Comment by XorNot
7 hours ago
"SpaceX is a fraud. Its all about control. That's why in the future you'll be eating bugs because it's Greta Thunberg".
I am only partly paraphrasing actual conversation with my father in-law.
I cannot stress enough that what you think will work here doesn't: literally every topic will be pivoted towards a rant about which groups are destroying the future (all of them), or how it's all a conspiracy or how they are plotting against you.
You've invented a conversation you think works. I have lived a damn decade of the list of "safe" topics endlessly shrinking, and the punchline is same: 30 damn minutes of alternately being told some half remembered conspiracy theory from Facebook or asking for agreement that group are bad.
That scifi concept from when they were kid? Well they are lying about that for money of course.
It is exhausting to deal with over and over again.
You can lean in to that though. I live in a rural county with 22k people in the entire county.
But you're painting two different pictures as if they are the same. The suited family type and the conspiracy theorist are different people.
Were I to know that I were dealing with a conspiracy theorist, the pivot is "I wish I could pay as little tax as rich people do (knowing fully well that they often pay far more than I do" or "yeah, it's crazy how the rich always abuse the little guy" or "what would you do if you were in their position (the same? ah well, at least it's understandable. Different, there, you see, there are good people like you and I left to fight the fight!) Or, hell, just for funsies you can play Conspiracy Olympics in which you try to outgun and outthink their own wild ideas. "Oh yeah, well 'spacex is a fraud' is exactly what a russian sleeper agent would say!"
I'll admit that there have been a small number of people that I simply could not connect with on any level, but working in non-profits and with volunteers, you get used to people's quirks and figure out how to work with them on their level. And what's more, you'll often end up being considered one of their few friends or even just "one of the good ones in their book" because so many people are just completely dismissive of them because they don't like their ideas.
You're engaging in exactly the kind of behavior that many of them complain about, their "no one cares, everyone's out to get me" mentality is only enforced by your "it is not possible for me to talk to or associate with these people". You are in fact one of the they that is plotting to remove this demographic from your own reality. It is not a stretch for them to imagine that you would prefer that they did not exist.
Kindness is not complicated.
It's equally tiring hearing about how every problem in society is a result of capitalism and how conservatives are all facists and are scheming for a way to bring back concentration camps and want to deport everyone who doesn't have three generations of native-born ancestors.
There are fringe kooks at all edges of the spectrum and they are all tiring and boring.
But most guys on the train wearing a suit are just normal people who have to dress like that because their work requires it.