My parents have always been left-wing hippies and entertained the odd conspiracy theory, but during the pandemic they got lost down YouTube rabbit holes and bought into Q-Anon and anti-vax ideas. They still don’t believe Covid is real (even though they blatantly had it…).

We’ve just kind of agreed not to talk about it anymore, but they’ve steadily become more and more batshit and I think they believe I have been brainwashed.

Anyone else’s familial relationships changed forever?

  • @sheilzy
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    21 year ago

    Well, my aunt kinda, but she’s mostly just following along with her husband (her most recent and current husbands have both sealed themselves off during my lifetime and I’ve never had an “uncle” relationship with either of them). She hardly has her own opinions anymore. I think both her husband and daughter had to get Covid vaccines for work and school, so I don’t know what they did. I hope my cousin has a mind of her own and went to get her vaccines with her sisters, but who knows. I feel like the husband might have some forged paperwork saying he’s vaccinated or he’s claiming a religious exemption (hahaha, he’s not devout, I mean he is Catholic but the Vatican and USCCB both said to get vaccinated). Same thing with this family friend of ours. Her daughters got her into vaccine hesitation. She doesn’t seem to feel as strongly about it as the daughters but still didn’t get the Covid shots last I heard, though her husband did. The older daughter had a kid who’s probably a kindergartner now, but she’s insisted she wasn’t going to get him vaccinated (specifically MMR) as a baby because that’s bad for development or something. She said he would eventually get vaccinated but not until he started school, which is probably around now but I don’t know if he’s vaccinated yet. She has another kid now too and I imagine she’s giving her the same approach. The younger daughter has a baby now too and is probably doing the same thing. Worse about the younger daughter is she is a nurse. Both the daughters are in their thirties and I grew up admiring them. I’m the oldest sibling so I always look to those somewhat older than me as guides for my near future. But now I realize how off-base they are from what I aspire to be.