The generations given everything and lived a life of Riley in the land of milk and honey reaping their triple lock pensions in their houses they bought for 2.5x their salary and now worth an absolute fortune? Acting entitled, unaware of their privilege, lauding it over others, denying other people everything they had? Nooooo! Surely not! You don’t say?! I can hardly believe it!
Embarrassed_Grass_16 on
“Do you remember a time when chocolate chip cookies came fresh from the oven? Pepperidge Farm remembers. Do you remember a time when women couldn’t vote and certain folk weren’t allowed on golf courses? Pepperidge Farm remembers.”
Historical_Owl_1635 on
This might not go with the crowd, but I genuinely don’t think social media is the root cause at all, it’s a medium being used to spread it sure, and the algorithms can do that very optimally, but it can only spread because of the condition of the world.
The far right has risen plenty of times all over the world without social media.
RaymondBumcheese on
My dad is one of these. A lifelong conservative who suffered severe online brain rot after retiring. I started using those annoying debatelord tactics whenever he went off on one and now he, thankfully, never mentions anything political when we visit because he knows I’m, basically, going to just end up making fun of him.
He’s still casually racist but baby steps.
bossanovaallnight on
My parents have gone down this rabbit hole. They retired and spend most of their day watching GB news now.
They can be genuinely cruel. My mum has sat in front of me before and said that I think I’m something special because I have a university degree, but a degree doesn’t make me special and I’m actually stupid.
It’s genuinely insane. They get so angry over such inconsequential things
quarky_uk on
That is just weird.
My wife and I disagree on politics and history, but it just isn’t a big thing. She is wrong, but that is fine.
HotInternal5567 on
My mother has never been political, never judged anyone, never commented on immigration or anything like that. This being said, the more she used Facebook, the more I started to hear comments about immigration, people from different countries, the usual sort of shite you’d start to hear about “dont belong here”.
It went on for a few months, she mentioned things more and more to the point where we’d end up arguing over it.
Every single time she’d mention something, I’d ask where she heard the information she was repeating, it was always on Facebook. I could see over the space of a few months, things which never bothered her before having Facebook now started to bother her.
I told her to delete it, get rid of the app and delete your account and see if you feel any differently about things.
The first week or so, I could see she was bored when she was just sitting, a few weeks into not using it, completely different person. Back to her old ways and questioning all of the utter bollocks that gets spewed from the right and the likes of Tommy Robinson, Farage and so on.
She was constantly seeing “bad news” and negative takes and it 100% started to change who she was because she genuinely believed it. Hate speech and lies brought something out in her I’d never seen before, it scared her what she was seeing.
Social media absolutely played a huge part in that. Fear mongering will bring out the worst in people.
99thLuftballon on
The problem is that a lot of these oldies are experiencing the outside world via the Internet these days. They join local Facebook groups to find out what’s going on in the village and spiral from there into “London now officially under shakira law as rampaging muslims behead princess Diana!”. When you’re reaching the age that it gets difficult to visit places and see for yourself, you rely on information being brought to you, and a lot of that information is highly untrustworthy.
Although I’m instinctively against regulating the Internet, I don’t think we have any other choice at this stage. It’s too effective a weapon being used against our societies.
DoorFinch on
It’s not uncommon for people to swing right when they get older. New things become harder to keep up with. Politicians who claim they’re going to take things back to “traditional values” like they were before, get more appealing.
Euclid_Interloper on
Sometimes you just have to say to family that you’re going to have to agree to disagree and that you don’t want to talk politics with them any more. If they can respect that, then you can get on with life. If they can’t agree to that, then they don’t respect you and you’ll have to distance yourself.
If someone’s relationship with you is dependent on political agreement, they have zero respect for you as an individual.
Fine_Cress_649 on
Every day I count myself lucky that my parents have drifted left not right over the last few years. They’re planning on voting Green rather than Labour for the first time in their lives next month.
My brother on the other hand – different matter. He’s now my kid’s problematic uncle.
Drizznarte on
This doesn’t seem like a political problem, but rather toxic effects of social media . Clickbait , rate engagement, short format media. It can fanatacise basic ideas to damaging proportions by taking away context. This endemic is all media now , infantisation . All for the sake of advertising / lobbied control , done nefariously with too many degree’s of separation and no culpability.
BrilliantSpray9447 on
I worry about my mum doing this. She’s months away from turning 70, retired, and watches all sorts of crap on YouTube.
leclercwitch on
My mum was on about Muslims calling for a mum to be killed because her son did something to the Quran so now there’s sharia law. Not heard that news, don’t know where she’s got it from, but my dad only watches GB news and loves trump. We’re fucking English for gods sake. I hate going round now. They’re awful sometimes.
KeithCadfael on
I look forward to the article about ‘families torn apart by younger relatives going far left’. Honestly, we’ve lost the art of being able to disagree. You may not share the same politics and that’s fine. Just park it. It doesn’t matter.
Momo-Velia on
Nothing more sad than seeing people become more and more unable to communicate and cooperate with families and friends over divisions made up by the government and corporations intended to divide.
If you can’t even work through your differences with family members what hope do we have as a people of standing up to any tyrannical moves made by our government?
Ver_Void on
Not strictly far right but watching my mum go down the anti trans rabbit hole on social media was wild. It’s all she talks about and it’s completely disinterested in any actual facts or reality
swagtastic3 on
Nahhh the sooner their generation dies off, The better this world will be
No_Secret2322 on
It truly pisses me off that a lot of reform voters are mostly retired, and they’re going to screw the younger generations over with their voting when they won’t even live long enough to see the impact of the next few governments, but me and my kids will, constantly talking about the boats coming in when they’re on the way to the grave smh .
ShitFuckCuntBollocks on
I’d put money on mass immigration being the main factor for the vast majority of those older relatives.
Papa-Huw on
I don’t think this is exclusively an old person problem. We live an increasingly polarised society with the rise of extreme populism on the left and the right.
I do understand the disconnect between young and old generations in that older generations probably had it easier.
I think a lot of the people who claim they are evil and pulled the ladder up and being hypocritical, since you look at the increasing share of people wanting to vote for the greens, who have economic policies which will, in the short term, aim to give us loads of free hand outs with the idea of much higher national debt, which is going to kick the can down the road to the next generation. Everyone wants something for nothing with no compromise and trade off.
MultiMidden on
I’m gen-x, kind of stuck in the middle, and the problem as I see it is neither fucking side is bloody well listening to the other!
As reddit shows all too often there is next to no nuance any more, everything is black and white, no room for shades of grey.
I personally blame social media and the algorithms who want division and rage because it drives engagement and hence more ad revenue.
Thatweasel on
Pre-internet generations seem to be absolutely defenceless against social media and talk show propaganda. It’s like an uncontacted tribe catching the flu from missionaries.
24/7 bombardment with far right messaging, scare stories about immigrants and crime, their TV never switching off from GB news.
AncientNectarine5352 on
This isn’t a “woe is me, I’m an American” comment. But the reality is quite different here. And I want to clearly communicate how bad it can get. I’ve had to cut off contact with most of my family members, and stopped talking to my neighbors. The people I’ve known for years and that I formerly regarded as decent people now believe all kinds of crazy conspiracy theories, and at least some of them spew the most racist shit I’ve ever heard in my life. Some of them have literally said Trump is the chosen one of god (which is probably rarer across the pond). And the irony is that only a minority of them were even really like this before; most of them went down the immigration rabbit hole… I’ve seen people abandon principles they held dear their entire lives, and almost die for, as soon as Trump sends a tweet. It’s bizarre.
I have empathy for all those around the world that go have through this, in large part because of people like my neofascist family members. But just be glad you don’t live here. Really. These people are both drinking and bathing in the Kool-Aid.
As a former resident of the UK, and though most of you already know this: Stop Reform.
Otherwise you’ll end up like us.
nonotthestew on
My husband’s mother hasn’t spoken to him in 4 years, because he told her she could either stop using racist language in front of our son or stop speaking to him. Prior to that, I had blocked her on social media because she kept sending me anti-immigration slop (I am an immigrant, I came here when I married her son). I suspect she feels we are choosing politics over her, but I don’t know her outside a politics. It’s literally the only topic she’d ever engage about. No hobbies, no interests, just sitting in her house thinking about how I ruined her country.
TopSpread9901 on
I’m in the Netherlands and it’s the same. My dad spends all day on Twitter and is becoming increasingly unhinged with his takes.
Character_Music777 on
Wow all the comments saying their parents are radicalised because they are on social media and yet here we all are on Reddit, a far left platform.
A lot of people criticising their parents for not being smart enough to make up their own minds, simply because it doesn’t align with your own. Pot. Kettle.
Lolabunnytaulor on
My dad has always been conservative (small c) in his views. He would say things that were racist and homophobic but I would challenge and we’d move on.
Since retiring, he’s gone down a complete rabbit hole. He can’t not talk about “saving the country” and went to far-right march in the Autumn (I refuse to call it Unite the Kingdom:utter bullshit). He has it constantly brewing in his head and can’t not talk about it.
It isn’t having “differing views” causing the issues, it’s the obsessional thinking and downright insulting behaviour.
The day he told me “the reason you are like this is because you became a teacher” was the day he stepped over the line. Like this meaning I believe all humans deserve to be treated with dignity and respect.
I’ve worked to educate children for twenty years, had children I’ve taught die, lose parents, get seriously ill and become wonderful humans. Those words were deeply hurtful and I can’t forget them.
Tigerbaton on
I don’t know, I think social media is so toxic. I’m a liberal, always have been. My family are right leaning and increasingly so as time goes on. My friends are a complete mix by varying degrees. We have had healthy debates about politics and we also have lots of conversation where we don’t discuss it at all. I don’t have an issue with someone who disagrees with my views, but we still manage to get on because we have much in common. The issue for me with family more than friends is the nastiness now, total nastiness towards others, constant spouting off about politics, immigrants, “the trans”, sharia law blah blah, it starts the minute I walk through the door and there is no discussion any more, it’s like verbal diarrhoea. There is no discussion, no facts, no considering another’s view or opinion. It makes visiting really unpleasant actually and now I find I actually avoid them because of it. They are entitled to their views but I miss them .
BLightyear67 on
Nothing new. My grandparents were like this in the 70’s. Still, fills some column inches in the Grauniad
discerning_kerning on
Similar thing happened with my mum. Growing up she was always fairly progressive feminist, though in a second eave vaguely anti man way that should have raised a few flags at the time. But recently she’s started dropping wildly anti trans and anti drag queen comments in conversation. It’s wild, we grew up watching Lily Savage and Dame Edna Everage every weekend but now drag queens are apparently “mocking women” and doing equivalent to blackface according to her. Lost her shit at a drag queen being on Bake Off as their drag persona. All she does since retiring is absorb shit on Facebook.
BamberGasgroin on
My 83 year old mother has gone more left than right, it’s a couple of my siblings that I’m worried about.
Fit-Tangerine758 on
Can’t read article, what is it, lefties not happy that other ppl may have different views to them? Typical 🙄
Headlight-Highlight on
Pretty much everyone agrees the country is a mess and politicians are to blame.
The state is way too big – every government have repeatedly bribed voters more and more with their own money… And now with money borrowed by the state.
It all needs to end – people are just jockeying for position so they survive the collapse.
34 commenti
The generations given everything and lived a life of Riley in the land of milk and honey reaping their triple lock pensions in their houses they bought for 2.5x their salary and now worth an absolute fortune? Acting entitled, unaware of their privilege, lauding it over others, denying other people everything they had? Nooooo! Surely not! You don’t say?! I can hardly believe it!
“Do you remember a time when chocolate chip cookies came fresh from the oven? Pepperidge Farm remembers. Do you remember a time when women couldn’t vote and certain folk weren’t allowed on golf courses? Pepperidge Farm remembers.”
This might not go with the crowd, but I genuinely don’t think social media is the root cause at all, it’s a medium being used to spread it sure, and the algorithms can do that very optimally, but it can only spread because of the condition of the world.
The far right has risen plenty of times all over the world without social media.
My dad is one of these. A lifelong conservative who suffered severe online brain rot after retiring. I started using those annoying debatelord tactics whenever he went off on one and now he, thankfully, never mentions anything political when we visit because he knows I’m, basically, going to just end up making fun of him.
He’s still casually racist but baby steps.
My parents have gone down this rabbit hole. They retired and spend most of their day watching GB news now.
They can be genuinely cruel. My mum has sat in front of me before and said that I think I’m something special because I have a university degree, but a degree doesn’t make me special and I’m actually stupid.
It’s genuinely insane. They get so angry over such inconsequential things
That is just weird.
My wife and I disagree on politics and history, but it just isn’t a big thing. She is wrong, but that is fine.
My mother has never been political, never judged anyone, never commented on immigration or anything like that. This being said, the more she used Facebook, the more I started to hear comments about immigration, people from different countries, the usual sort of shite you’d start to hear about “dont belong here”.
It went on for a few months, she mentioned things more and more to the point where we’d end up arguing over it.
Every single time she’d mention something, I’d ask where she heard the information she was repeating, it was always on Facebook. I could see over the space of a few months, things which never bothered her before having Facebook now started to bother her.
I told her to delete it, get rid of the app and delete your account and see if you feel any differently about things.
The first week or so, I could see she was bored when she was just sitting, a few weeks into not using it, completely different person. Back to her old ways and questioning all of the utter bollocks that gets spewed from the right and the likes of Tommy Robinson, Farage and so on.
She was constantly seeing “bad news” and negative takes and it 100% started to change who she was because she genuinely believed it. Hate speech and lies brought something out in her I’d never seen before, it scared her what she was seeing.
Social media absolutely played a huge part in that. Fear mongering will bring out the worst in people.
The problem is that a lot of these oldies are experiencing the outside world via the Internet these days. They join local Facebook groups to find out what’s going on in the village and spiral from there into “London now officially under shakira law as rampaging muslims behead princess Diana!”. When you’re reaching the age that it gets difficult to visit places and see for yourself, you rely on information being brought to you, and a lot of that information is highly untrustworthy.
Although I’m instinctively against regulating the Internet, I don’t think we have any other choice at this stage. It’s too effective a weapon being used against our societies.
It’s not uncommon for people to swing right when they get older. New things become harder to keep up with. Politicians who claim they’re going to take things back to “traditional values” like they were before, get more appealing.
Sometimes you just have to say to family that you’re going to have to agree to disagree and that you don’t want to talk politics with them any more. If they can respect that, then you can get on with life. If they can’t agree to that, then they don’t respect you and you’ll have to distance yourself.
If someone’s relationship with you is dependent on political agreement, they have zero respect for you as an individual.
Every day I count myself lucky that my parents have drifted left not right over the last few years. They’re planning on voting Green rather than Labour for the first time in their lives next month.
My brother on the other hand – different matter. He’s now my kid’s problematic uncle.
This doesn’t seem like a political problem, but rather toxic effects of social media . Clickbait , rate engagement, short format media. It can fanatacise basic ideas to damaging proportions by taking away context. This endemic is all media now , infantisation . All for the sake of advertising / lobbied control , done nefariously with too many degree’s of separation and no culpability.
I worry about my mum doing this. She’s months away from turning 70, retired, and watches all sorts of crap on YouTube.
My mum was on about Muslims calling for a mum to be killed because her son did something to the Quran so now there’s sharia law. Not heard that news, don’t know where she’s got it from, but my dad only watches GB news and loves trump. We’re fucking English for gods sake. I hate going round now. They’re awful sometimes.
I look forward to the article about ‘families torn apart by younger relatives going far left’. Honestly, we’ve lost the art of being able to disagree. You may not share the same politics and that’s fine. Just park it. It doesn’t matter.
Nothing more sad than seeing people become more and more unable to communicate and cooperate with families and friends over divisions made up by the government and corporations intended to divide.
If you can’t even work through your differences with family members what hope do we have as a people of standing up to any tyrannical moves made by our government?
Not strictly far right but watching my mum go down the anti trans rabbit hole on social media was wild. It’s all she talks about and it’s completely disinterested in any actual facts or reality
Nahhh the sooner their generation dies off, The better this world will be
It truly pisses me off that a lot of reform voters are mostly retired, and they’re going to screw the younger generations over with their voting when they won’t even live long enough to see the impact of the next few governments, but me and my kids will, constantly talking about the boats coming in when they’re on the way to the grave smh .
I’d put money on mass immigration being the main factor for the vast majority of those older relatives.
I don’t think this is exclusively an old person problem. We live an increasingly polarised society with the rise of extreme populism on the left and the right.
I do understand the disconnect between young and old generations in that older generations probably had it easier.
I think a lot of the people who claim they are evil and pulled the ladder up and being hypocritical, since you look at the increasing share of people wanting to vote for the greens, who have economic policies which will, in the short term, aim to give us loads of free hand outs with the idea of much higher national debt, which is going to kick the can down the road to the next generation. Everyone wants something for nothing with no compromise and trade off.
I’m gen-x, kind of stuck in the middle, and the problem as I see it is neither fucking side is bloody well listening to the other!
As reddit shows all too often there is next to no nuance any more, everything is black and white, no room for shades of grey.
I personally blame social media and the algorithms who want division and rage because it drives engagement and hence more ad revenue.
Pre-internet generations seem to be absolutely defenceless against social media and talk show propaganda. It’s like an uncontacted tribe catching the flu from missionaries.
24/7 bombardment with far right messaging, scare stories about immigrants and crime, their TV never switching off from GB news.
This isn’t a “woe is me, I’m an American” comment. But the reality is quite different here. And I want to clearly communicate how bad it can get. I’ve had to cut off contact with most of my family members, and stopped talking to my neighbors. The people I’ve known for years and that I formerly regarded as decent people now believe all kinds of crazy conspiracy theories, and at least some of them spew the most racist shit I’ve ever heard in my life. Some of them have literally said Trump is the chosen one of god (which is probably rarer across the pond). And the irony is that only a minority of them were even really like this before; most of them went down the immigration rabbit hole… I’ve seen people abandon principles they held dear their entire lives, and almost die for, as soon as Trump sends a tweet. It’s bizarre.
I have empathy for all those around the world that go have through this, in large part because of people like my neofascist family members. But just be glad you don’t live here. Really. These people are both drinking and bathing in the Kool-Aid.
As a former resident of the UK, and though most of you already know this: Stop Reform.
Otherwise you’ll end up like us.
My husband’s mother hasn’t spoken to him in 4 years, because he told her she could either stop using racist language in front of our son or stop speaking to him. Prior to that, I had blocked her on social media because she kept sending me anti-immigration slop (I am an immigrant, I came here when I married her son). I suspect she feels we are choosing politics over her, but I don’t know her outside a politics. It’s literally the only topic she’d ever engage about. No hobbies, no interests, just sitting in her house thinking about how I ruined her country.
I’m in the Netherlands and it’s the same. My dad spends all day on Twitter and is becoming increasingly unhinged with his takes.
Wow all the comments saying their parents are radicalised because they are on social media and yet here we all are on Reddit, a far left platform.
A lot of people criticising their parents for not being smart enough to make up their own minds, simply because it doesn’t align with your own. Pot. Kettle.
My dad has always been conservative (small c) in his views. He would say things that were racist and homophobic but I would challenge and we’d move on.
Since retiring, he’s gone down a complete rabbit hole. He can’t not talk about “saving the country” and went to far-right march in the Autumn (I refuse to call it Unite the Kingdom:utter bullshit). He has it constantly brewing in his head and can’t not talk about it.
It isn’t having “differing views” causing the issues, it’s the obsessional thinking and downright insulting behaviour.
The day he told me “the reason you are like this is because you became a teacher” was the day he stepped over the line. Like this meaning I believe all humans deserve to be treated with dignity and respect.
I’ve worked to educate children for twenty years, had children I’ve taught die, lose parents, get seriously ill and become wonderful humans. Those words were deeply hurtful and I can’t forget them.
I don’t know, I think social media is so toxic. I’m a liberal, always have been. My family are right leaning and increasingly so as time goes on. My friends are a complete mix by varying degrees. We have had healthy debates about politics and we also have lots of conversation where we don’t discuss it at all. I don’t have an issue with someone who disagrees with my views, but we still manage to get on because we have much in common. The issue for me with family more than friends is the nastiness now, total nastiness towards others, constant spouting off about politics, immigrants, “the trans”, sharia law blah blah, it starts the minute I walk through the door and there is no discussion any more, it’s like verbal diarrhoea. There is no discussion, no facts, no considering another’s view or opinion. It makes visiting really unpleasant actually and now I find I actually avoid them because of it. They are entitled to their views but I miss them .
Nothing new. My grandparents were like this in the 70’s. Still, fills some column inches in the Grauniad
Similar thing happened with my mum. Growing up she was always fairly progressive feminist, though in a second eave vaguely anti man way that should have raised a few flags at the time. But recently she’s started dropping wildly anti trans and anti drag queen comments in conversation. It’s wild, we grew up watching Lily Savage and Dame Edna Everage every weekend but now drag queens are apparently “mocking women” and doing equivalent to blackface according to her. Lost her shit at a drag queen being on Bake Off as their drag persona. All she does since retiring is absorb shit on Facebook.
My 83 year old mother has gone more left than right, it’s a couple of my siblings that I’m worried about.
Can’t read article, what is it, lefties not happy that other ppl may have different views to them? Typical 🙄
Pretty much everyone agrees the country is a mess and politicians are to blame.
The state is way too big – every government have repeatedly bribed voters more and more with their own money… And now with money borrowed by the state.
It all needs to end – people are just jockeying for position so they survive the collapse.