The amount of times I've been talking to some friends and I'll make a prediction or make an observation on what's going to happen in a political situation (or what to focus on), get disagreed with and called a tankie or pessimist or whatever, and then I'm correct 3 months later is driving me mad. Of course, they then start saying they need to protest against that or whatever. You would think at some point if someone is consistantly correct about stuff (that isn't hard to be correct on, I'm just like, the only theory reader and person who knows any real history in a group of americans) that you'd start to give them a little credit and maybe value their opinion a little higher, maybe even try to understand what's different between you and them????
Example: telling them ukraine has a nazi problem???? Why was this difficult.
It might just be me or something (likely) but it seems like it's a trend across the states.
It's not about whether you're right or wrong it's whether you:
align with what they consider to be an authority figure
are saying things that they already agree with
are believed by other people
Sadly, if you don't tick off enough of these boxes for someone, all you are to them is somebody who got lucky.
This is exactly right, it's so frustrating. It's so hard to get my Mom to come around to anything because she essentially just has sources of information that she decides to "trust" for reasons I still don't understand. Anything that goes against them is something she struggles to accept. Even if I do get her to come around it's treated like an edge case.
I feel like I can get most people to come around on a particular issue, or even socialism generally but I can't get them to actually change the media they consume. I remember a talk I had with mom and dad where I convinced them, boomer and silent generation, of socialism and even got them to say socialism is good. But then the next day they go back to reading the neoliberal newspaper and watching msnbc. So essentially I have to convince them of something every time it comes up because even if what I'm saying is right they'll forget in a month and go back to believing what the TV told them.
65% of democrats during the 2020 primaries thought that Biden supported M4A despite him fucking saying he didn't! They just assume that the dems are the good guys that support the good policies and if they didn't make it happen it means it was never meant to happen. How can you have a democracy when people act like this??
How can people care more about who is saying it than what they are actually saying or referencing, people lie all the time!
You ever hear the story about the time Target figured out a woman was pregnant before her family did?
The reason they did that is because people are creatures of habit and through data mining they've determined that there are certain times in people's lives that they are more open to big changes. Kind of a marketing cheat code they figured out.
Now think of how hard it can be for people to convince themselves to start working out, eating right, not procrastinating. :side-eye-1: :side-eye-2: And you and I expect them to completely change their worldview and the institutions they trust after a couple of conversations when everything else in the world is telling them otherwise. It sucks, but it also kinda makes sense when you think about the big picture like that.
I'm too autistic for this shit but thank you for spelling it out for me.
I feel for you, I really do.
Even understanding this crap :this: is something i say to myself often .The problem is that it's more about salesperson-ship than truth. Our belief is based more on habits, values, and emotional attachments than logic. Honestly, if you wanna understand more of how it works, marketing based psychology books are the way to go. Marketers are nothing more than propagandists, after all.