed to nurture and raise and protect out of love and see it as some kind of "investment" with expected returns, is poison, the death of love and meaningful emotional connections.
I wish there was a way to see it a long ways off to avoid those empty-inside fucks, forever.
This is so bleak comrade
you don't deserve to be treated like that 
Thank you
Man I fucking feel for you guys in this thread. My parents are just well-meaning libs who immediately cave when I apply pressure. Like when JK Rowling was first getting onto her bullshit and I whipped out an "actually my friend is trans and you knew her pre-transition" it basically blew the transphobia out of them like a shotgun blast. I'd rent my parents out to you guys if I could so you could have a couple old academic libs to very lightly dunk on with the understanding that they are still trying to figure out a confusing world even in old age.
Edit: I should add that I empathize because growing up in the South, most of my friends had the parents you describe and I was pretty familiar with how unstable it made them feel at home.
Yeah I'm literally in the process of trying to figure out how to stay in contact with my father but cut off all communications with my mother. She's gone off the deep end. Any conversation with her centers around her racist hatred of Mexicans. She always wants to tell me highly exaggerated and likely fabricated stories of encounters with Mexicans she's had. The woman carries a switchblade and always grasps for it in her purse if she sees someone with too dark of a complexion. I can't be in public with her because if she hears a single word of Spanish around her, her eyes get wide and she'll start muttering to herself about how "Mexicans should all go back."
We live in Texas, so often these people aren't even from Mexico. It's just Latinos, mostly people born in Texas in the first place.
She's super into Trump as well, obviously, but she's one of the odd ones who is also pro-vaccine, so at least she has that. She worships the British royal family too...and is also somehow an advocate for Irish decolonization (she claims we have Irish ancestry even though as far as I can tell our family came from Poland)
I already disowned one outright fascist parent (as in, actively and out loud wishing murder-by-police on
for even existing in the same city), but while trying to maintain contact with the other, that enabling parent tricked me into meeting with the fascist parent again after years of no contact.Oops, two disownings.
That's so funny LMAO these people are real?? Like I know people that are casually racist or two-faced racist, but I've never met someone that goes berserk at hearing Spanish. I'd want to see her if she wouldn't stab me 😂
Yeah she's actually like this. Also she'll scream the n-word if she sees a black person on TV. She's like a cartoon character and it's only gotten worse in the last 10 years. She was more subdued and casually racist in the 90s. Now she's been driven nuts by Facebook.
My MIL recently pulled the "Think about what your doing to [my daughter]." After we recently set boundaries about her not talking to my wife until she apologizes to her for a previous incident.
After a couple instances of non-compliance we shifted to no contact. MIL threw a fit because she "didn't know what she did wrong".
What's up with your MIL? Is it standard sort of racism or bigotry?
Because I'm scared to have kids and introduce them to my parents. My potential kids would learn slurs just from the everyday conversations my parents have.
My MIL has just been generally unsympathetic to my wife's mental health. We tried to be considerate because my MIL was raised in a different time where that kind of stuff was just shut away.
She recently said some very nasty stuff to my wife along the lines of "You won't be a good mother because of your mental health".
We've tried to mend that with talks but she never really understood the damage she caused. Giving half apologies like "I'm sorry you took it that way" or "I'm sorry you feel that way".
We haven't received a true apology and we're starting to accept that we aren't going to get one. She thinks we're overreacting and tries to act like nothing is wrong and tries to interact with us as normal.
So we finally set our boundaries for our peace of mind. And she's starting to get consequences from those boundaries.
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Its the "fathers rights movement" a subsidiary of the "men's rights movement".
A further subsidy of the “states rights” movement
“It’s about parents’ rights”
“A parent’s right to own what, motherfucker?”
My uncle keeps sending group texts of straight-up Qanon or transphobic hatred shit and I just don't respond, nobody does
My dad's Facebook page paints a profile of a painfully stereotypical boomer conservative, he thinks Bernie Sanders is a communist and Joe Biden pressed the make gas expensive button
My mom listens to Adam Carolla
My surviving grandma is 91 and watches Fox News all day, weeping for how bad California looks now with all the homeless people living on bridges but not a thought for the people and where they're supposed to fucking go since simply existing in public is basically illegal for them
I'm very thankful that my family is full of leftists. Some of these posts tell me I'd be traumatized if I lived in some of these households. Instead I get to hear my dad go on hour long rants about the US Empire and how the president of El Salvador is a fascist dumbass. He does tend to say things during those rants that could be labelled as problematic but he's also a farmboy from a rural area in a developing country.
My dad's tapes were of Sousa marches.
Teaching my grandkid that racism was invented by Judeo-Bolshevik agent provocateur Trotsky to shame and silence white people from being, well, racist. Meemaw and Pep Pep are just happy you're back.
Yes, it is the child's fault for not attending to the emotional needs of the parent. How may I serve you today, my liege
There's a weird inconsistency where kids are supposed to always defer to their parents and also expected to be independent. Like, what the fuck.
My dad sends me these and also lots of pictures of flowers with Bible verses about forgiveness over them. I haven’t responded in almost a year, but I know when he’s having a bad night because he’ll just start sending me a bunch of messages. The reason I don’t talk to him has nothing to do with politics. Suffice it to say that about 3 years ago I started having very good reason to be scared of him being around me or my kids.
My mom sends me photos of the random people desperate for free childcare that they "replaced" my family with. It's pretty fucked.
My mom does this. She send me texts and emails of pictures with quotes of positivity plastered on top.
After the last time I saw her a few months back, she texted me that I seemed distant and asked if anything was wrong. Over the past few years, I've been coming to terms with just how emotionally abusive and manipulating she was when I was a child. She spent a decade with a man, not my father, who was an alcoholic and was the same way but worse, with some physical abuse sprinkled in because why not. Always taking his side in any conflict. Even when that ended, she found a new manipulative piece of shit to side with.
In response, I told her that I've become aware of just how much unresolved childhood trauma I have and that I'm having a hard time reconciling it. I guess I thought that this might open up a channel of communication, but nope. Her response basically amounted to "get therapy". Not the worst advice, but I didn't come to her for advice. She asked. I should have known better.
She mailed me a letter, but I haven't been able to get myself to open it. I feel like whatever is inside is just going to upset me.
🫂
Just a little closer to the grave and feeling lonelier, boomers?
Lots of y'all are posting about the politics divide. My mom won't let the church thing rest. When I moved out for college she was constantly asking about me finding a new "church home" there. Eventually I had to have the talk and she just couldn't comprehend that I could be secular and have a moral compass without a bible. It helped me a little that my siblings have finally had the talk too, but every couple of months or years she checks in to see if we've changed our minds. At least we aren't being disowned or anything, but holy shit please just let me have my own beliefs. I think she's worried we're all going to hell (especially worried about grandkids), which I guess I empathize with a tiny bit if I put myself in the shoes of a concerned religious parent, but like, just pray on it and trust the Lord or whatever. We've made up our minds.
My dad won't shut the fuck up about this with my family too. Like yeah I empathize a little because of the brainrot he inherited that says if you don't think exactly like this then you'll be tormented forever, yeah that's horrifying to think. But you've had a whole lifetime to interrogate that belief, study, discuss, learn, and even do that with us but instead it's believe exactly this, no room for discussion
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Likely real. The 'I can't see my grandkids due to my political views' isn't new.
it's not new but it's becoming more common given how stark there is of an ideological divide between older and younger people right now
don't wanna get into generational war or anything, because this is mostly a result of stuff like the housing collapse and wages staying stagnant since the 1970s. Older people largely represent survivors of a easier time to be alive (if you were white and not poor) and that's coloring their impression of the world, even now
I'm glad that the one aunt I have who went down the conspiracy rabbithole has been cut off from the rest of the family (she tried to force her unvaccinated ass into the hospital our grandma was staying shortly before her death to rant about the dangers of vaccinations, luckily no one gave her the room number)
In the past few years my parents, one a tail-end boomer and the other an early Gen-X’er, have become increasingly more and more difficult to have conversations with. They spout this FoxNews rhetoric every chance they get and my step-mom foams at the mouth blaming literally anything and everything on Biden (open a pack of chips and the bag splits on the side and it’s “Biden is ruining this country.”)
They’re irrational and exhausting. If they ever talk to my children about politics or even life in general, I’m sure I’ll see this post shared in our family group chat along with the other fucking stupidity they share.
Idk what happened or when, they were normal. Now, they’re banging on the walls of the looney bin waiting for a bed to free up
I feel like in 30 years (if we're all still alive by then) we're gonna talk about like FoxNews and Facebook like cigarettes or amphetamines. This is an observable phenomenon. Certain age and wealth groups have taken to the whole internet reactionary ideology like catnip. I don't know how else to describe it. If you're 55+, white, a homeowner, and you regularly wear polo shirts with khakis for fun it's like your whole brain got scooped out and replaced with conservative dipshit madness spinkled with minion memes. It's so common it should be a statistically noticeable blip.
They've become so heightened, so hair-trigger, they really do froth at the mouth once any of their activation words are said. They're often deep into Qanon, they concoct elaborate conspiracy theories that get more confusing every year, and they can't tear themselves away from Facebook. Is the problem they weren't weaned onto the internet like younger people? Like when I was growing up the internet as it is now was being constructed, I watched it grow and learned how to parse information presented to me. Older folk slammed face first onto the internet in like 2015, without the decades of acclimating to it.
Stories like yours and mine are so common I'm surprised there isn't yet an industry of family counseling specifically about de-programming reactionary parents/grandparents (there probably is already and that makes me sad)
I feel like in 30 years (if we're all still alive by then) we're gonna talk about like FoxNews and Facebook like cigarettes or amphetamines. This is an observable phenomenon.
I sure hope so. It's exhausting pushing back against the "it's just entertainment; entertainment has no effect on me" mantras of those consuming it. No one is immune to propaganda, least of all those who believe that they are immune to it.
Older folk slammed face first onto the internet in like 2015, without the decades of acclimating to it.
Facebook went public in 2012. There's always going to be a lag with this kind of thing. Immediately before, Facebook was strictly for young people, mainly students. It was an unspoken rule that if older people or non-students joined, you didn't friend them. That changed quite quickly, really.
Fast forward to 2015. FB shareholders are only in it if it makes bank. And the interested security services partners are only interested to control the narrative. So they've opened FB to everyone. As you say, it's the first time the older generation has used the internet for fun.
I wouldn't be surprised if there was some level of orchestration to make sure those new users hit a curated wall of propaganda from the get go. Because it guarantees an audience, which can be sold to advertisers. And it guarantees that the audience isn't going to move away from terrestrial and cable TV to consume anything wholesome. It's slop or nothing. So not only were they not acclimated. They never got a chance to become acclimated to anything that looked like reasonable discourse.
They did the same with streaming. Until around 2013 if you wanted to stream music or videos you went on YouTube or heaved ho and hoisted the skull and crossbones. Then came Netflix, which made the risks of the high seas disproportionately risky. So the same generation that ran head first into the FB wall started treading water in media libraries curated by the secret services on behalf of the haute bourgeoisie. They didn't stand a chance.
I'd like to be around when the records of 2010–2020 are made public in the FALCSRs of, say 2035 (too optimistic?), so I can read the books that come out revealing exactly what we've been up against.
I think part of it is that for white boomers, both the USA and Canada offered a reasonable quality of life. You could own a home, 2 cars, and raise a family on a single income and a 40 hour work week. Neoliberalism (and the fact that this was unsustainable due to its reliance on imperialism) made this impossible for gen X. But at the same time, gen X was raised on red scare, anti-communist propaganda. They're unable to reconcile with the fact that the problem is Capitalism. And so they turn to the reactionary propaganda, because they have to blame something or someone for this decline.
Facebook fucks with people's heads even when they're not super conservative. Facebook liberals are low key insane too, just less aggressive
we're gonna talk about like FoxNews and Facebook like cigarettes or amphetamines
1,000%. My dad is usually just sitting and watching Fox News/Fox Business half the day. But there are times where for one reason or another, he doesn’t watch it for weeks. There is a marked difference in his demeanor in the two situations. He’s happier, less angry, and more apathetic (in a good way) to politics when he’s not watching. There’s something to the addictive quality of those things.
It's the effects of leaded gasoline and paint.
In the past few years my parents, one a tail-end boomer and the other an early Gen-X’er, have become increasingly more and more difficult to have conversations with.
I'm pretty old, but people that I know that are slightly older than me (Xers) are almost universally indistinguishable from boomer stereotypes. Effectively, they are junior boomers, but instead of a root of post-war abundance-driven selfishness, they had a root of post-Soviet-collapse apathy-driven selfishness.
The I came out on the right side of the end of history, loser, printed on their T.
the tears are CGI of course
Looks like a MrBeast thumbnail, only missing
1upvote = 1prayer
Why is the child naked though?
Best way to get conservatives attention
I don't talk with my mom too often but she'll email me the most horrific reactionary comedy central comedian stand-ups. I don't even know how to respond to the latest, they were usually just problematic but the most recent one is just a straight up fascist creating a "class" out of nothing, insulting it, and dividing it from every other imaginary class he can come up with.
It makes me feel really sad sometimes. I made it very clear that we hated fox and wouldn't let her have it on the TV while visiting her but the last time I mentioned it she said she doesn't watch them anymore anyways - it's OAN all the way. Someone else mentioned it below and I hadn't really noticed it before but, if she's away from the TV, tablet, or phone for too long she does seem to get fidgety and agitated.
I sometimes wish I had spoken up sooner about it to her. I doubt it would have stopped her but maybe it would have slowed the descent, or I could at least absolve myself of a little bit more of the guilt.
Would it help to send her 'bridging' content? To slowly shift the overton window to the left?
I really like that idea. I was planning to respond with all the problems her latest vid has in the first 5 minutes, but if I could share a vid or something as well it might help. I've sent her a lot of climate change stuff because, while she used to deny it, she's come around to acknowledging it's real and "probably" caused by humans. Just wish I could further the push to it's caused by capitalism.
Got any recommendations? I have climatetown and skip intro in mind as some transitionary YouTube channels but I don't feel like they are ostensibly political outside their specific topics. I'd like some more general content that covers everything and is maybe hosted by a boomer.
I don't have high expectations but I'd like to try.
Lol, lmao
Imagine that being disowned by their children is prevalent enough that this meme exists between boomers. 🤔
It’s not just fascists who are losing access to their relatives for political reasons…
Is it losing a relative when a leftist willingly walks away first because the relative is irredeemable?
Yes
My kids only have one set of grandparents active in their lives, my parents (who are fortunately very active and great with them). My wife's mother died before we even met so of course the kids never knew her either. And her dad is just kind of an asshole, she put up with him for years but when he started being mean to me in front of the kids she decided she was done - she didn't want to risk him being mean to them. It's not even maliciously mean he just thinks it's funny to insult people and gets butthurt when people "can't take a joke".
The only person in either of our families who is a regular consumer of FOX news is her grandpa (her Dad's stepfather), and he's truly one of the sweetest and most loving people I've ever met. He just lives in rural Indiana and that's what they watch there.
I'm proud to say that I converted my mom from voting Green to voting Left.
My dad however voted for Olaf Scholz. Said he thinks he's "competent enough".
)