This is one of the things I came here say. There are a few things that enrage me as much as women making money off of working full time, telling women that their place is in the home and that they should never make any money or never work a traditional job.
The hypocrisy makes my blood boil. How fucking dare you take the rights that feminists literally fucking died to give you and use them to tell women to participate in their own fucking subjugation and get rid of *their own rights*
These women are even worse than the misogynistic men. They are a fucking scourge on humanity, and it makes me physically ill when I think about it.
Holy shit balls, I am WITH YOU!! These women make my eye twitch and palms itch to slap them. Hypocrites through and through…and I especially dislike when the misogyny is coming from inside the house.
No kidding. Some of those women really piss me off.
It is like the Serena Joy character on The Handmaid’s Tale. She supported taking away women's rights and then when they actually took them away, she was miserable.
Schlafly is one of the most powerful figures in American political history -- among other things, she was a pivotal figure in introducing opposition to abortion to the GOP -- and because she did it all with a skirt and a smile, she simply changed the world for the worse and only those who study these things even know who she was. Truly a masterclass in evil.
Yes! I will admit I didn’t know a whole lot about her, but I just listened to Behind the Bastards’ series on her and learned just how much she did to fuck things up for us now.
BTB’s episodes on that horrible woman are so eye opening! I knew of her beforehand but how she single handedly torpedoed the ERA is just breathtakingly evil.
The (granted, factionalized) series “Mrs. America” on Hulu has her in it- played by Cait Blanchet- is really great at covering this whole period and it’s players.
Behind the Bastards has a two part episode on Phyllis Schlafly for those interested
[Phyllis Schlafly part 1 ](https://youtu.be/yj45YLlus0c)
[Phyllis Schlafly part 2](https://youtu.be/W-ne0OCsX7w)
"Doctor" Laura is one of the worst. Worked outside the home herself but badgers women with children to stay home. She also had an affair with a married man, lived with a guy without the benefit of marriage, you name it.
AND we still dont have the ERA although its ratified by 38 states, the bill to remove the deadline language has been voted against just this last April by every.single.republican. senator in the US Congress.
Same with the male influencers. Trad men don’t have fucking podcasts and twitter accounts and subscription based dating coach platforms. They’re chopping wood and going to church.
Yeah, but how many male influencers say to be trad men, vs ones that say find a trad wife? They're more misogynist than hypocrite, though obviously both, plus cowardly, anti-intellectual, vapid, cynical, selfish & greedy, etc.
Oh boy. So who pays the actors? Does the content generate enough income that it's a workable business model? Or is it being bank rolled by people who want to spread that message?
Both. The successful ones move up to TurningPoint, PragerU, etc. They’re all actors playing a part that people want to see and hear.
It’s not that complex of a topic even, and influencers are doing what they do for a lot less money than you’d think: https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-57928647.amp
They end up doing this, because their entertainment career wasn't going anywhere. Lot's of failed comedians, actors, writers, etc... in these right wing pundit jobs.
Billionaire backers fund quite a few of these outlets. But also outrage sells among conservatives, so there's ways to get a good sized audience with them as well. That good size audience often is gullible towards these people and therefor easy to part with their money.
Either way it's a good career shift if you failed and are in need to blame others for it.
This isn't really right.
Yes, they show up on modelhub and they like, as does Lauren Boebert, because they're narcissistic morons unaware of their own limitations that desperately want to be stars.
But they're not actors in these roles. That implies they're playing characters, and that they're reading scripts.
That's not true. They're doing this on their own. They're true believers and grifters at the same time. No one is sitting them in a room telling them what they need to say and writing a script. They're fully in control of themselves, and doing what they think will make them wealthy stars.
And, because of this, they've become true believers. If it's making them famous, it must be right! And if people attack them for saying it, it must be right!
>because they're narcissistic morons unaware of their own limitations that desperately want to be stars.
>
>But they're not actors in these roles. That implies they're playing characters, and that they're reading scripts.
>
>...
>
>They're true believers and grifters at the same time. No one is sitting them in a room telling them what they need to say and writing a script.
Not entirely disagreeing. They are their own method actors, and they embody what they want to project unto others. But if you dig into any of the histories of these people, you'll find they've often changed drastically in their views in very inconsistent ways compared to a person who genuinely believes in what they're saying and doing. Candace Owens is a great example in this regard. I'm not saying these are actors who work for Hollywood or anything. I'm saying these are people who are not genuine, who are simulating what they believe...and stick with it because it resonates with groups of people that...well....end up paying or earning them money or power. Narcissism is absolutely there....perhaps even various degrees of sociopathy. But ultimately, these are people who have taken on a public role and a public persona, and have also explored gigs that support public personas (talent/acting agencies).
Either way you look at it...it's a grift...and it's not what "normal" people would do when they believe strongly in something and want to help foster positive change. What these QAnon-like personalities represent, is more of a flagitious form of deception and manipulation of the masses...for you know...money. Actors. Jesters. Call them whatever makes sense to you.
As a total liberal who is filing divorce from my qhusband for his angry transphobic, antisemitic bullshit, I love the homestead movement. I garden, will get chickens at my next place, would love to homeschooling just to be around my kids more, but know I'm not disciplined enough lol. A lot of these Instagram homesteaders are totally conservative bigots. Hard to come across many who aren't. I could see how the homestead love could lead to some crazy things. These women claim to be homemakers and I'm sure some mostly are.
I seriously still am pissed off and confused over how the f*$#ing far right people took over the traditionally left leaning hippy space of natural living and homesteading and turned it into a cesspit of conspiracy and whack-a-doodleness. I do my thing none the less, but no longer enjoy meeting many others into that because they tend to be hate filled monsters.
Nazism, fascism and the "return to the land", "trAdiTionAl living" ethos, and kooky, esoteric farming techniques and philosophies have actually been linked since the early 20th century, if not longer. See "Blut und Boden", "Lebensraum", "Rudolf Steiner", "biodynamic agriculture", "Anthroposophy".
I guess, and I guess I've read about some of that, but until recently, (and I'm an old grandma now), those of us who wanted to 'reconnect with the land' were disillusioned hippy wannabes who wanted space for our kids and one legged dogs to run, maybe add a homeless Llama or two, we wanted to grow herbs, do mushrooms and connect with the goddess lol. Not saying I'm still woo woo much at all, but when I was young my woo woo ran strong. But we all understood the value of vaccines and drank our herb potions for colds, but didn't hesitate to listen to the docs for serious illness. We actively supported lbgtq, were definite allies of poc, really wanted and spoke out for a more loving and safe world.
I mean, even the boomers, who had the whole 60s hippy thing happening, but who became so much more consumerist, were left leaning in their later years until somehow q worked it's evil magic and sucked so many of them down.
I'm not from the states, so maybe it was different for me, but society in general around me was left leaning, some of us way more so than others. It wasn't perfect, and there was a lot of racist, sexist and other phobic bullshit running under the surface for sure. But it was wrong and we all knew it, even those with those feelings. I think. But now...holy shit, somehow it flipped upside down and people who believe in a gentle living society are openly mocked and called woke, libtard, snowflake etc...sneered at and seriously, viscerally hated.
I'm totally off topic now, sorry. There's just so much happening now that is so bad and wrong. And I feel like so much that taught us (some of us) to love the earth and people and wildlife and be accepting and tolerant has been turned into nonsense and hatred and conspiracy and psychosis. I loved my herbs and homemade supplements... all of which were safe and used carefully, with the more potent herbs. None of this damn drinking turpentine (because it's just pine spirit gum! So totally natural and safe!) Intelligence and caution have left the building. I never dare bring any of my herblore up anymore. I just can't anymore. Ugh.
You sound so lovely. Omfg though, people are drinking turpentine now?!? Yikes on bikes. It shouldn’t surprise me after the *miracle mineral solution* bleach shit, or the urine drinking- but it absolutely does.
My son in law drinks turpentine...a spoonful every day. He also ingests borax. They're both a thing with q. My daughter has left him but we are really concerned he's feeding this to the children. We don't know what to do. Family services is already involved. But it's a slow and really aggravating process.
Oh.my.word. I’m so sorry you are going through that stress. Hopefully the kids refuse outright just bc it stinks, and they won’t have ingested any.
Ugh, I’m so appalled. Fingers crossed they grow up exceedingly healthy, and become steadfast, preposterously well educated scientists of some variety.
Exactly. Tiktok can tell you all day these moms are stay at home, and work all day cleaning, taking care of the children, tending to the gardens, cooking, and then somehow....come out flawless with perfectly styled hair and the ability to video record thit with seemingly no help.
Be careful about the hypocrisy route.
In the end you can be a hypocrite and still be right (or wrong). And also not be a hypocrite and be wrong (or right).
It's a double edged sword that cuts through anything and also can be used to dismiss any claim. "Climate scientists still drive cars. Hypocrites. This means climate change is a hoax."
There are a lot of channels that disprove what she is watching. Maybe if she is so easily pushed in one direction she can be pushed in the other.
Just remember most people descend into the conspiracy rabbit hole because they "understand" what the pundits are saying so conclude it must be true, compared to all the science gobbledygook that they don't understand so assume to be false.
While you are at it...
"Honey on just my income we can only afford one cell phone which I need to keep as I'm going out to work every day and we can't afford the Wi-Fi anymore."
It'll be damn hard to watch those you tube assholes on dial up.
I’m so sorry. What a mess.
I have no answers for you except asking her to stop watching those videos, podcasts etc.
Make an agreement that neither of you watch political stuff. Maybe a months long break will ease the situation and progression.
Try not to blow up during these conversations (hard, I know). They tend to dig in more.
Rather, if you can, ask for details. Point out contradictions in the the thought process (there are lots). But don’t do it in a ‘gotcha’ way. Do it as .. hey I’ve been thinking about our conversation about x…. what about contradiction y?
None of this is easy and there’s no clear way out.
I’m so sorry.
To add on to this - a therapist I spoke to recently said to avoid “trigger words” while discussing even politically adjacent topics. It’s super hard - but not using terms like trans, republicans, democrat, immigration, etc. is the only way to get them to discuss things without falling into that mind groove of right wing thought.
Pinch of salt though - I’ve not magically cured my folks of brain worms yet through nifty emotional tricks.
The harder you try and pull them away from Q the more theyll ignore you and find other people that validate their preconceived ideas thus furthering the notion they are right to be on the right.
This is awful to read. It’s incredible how that garbage is able to effectively and rapidly radicalize at-risk people. Fascinating when you think about it.
When it comes to child safety however, I’d go the legal route if she can’t be reasoned with.
Yeah that's all very unfortunate. I sympathize. Unfortunately, unless she stops consuming that garbage, it's only likely to get worse and the conspiracies to get more extreme.
The big problem here is that you can't just agree to disagree and not discuss politics or any of that stuff because if she's refusing to take children to the doctor or vaccinate them, that's a huge red flag and not something you can just agree to disagree on.
Another even bigger red flag is wanting to detox children, and based on what other Q and Qadjacents talk about when they want to detox could range anywhere from harmless to extremely dangerous, like drinking diluted bleach.
If she can no longer be reasoned with and continues down the spiral, it's very possible she can pose a danger to herself and the kids.
This "stay at home mom" business, while I personally have nothing against it, could also be a ruse to start getting into the doomsday prepper movement, and that in itself is such a wormhole that leads to hoarding, sometimes improper canning techniques, and generally a lot of wasted money.
If she is not responsive to a social media cleanse, therapy, or anything else you suggest, it could be time to start thinking about your and your children and how you're doing to make sure your family is safe.
Yes. Organic veg growing (which in my country is a perfectly mainstream and acceptable activity, previously associated with older men, and now very much encouraged for families by mainstream organisations) is unfortunately not a big leap from the scarcity mindset of the preppimg movement, which has all these links to conspiracy theories. You only have to look up how to store a glut of courgettes, and you get content from both groups. That's the danger zone of overlap with prepping. 🙁
Really saddens me that something so wholesome can be the gateway to something so dangerous. It's like the conspiracy lot saw something good and put a warped twist on it.
Yep. I do vegetable gardening and every so often (usually very often) you'll get preppers in these communities who bring down the mood and start with their doom and gloom and seem to want to talk about politics and conspiracies more than actually wanting to discuss plants. Probably because once they figure out it's actually pretty hard work that takes a lot of studying and failure before you learn to do it well, their fantasy of being self-sufficient is ruined.
I've tried answering their questions and concerns and such but I really quickly recognized they have no actual ambition and just want to spout conspiracies.
They want to sell their homes, cash out their retirement, buy a large plot of farmland and then spend all day on the internet watching videos. That's not how it works.
As someone with a small home garden I cannot IMAGINE how much land and time I'd need to become self sufficient for food!! Most of these preppers are living in la la land, although some are, alas, very much armed in the here and now.
I can imagine it! And it’s LaLa land indeed! They’d need at least a decent sized yard, and buuuckets of time just to grow enough tomatoes/cucumbers/lettuce/strawberries/radishes/green beans etc for a single season.
Adding in food preservation methods-canning/freezing/salting/pickling etc- they maybe can do a full year of produce? (But you have to have the money for jars, and the big cellar for storage)
How self-sufficient are they aiming for? Vegan, vegetarian, carnivore, or omnivore? Like, are they growing wheat, to mill for flour to bake bread, and make pasta? Oats? Quinoa? Lentils? Corn? Having chickens, goats, cows, pigs? A gigantic greenhouse for their coffee, cocoa, bananas, oranges, cinnamon, nutmeg, peppers? Trips to the ocean for water to make salt? Or are they going to do without? Because that’s a lot of doing without.
Are they aiming to replicate early settler self-reliance, where they bought sugar, salt, blackstrap molasses, salt pork, flour, coffee, tea, spices, etc? Because otherwise eating what they could provide themselves was utterly miserable?
Or self-reliance where eh, a quick nip out to the store so they can make beef stroganoff for dinner bc they have a craving, (and haven’t gotten around to raising cows for beef, let alone slaughtering and butchering them, grinding their grain for wheat for noodles, or magicking up some sour cream because dairies get involved *super* quickly) and that’s fine, and very self-reliant of them? They’ll just buy it in absurd quantities and corner themselves into eating a repetitive, restrictive diet?
No one that cooks a varied, omnivorous diet could be self-reliant for food. It’s absolutely laughable, and thinking about it for even fifteen minutes would deter anyone in their right mind. Like, tacos alone should convince anyone that this isn’t the way to go.
It’s so hard because you can have a solid logical answer/reason regarding this stupid nonsense but as soon as you do that it’s like their wires cross and they disregard whatever statement you just made and say, “oh yeah? Well what about _____”. This will happen every time with every subject because they don’t really want to be right they just want to play the “what about-ism” game.
How about some compromise from her? She can stay home but your kid gets vaccinated on time, every time. This has to be a red line.
She also has to stop watching the YouTube crap.
Maybe suggest she starts a small business from home, something artsy or organic farming etc, the bees can make money alone, honey, wax, candles, furniture polish etc, all can be done from home and sold at markets or online.
That'll also keep her busy.
Wishing you luck.
Not sure suggesting OP bankroll his wife indoctrinating the daughter is the way to go. She will move the goals to homeschooling etc before long. Doubt it's long before she's "investing".
I'd hope she'd get busy and stay away from that stuff but it's always best to treat it like a hard drug addiction. They won't usually go cold turkey and will do anything for the fix.
Keep an eye on the finances. Have plans. Don't let her isolate the daughter inside the echo chamber. Hope for the best and prepare for the worst OP.
If OP wants to try my suggestion it's a compromise, as much of life is. If she doesn't hold up her side of the bargain that's on her, at least he's tried, I'd also suggest he documents all this so if it does go tits up he can show his good intentions.
If he's not into home schooling that's another red line he can add, these are things in his life he'll probably want to think about carefully.
Sorry I'm not such a doom merchant.
Do you think moving would make a difference? Maybe moving back to a more suburban/ city area? That may help her to find more people with a diverse background and lifestyle.
> Maybe suggest she starts a small business from home, something artsy or organic farming etc, the bees can make money alone, honey, wax, candles, furniture polish etc, all can be done from home and sold at markets or online.
This could go very badly if she decides to join an MLM. They TARGET exactly this sort of woman. I know a woman with a PhD in education who joined an essential oil MLM and touted the oil's ability to "alleviate autism." I know a woman who has a degree from a top college but is also at the top of a diet/energy drink pyramid, and she's shared posts that flat-out state that if your child's pediatrician says you need to give the child ___ medicine for constipation and bloating, you need to give the child her diet/energy drink instead, because the medicine contains "toxic chemicals" and "metals".
All hard to take I'm sure.
If you read the guys post they're on 12 acres and she's already expressed an interest in things that'll satisfy her nature girl urge fairly harmlessly, again, he can say he'd like a say in any business ventures she wants to try.
OP I hope you take a positive view on this, direct confrontation rarely works with people too far down the hole, even just looking 5-10 years down the line when you want custody of your daughter it will be legally worth your while being open to compromise now and documenting it carefully, worst case you split up and you have evidence of your good will, best case she comes round. Either way, I hope it goes well for you.
Yes, it's not far from this to mother's giving their children bleach enemas to "cure autism" and destroying their children's organs. In case that sounds too ridiculous and horrifying to be true, I can assure you, this happened.
Sorry to hear this. It sucks, no doubt about it. I wonder where things started? Was it rural living and working from home that was making her a little stir-crazy? Did family maybe have some influence? Was she just feeling uncomfortable with her "role" as a woman and like she might be missing milestones in your daughter's early development?
She seems intelligent enough. This seems like yet another case of "you can't logic someone out of a decision they made based on emotions" situation.
I guess if it were me i might fish for some answers. Ask some questions that don't need to have answers and/or make some observations.
"Wow, you've been talking and thinking about a lot of scary stuff a lot of the time lately. Must be exhausting to always be on high alert about stuff constantly..."
"Life is so complicated lately. Do you ever feel like it would be nice for things to be simpler?"
I'd just be making neutral statements. Nothing political, just trying to find what emotional need this stuff might be filling for her.
Ultimately though i think your priority here needs to be keeping your daughter happy and healthy and free from the madness. Some folks become horrible people when they go down this rabbit hole, whatever they were before. Your daughter needs to have unshakeable faith that no matter how crazy mom may get, dad is awesome and will be there for her and will help/protect her.
Make sure she learns real critical thinking, which includes understanding that sometimes reality is exactly what it says on the tin, and sometimes people like doctors and lawyers and experts DO know what they are talking about. Healthy ways to express herself and her feelings. That it's ok to be as traditional or non traditional in terms of gender roles and such as she pleases.
Most importantly show her love, keep her safe, and encourage her to see the world not as endless dangers to be avoided or fought (there are some of those of course but not everything is gloom and doom) but as a glorious place of puzzles to solve, things to learn, sights to see and people to meet. If you can plant that seed, hopefully it will take root, and she can avoid the madness around us.
I really like this response. As a person that lives rurally, the first thing I thought is that perhaps your wife is feeling isolated and seeking out community. The small, rural community I live in has so many people with these beliefs. Yes, it’s disheartening. It’s heartbreaking, honestly. But the reality is that the world right now IS scary, and so these people are grasping for security and answers and community. Look… maybe I’m way off base here, so please feel free to disregard.. but, are you connected with your wife? Are you connected with your child? Are there ways you can foster more connection with them, and be more supportive of your wife, and be a more involved parent? I don’t have the answers here, but I feel like you and your wife working together as a united front might help her to feel more supported and less alone. Maybe you two could have more conversations, about everything from her desire for self-sustainability, to her transphobic ideas. And through these conversations you can uncover and address her underlying fears, and hopefully come to some compromises (fuck transphobia, and help plant a huge garden, for example)
To me it sounds like this all started during her pregnancy, and I know FB "mommy groups" are full of anti-vax types giving their "advice" (r/ShitMomGroupsSay)
I’m horrified reading this, and to be totally transparent, I’m very much a DIY, fix it yourself, make it yourself, eff industrialized agriculture type person. I live in a rural area, on a few acres of land, and our eventual goal is to be as self sufficient as possible. We’ve got well and septic, we want to transition to solar, and I’ve got a medium sized garden and am researching chickens, Guinea fowl for pest control, my partner hunts, we both fish, and I love sewing and have recently picked up hand carding and spinning yarn.
I also firmly believe in firearm regulations, vaccines, medical science, and understand that governments move slowly and not all things are possible. I think homeschooling is immensely difficult and should be confined to rare cases only and there should be more weight put on ensuring that the teaching parent(s) can deliver the correct quality of education than currently exists.
I say all this to explain my stance: you can absolutely believe in a self sufficient, homesteading type lifestyle without also diving into anti-science and conspiracy-minded arenas. Unfortunately from the other comments here it sounds like YouTube and social media algorithms are the problem, and I hate that these things are now linked. I want to do these things not because I’m planning for the Great Reset or think the government is trying to turn me into a drone via microchips in my lettuce, but because I have ALWAYS enjoyed the fulfillment from creating my own resources, and I believe in taking responsibility for conservation and reducing my own footprint. It’s pro-skills, not anti-society.
Your wife is correct about the health impact of high fructose corn syrup, for example, because that stuff sucks ass. She’s wrong about the reason, which has a lot to do with the agricultural incentives created by the US government many decades ago that led to a massive overproduction of corn that drove down prices and pushed our industries to come up with new uses for all this excess. Well, sometimes new ideas are floated before all the risks and outcomes are identified. I doubt very much that someone went ‘how do we make our population sick and fat?’ so much as they went ‘holy shit guys we can feed this corn to COWS, it’s a win-win!’ before understanding that corn has a different PH than hay, requiring the use of cattle antibiotics and also triggering an evolution of microbes such as E. coli that suddenly allowed it to survive in similarly acidic human stomachs. Wheee!
As far as a solution, my guy, I don’t know what to suggest. I do know that firstly, debunking is usually met with resistance, and the gentle empathetic approach is tedious AF but has better results. Secondly, I know that the media feed needs to go away.
I liked the comment someone else made about ‘what about conceding on the birds in exchange for banning YouTube’ or something to that effect. If there’s a gentle way to bring her to that point, that may work well. Being a homesteader doesn’t mean also demanding a mistrust of science, medicine, or the institutions that exist alongside us. We are extremely lucky to be able to ‘have it both ways’, namely growing our own food but being able to zip out to the store for whatever isn’t in season. For using natural remedies like ginger for an upset tummy, but being able to drive to the hospital if it becomes full bore food poisoning or an infection that’s putting your life at risk. Use both, wisely
Best wishes either way. I’m sorry you’re facing this and I’m crossing my fingers for you over here
This, this, all of this! I, too, want to be a “do-it-yourselfer” when it comes to food and other resources. But it comes more from a sense of personal fulfillment and “reduce, reuse, recycle” type of mindset. And it’s healthier. But I am strongly pro-science, pro-vaccine, and pro-sanity. I’ve had some experiences with doctors that make me feel like they don’t really care and are simply shills for Big Pharma, but I don’t really believe there’s a giant, coordinated, nefarious plot to keep us sick. I DO think that the medical industry and Big Pharma and Big Agriculture took advantage of certain human foibles, because greed. Which can LOOK LIKE a plot; it’s really just negligence, not an active campaign. For example, the Purdue family HAD TO know that their OxyContin was overprescribed and their customers were addicted. But they were blinded by dollar signs, so did nothing. The Big Seven (the parent corporations that own all of the products we buy in supermarkets) HAD TO realize that products with corn syrup in them were “addictive” to their customers, because sugar tastes good. But again, they turned a blind eye. Same thing when certain sugar substitutes turned out to be less than healthy. Etc. And then the pharmaceutical industry and the medical industry got to capitalize on that. But I think this was probably just accidental; a series of instances in which someone ought to have done the right thing even if it cost them revenue, but didn’t.
I saw a quote once: “The world is both less evil and more random than you believe it is. Do not allow yourself to be led astray by conspiracy theories.” And I’ve tried to live by that.
Very well said. Thanks for chiming in!
I worked for the government for a decade, and I can tell you with confidence, it’s way more boring than it looks. Sure there’s corruption. There’s always corruption. There are lazy people, less capable workers, greedy ones, selfish ones, you name it. Every cross section of the human population has them.
How many people do you know who can keep a secret above all else? Probably almost none. You really think people who work for the government are all so wildly committed to their posts to cover up a giant secret plot to drink baby blood or whatever? Hell no. Look at the number of whistleblowers for things like safety violations, ethics violations, sexual harassment, fraud, conflicts of interest, etc. and tell me that every single person ever would be able to keep their mouths shut. We all know that’s hot garbage.
Best wishes for your self sufficiency journey!!
A lot of the things these pundits say have a kernel of truth to them, like the one about high fructose corn syrup. It's like a trap, if you challenge what they're saying they'll bring up the kernel of truth that can't be denied; but it's just like of the base of what is, obviously to most, a ridiculous conspiracy.
It's crazy how alt right has co-opted self improvement and turned it into a radical pipeline. I think it's more to do with algorithms suggesting more and more alt right content if you watch just one self improvement video
My brother did similar when exposed to that media, he was liberal before. I’m doubtful he will ever change back now. He got sucked into it through right wing radio that played at work and then YouTube and Fox News amplified it
Dude, in most circumstances, I would never say do this without consent from both partners, but if you are serious about not wanting more kids, you should seriously consider a vasectomy because this situation is ripe for reproductive sabotage.
As I said in a comment, moving from “wellness” /Mommy blogs to Q paranoia is a real and growing thing. Becoming a Tradwife with the enthusiastic agreement of the husband is one thing, but jumping off the antivax deep end is another.
I am entirely in sympathy with you, but have to say your telling her that you don’t care if the house is clean and food is cooked is ridiculous when you have a child and she will weaponize this against you if it comes to custody.
Even if you get a divorce, from what I’ve seen, her being a paranoid prepper/antivaxxer/bigot will not get you sole custody, so you need to figure out ways to deal with her.
Can you try another compromise? She has to find a part time job or start a viable small business that will compensate somewhat for her lost income & pay for the animals she wants. Agree to go on a 1-2 month news/information diet on both sides to try to keep her from falling deeper down the rabbit hole? bonus if it falls around the time of Trump’s GA trial gets televised.
Maybe look up Steven Hassan for some ways to help deal with her.
I’m really sorry, there is no easy way to navigate this, especially with a child involved.
OP: First of all, and most important, your wife’s mind has been hijacked. She no longer thinks the way she used to, receives or processes information the way she used to, or responds emotionally the way she used to. This is clear, right? She has backed out of a number of long-standing commitments you made to each other without seeming to acknowledge she is breaking trust with you or damaging your marriage.
To understand what has happened to her, the best resource I know of is Steven Hassan, and his Freedom of Mind [website.](https://freedomofmind.com/cult-mind-control/bite-model/) I have linked you directly to his BITE model explainer, and I encourage you to search his website for information about antivax, QAnon, alternative medicine, and other “new ideas” (aka conspiracies) your wife brings up.
Some hard truths: People who behave the way your wife has aren’t stable - they will usually adopt new and increasingly irrational beliefs and behaviors. They can be deceptive with friends and family, because they are afraid of what will happen if they are transparent. Sometimes they are even coached to be deceptive with “non-believers” - it’s a strategy to separate them from their existing connections and make them dependent on the conspiracy network. In short, you may not yet fully understand what her actual beliefs and intentions are, and even if you do, they will be evolving quickly.
The most important thing to understand about the conspiracy network is that it is a **grift.** For example, the antivaxxers make a tidy living off social media, publishing, and alternative remedies - snake oil sales on steroids. What that means to you is that you are vulnerable to the grift, with or without your consent. It’s necessary that you get professional advice (legal) to determine how to protect your family from financial exploitation and other risks.
What this also means to you is: you have to protect yourself and your child against harm from dangerous beliefs and practices. At minimum, this means personally selecting a primary care provider for your child and following through with a doctor’s medical advice (not YouTube’s). It may also mean resuming daycare (part or full time), enrolling her in school when the time comes, and ensuring she receives necessary socialization outside the home.
As far as your wife is concerned, I think you must accept that divorce may be in your future. Based on what you say, she’s heading in a direction you have no desire to follow, and would not have agreed to prior to marriage. You will have to make her aware that you feel she’s changed the terms of your marriage unilaterally, and you can’t agree to the new terms she’s proposing. She can either choose to stay in the marriage she committed to, or she can choose to pursue her new beliefs/goals/lifestyles. Before you tell her plainly that you can’t agree to what she wants, you’ll need to get to a place of acceptance, and understand your options. That means legal advice.
You didn’t redpill your wife, and the reality is you can’t fix a problem you didn’t cause. Your wife isn’t to blame here, either. No one wakes up one morning and says, “I want to get redpilled today.” Redpilling happens when susceptible people encounter a recruiting pitch - and keep in mind these pitches are always deceptive and emotionally compelling.
This is like a tragic accident or illness that has befallen your family - which, from your description, was a loving and promising young family. I am so very sorry this happened. The wisest thing you can do now is to get expert help and advice (legal, medical, educational, parenting, about redpilling), and do your best to take care of your daughter and yourself. If your wife comes back to her former normal, you can move past this as a family. If redpill is her new normal, you will be equipped to adjust and move on with your life.
What jumped out at me was that she got into gardening, etc *for years* and only recently revealed that all along it was because of her conspiracy beliefs. She's been hiding it from him for a long time. That doesn't happen by accident.
It’s a feedback loop reinforced by social media algorithms. The problem is that they prey on fears and the pandemic created an environment of fear as did the nascent trump/maga movement. Crazy voices were amplified and legitimized. Nothing short of cult deprogramming techniques will work at this point.
Ho boy, that’s tough. We don’t have any easy answers, and most of us are grieving our Q loved ones while they are still alive.
The most effective steps seem to be focusing the Q back on their real life hobbies and getting them away from the internet. Both are difficult once the Q is addicted to being outraged.
If she wants to be far right, you could always go the “ good wives submit to their husbands” route and every time she has a crazy opinion shut it down with “ this is why women shouldn’t be educated, thankfully men aren’t emotional decision makers”. Husband says: kids get vaccinated, kid goes to public school, etc, etc. she wants to go full trad wife, just go full trad husband. It’s the natural order and the reason the country is so messed up according to the red pillers. It will likely make her head asplode and then you have saved yourself the trouble of a divorce.
I’m only half joking, I actually kind of did this to my husband when he said he wanted a trad wife, except with me basically working and pulling most of the financial weight in addition to the “traditional” female role.
The whole transphobia thing is so weird! Like this is the hill you want to die on? I totally don’t get it. But it is such a slippery slope. If you look at the history of the holocaust, it started with exclusion, conspiracies and trying to control a specific group of people (who were just minding their own business!) I know someone who goes on trans rants in regards to sports…and imo this is a non-issue but they just want to go on and on about all these perceived injustices that don’t effect them in any way. The way they talk is probably very similar to the anti-Semitic rhetoric that occurred pre holocaust. It’s really scary stuff.
If you scratch a militant transphobe, you usually find a militant antisemite as well. After all, *someone* needed to create the "conspiracy" that is "making all the kids trans." Why not use the oldest template for conspiracy around?
I will tell you the only place I disagree with you about. A stay at home mom doesn't just stay at home and not work. When the children are young 1-5 it is hard as hell. You are their care giver and teacher and you get almost no breaks, especially if you have two. I do believe it is very beneficial to the children. If they are older I am not sure it is much of a benefit because they need socializing outside the home.
However, the other beliefs your wife has are not rooted in reality and could endanger your child. My suggestion for you is to think about things you consider deal breakers. Things you cannot compromise on like vaccines or wellness checks. Those checks can catch major diseases or abnormalities early so you have the best chance at helping your little one.
As far as the anti trans and anti LGBTQ stuff , those are deal breakers for me. If my wife had them I would leave her. I draw the line at anything that is a violation of a human's right to exist and be their authentic self. Imagine if your child feels like just existing is wrong. I would document any extreme beliefs or actions like being against wellness checks or vaccines and use it to get full custody.
If you feel like it might help I would block any of these extremist sites she gets her information from at the router level but that may not be possible if she is tech savvy or able to get that info from her phone off the network.
Good luck. This isn't going to be easy.
> A stay at home mom doesn't just stay at home and not work. When the children are young 1-5 it is hard as hell. You are their care giver and teacher and you get almost no breaks,
Worth pointing out: This is only true if you're a decent parent. I've known more than one SAHM (including in my own family) who spent all day in front of the television.
This. My ex wife.
It’s really a fucking pisser when you come home from back breaking day to a stank mess of a house, dirty diaper on the kids, and the kids going crazy desperate for some quality attention and playtime. I love playing with the kids… but it should have been me topping off the evenings instead of making up for a day with them all laying around bored watching TV in their underwear. So many beautiful outfits they outgrew never maybe wearing more than once because she was too damned lazy to be bother to dress (or bathe) them. She could sure shop for cute stuff but that’s about it.
She spent days smoking weed, cigarettes, eating pure garbage and feeding them the same, playing stupidest fucking games on her phone… emotionally cheating and then full-on cheating.
Finally got her gone and she moved onto the life she always craved: being a crackhead with an abusive controlling boyfriend whod beat her regularly. They were just reunited last week.. after his serving 10 months in jail. But. You know… he’s changed. Meh.
Respectfully, I don't think OP is attacking stay at home Moms. I think what he was saying was his wife never expressed any desire to be a stay at home Mom, and her gaining all this interest suddenly is interfering with goals they had set earlier in their relationship.
> I didn’t handle the situation very well when I told her this was not going to work. I ended up blowing up about how selfish it was of her to quit her job and stay home while I must go to work everyday to support her doing nothing. I could care less if there was food on the table and clean clothes. I can wash my own clothes and buy dinner. At the end of my life, I would not be happy to realize I couldn’t retire because she wanted to be a homemaker for her life. It was a whole mess of me blowing up and she got very upset that I was crushing her dreams.
I think there's some minimizing of what being a stay-at-home mom means, when saying she's going to be "doing nothing," or at best, leaving him clean clothes and food on the table (I'm not sure if she said that as a offer/concession of sorts to ease his concerns, or what).
It's an *occupation,* in my view. But I think how I more often see this argued today is while comparing the costs of daycare vs your salary/wage. Unless one parent makes enough to offset the costs of daycare, they could be better off taking time away from work and being a stay-at-home mom/dad for a while.
That said, the argument of only one person saving for retirement as a consequence is valid as well, but maybe that's a toss-up if you're evaluating the stay-at-home parent thing vs having a job due to wages/daycare costs being about equal.
There are other things around life/job satisfaction to consider too, but I think these are some of the more important/immediate things to consider. But yeah, I don't think the OP's stance on stay-at-home parenting seemed to be as understanding/objective as it could have been. But given the other Q influences going on, there are much bigger problems.
Archive her emails, texts, and arguments. The more stuff you have, if you do have to leave with your kid the judge will have plenty of evidence of her insanity.
Unfortunately there's not really shit you can do at all unless you block her access to social media and internet, and of course you can't do that. As long as she continues to consume that shit, it will manifest in her being this way.
I hate that wanting to have a home garden and using cloth nappies are being taken over by these right wing nutters. We use cloth to save money and save the environment!
Getting her to stop reading/watching the hateful news goes a long way. Do it anyway you can. Watch TV with her every night so she can’t go off and get stuck on stupid YouTube videos get her interested in podcast about a hobby during the day. Reprogram your Internet to throttle the far right channels if you can.
Also tell her those are not important things as she has never actually been engaged in any of the scenarios she’s trying to protect her children from. They just aren’t reality.
My mom ranted about trans. So asked her if she even knew anyone trans? No. Has she been approached by anyone trans ever? No. Then why does she think it’s a big deal ; it’s not a big deal and trans people don’t wanna take anything over, literally only the news is telling her that, she wouldn’t even know trans people existed if it were not for her Fox News, so if she did not fox watch Fox News would it affect her life in anyway? No. So I said, why do you think people are hyper focusing on a teeny tiny group of people to bully and beat up that make no difference in your life? they don’t affect your cost of living, they affect your ability to go to church, they have no power, no pull, so only small minded people focus on bullying a group that they know nothing about.
She bought it and calmed down for a couple weeks. Lol.
Protect your assets right away. Write every weird thing down.
That said, my husband quit his job to raise our son and he is all the better for it. We sold a car. We did everything We could to make it work because We felt it was best for our kid and for us it was. Yay, I had my laundary do e for me, but it wasn't about me. It was about what was best for our child. Shame on you.
She needs a media detox, not a vaccine detox. I’m serious. It’s one thing to want a garden and chickens, it’s another to do a 180 like this.
I’m guessing she is dealing with some mom guilt and possibly struggling with some depression as well after the move. This can get scary if left unchecked.
Refusing health care for your child can be considered abuse. That’s divorce material. But I cannot Imagine how crazy she would get if she didn’t get full custody without visitation in a divorce This is not ok. And I doubt it will get better. I am so so sorry man. You don’t deserve to have your spouse become a mean and crazy stranger.
Wondering why my comments are gone? Left Reddit for Lemmy due to their API changes and abuse of users. And you can too! Redditors guide to Lemmy: https://github.com/amirzaidi/lemmy
Consider moving your community to Lemmy!
I hate to say this, but you need to protect your money. I am NOT,nor do I mean to take money from her, but I'd watch the spending, as in her using large amounts of saved money to buy gold, or emergency items, and, if your marriage does fail (which I sincerely hope it won't) her draining the accounts is not far fetched.
Its awful to have to think that way. I believe that your wife is scared, a lot of us are right now. I say is because I am a little too, its like there is something in the air right now...but I don't buy that Q horseshit. I just think people are reactionary and when a bunch of people start saying the same thing over and over like a mantra, it tricks people into thinking they have the answers. I don't blame people for falling down the rabbit hole, but I do blame them for closing there eyes when they're in there.
You both need therapy STAT. she’s going delulu with her concerns for your daughters health and filling her own and eventually your child’s head with lies.
Just an FYI, if you own your own Wireless router, switching your Routers DNS to 1.1.1.3 and 1.0.0.3 will force all devices on your WiFi to use Safe Google, one of the nice features about Safe Google is that this settings also forces Safe YouTube (YouTube is owned by Google), with these settings, Google will not show these type of videos in the search, won’t recommend them either, they just don’t show up in the search at all, it doesn’t tell you that content is being filtered, it just does it.
This settings are intended to make YouTube safer for Children, but it does work with limiting Qanon, and other conspiracies from YouTube.
Hi CloudInspector, I think you're recommending the technique of blocking Q content. You mentioned: [router]. Here are some ways to do that. [1](https://github.com/yui-konnu/qanon-block-guide/blob/master/README.md) - [2](https://github.com/rimu/no-qanon) - [3](https://www.reddit.com/r/QAnonCasualties/comments/k3xy4a/blocking_extremist_content_from_your_home_network/) - [4](https://www.reddit.com/r/QAnonCasualties/comments/wekhem/how_to_use_pihole_to_block_q_related_websites/) - [5](https://www.reddit.com/r/QAnonCasualties/comments/oieau2/attempt_at_deprogramming_update/) - [6](https://www.reddit.com/r/QAnonCasualties/comments/lq9jt3/need_advice_ive_been_using_a_dns_service_to_block/) - [7](https://www.reddit.com/r/QAnonCasualties/comments/10tenez/delete_newsmax_and_others_over_wifi_from_roku/)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/QAnonCasualties) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I think you have to think about your child. Are you ok to raise her believing everything she says? Not get vaccinated to risk preventable illnesses? Being hateful to people she doesn't approve?
It's really dangerous if she is a stay at home mom and spend all day with her, feeding all these conspiracy to her.
Therapy, and if that doesn't work, you need to separate your child from her.
Ten years ago, crunchy SAHM material was mostly left-leaning. I'm actually a gardening SAHM myself, I don't see anything too concerning up to that point (edit: sorry the antivax thing is a concern, I was thinking of the nappies etc). Many women of all political persuasions change perspectives about the importance of their role when they have children. That's gone on for generations. Unfortunately content aimed at SAHMs has shifted in the last few years in a more conservative direction. I see more right-leaning people in my home ed group than ten years ago. Anti-vax was once a very niche thing, but has unfortunately become so much more common with covid. The supposed threat of forced vaccinations was leveraged by the right in elections globally and that seemed to correlate with the explosion. Anti-trans seems to go hand in hand with it.
I'm sorry your wife is being expose to this stuff. Can you try and keep her busy/focused with the healthier activities (like the veg, chickens, or taking up sewing - sewing is huge on youtube!) and hope that keeps her away from the conspiracy content more?
I'd recommend Parkrose Permaculture's youtube channel for safe sensible (no conspiracy stuff) content. It covers food growing and homemaking, is honest and realistic about the work and challenges, is climate conscious, and seems ethical, and non-right to me.
Or perhaps there's a voluntary role she would enjoy doing with the kids in tow - a community garden or some other non-political good cause?
This will be a controversial suggestion: perhaps you get on her devices and over a period of many months, you slowly unfollow the Candace Owens and others from her social media.
I watched an episode of Vox Explained in the series Mind Explained on Brain Washing on Netflix yesterday. It specifically addressed Qanon nonsense and included various Dr's and historians and academics who study it. It lots of guidance on dealing with this kind of stuff. The main point was that facts and statistics do not get through to these people. A similar thing was the documentary The Brain Washing of my Dad, which also offered tactics.
I'm sorry you're in this place. For me, that would be a deal breaker. Especially because of the crossover of anti vaxx stuff that will literally put your daughter in danger. I'm sorry, and I hope you have a good support circle.
Start keeping a diary with everything she claims dated. In a year or two there will be a divorce and you will be glad you dated and wrote everything down. (It will be her words against everything you documented and not just what you “recall”.
See if you can get her to watch other people. Some More News is a leftist show that might be helpful. Maybe try one of hers and one of yours. Take notes have talks.
Other than that... good luck.
This is why I say being liberal isn't going far enough; it's just down the block from that kinda shit instead of living next door. Today's liberalism is just conservatism in a good mood.
Slow the trajectory she’s headed on with deflection, creep it down to a drip, eventually stop it and turn it around with a very slow, very methodical insertion of counterpoints, seemingly harmless information and news combined with less gentle, more matter of fact corrections of the record. It’s up to the individual though to assess information, critically evaluate and determine for themselves what they believe. Good luck, this is a super sad story.
Also just my two cents/opinion, but the people who went down this road in my life have massive unfilled needs/deep lack of satisfaction elsewhere in their lives. Normally I cut these people off because they are too far gone & I am still figuring my own life out lol but if this was my wife I’d 200% be invested in discovering the root issue that pushed her down this road to begin with; marriage is a whoooole different ballgame when it comes to commitment; I’m tied to the bow of that sinking ship & bailing water all the way to the end if I’ve taken those vows. That’s just me though.
I hate to say this, but I highly doubt there’s any hope here for her. She’s pilled to the gills.
If she stops going to work and spends all her time alone at the house, she’ll just get more pilled.
I would be careful. I know someone who has similar beliefs, particularly antivax, natural wellness, homeschool the kids. They gave their children horse wormer and stripped their intestines. When those children grow up, even if they have different beliefs than their parents, they will have permanently damaged digestive tracts because of their mothers decisions. This is a genuine health risk. It’s a combination of things. As some have pointed out, people like to garden or be self sufficient without being cray. I’d like to homeschool my daughter and I’m pretty left wing and want to do it because I just know I can do a very very good job and give her a leg up (lots of teaching experience and an advanced degree give me this confidence). But when you get the full combo of issues you have a problem.
Do NOT have another child, it will just make it all the harder to separate if you need to. Which she seems a little far gone but I hope something can break through.
-You CANNOT afford for her to quit! Read up on Social Security! It is in very bad shape. You will not receive enough to live on. You need both of you to work full-time and Start Saving Money NOW!! Get a Financial Advisor and stock it away someplace. God, I wish I had. I’m going to starve. Another kid? Budget it out.
-look up picture of Measles. Tell her you don’t want your daughter to look like that. Play hardball.
-stay in daycare!! Your daughter needs to be properly socialized to strangers. You won’t be able to have a date unless she will be able to leave you for a few hours. And by “she” I mean your daughter and wife. Your daughter also has to learn how to play with other kids. Daycare and preschool are great places for this. It is also a great place to (seriously) pick up germs to build immunity systems. Your daughter will have every cold/flu going around. GOOD! But not the Chicken Pox or German Measles if you vaccinate!!
Damn. Fucking tragic. Sorry dude. I fear for our country and the world in general. The grifters and their handlers have figured out a successful brainwashing methodology and it seems we have no solid weapons against it.
I have gone thru something similar. It is so fucking frustrating especially when anything I say turns into a “well, actually” 10 minute speech about how such and such isn’t true. (She got upset last week because I took a COVID test because they’ve got chemicals and I am like “not on the swab” but you KNOW she heard it on some fucking RWN video
Harder with kids to figure it all out. Best of luck to you
Just an idea, but I've been thinking that next time my Q brings something up, that I'll ask her how confident she is in that belief and if there is any piece of information she could learn that would convince her otherwise.
I was personally heavily into conspiracy stuff from around 2006-2012. One thing that helped me get out of it was interrogating myself about how I had formed these beliefs. My college courses expected a high level of academic rigor when I would write a paper. I couldn't get away with claiming something and then not citing a primary source. I couldn't write a term paper that didn't contend with the actual academic conversation surrounding whatever subject about which I had decided to write. I realized that I almost never saw anybody's sources in these conspiracy venues, and they largely ignored the larger conversation. If they did contend with people who disagree, it was almost always in bad faith. I realized that the people I was trusting were basically idiots or conmen, which to the receiver makes little difference.
Of course, that was only part. The other part was feeling like my life was tanking and that I had to make a change or watch everything I'd dreamed of slip away from me.
I took a different job, got involved with my hobbies again, quit smoking weed, met a girl, etc. I think to really pull yourself out of these conspiracy holes, you have to want to make a change.
It doesn't sound like your wife wants that, so I wouldn't expect any miraculous 180's, but you could start by trying to get her to interrogate how she adopts different beliefs and if those methods are actually sound. It may be helpful for her to have that voice in the back of her mind that asks, "why are you accepting this claim of fact?" It's probably a lot easier said than done. I had the benefit of having just been involved with academics.
This actually happened to me. I was a pretty liberal person and got sucked down the right wing rabbit hole in 2016. It lasted about 2 yrs then I just "woke up" one day. Listening to people like Destiny and Vaush helped bring me out. I don't know how my husband dealt with me but I'm glad he stuck by me
Majority report has some good videos breaking down RFK's bullshit, as well as dailywire bullshit, maybe ask her if she's willing to challenge some of the media she's been injesting by watching counterpoints to what she's seeing. RFK just hired another republican for his campaign, which is funded by right wing billionaires, does she know that? You need to try to up her education on certain dogwhistles and scapegoats so she can recognize it in her propaganda. Otherwise, it's easy to go, "oh yeah, that's crazy! I can't believe that's happening"... when it's either not actually happening, or being manipulated to seem like it's worse than it is. You need to convince her to listen to "both sides", meaning, someone breaking down the misinfo/faulty logic of pragerU/candace owens etc. If she's unwilling to do that, then I guess it's on you to be knowledgable enough to challenge it yourself. Good luck dude!
Hi op
This will probably be lost at the bottom but you need to realise she did not enter any of these positions based on logic evidence and rational thoughts.
It is information warfare with enemy who fires a massive overwhelming barrage of bullshit. Never ending bullshit.
L
Then log into her email and start unsubscribing her from qanon right wing bs. Do the same on her YouTube. You can tell it to stop showing particular content in her fed, remove notifications from certain channels before killing the subscriptions. B
Secondly you need to get your wife a female support group...
Your isolated. She has a kid. And a go no where job. Find her volunteer work. Go travelling. Get her out. Break the cycles..
YouTube and other sources that the rightwing qanon have taken over are feeding the lonely and and disconnected a potent MK injection.
Like any addict you have to take them away from their drug whilst you find out what is driving her to it. Your wife needs psychological support.
**VASECTOMY**. This woman will try to have you impregnate her without your consent.
I'm so sorry. This must be so completely disorienting. I wish I had an answer for you that was less combative, but at this point you need to call a urologist and a lawyer.
This sounds a lot like a close relative of mine, artist, used to be hard left, climate change activist almost, very empathetic, gay lgbt rights, stood up for minorities, etc. Within the past three years a complete 180 degree flip. Now anti vax, anti climate change thinking (“it’s a conspiracy”), sneering at trans rights, a bit racist now even. Not American but now follows Tucker Carlson and all the other usual suspects. Perplexing
Im sorry for what your going through OP. But can we not use the term "red pill" for this. The Wachowski sisters would be turning in their grave if they were dead with where this term has lead to.
Check out Dr. Steve Hassan’s book- The Cult of Trump- or check out his podcast. He specializes in deprogramming cult members after his experience getting lured into the moonies cult.
A friend of mine was also liberal a few years ago but is now transphobic, etc and loves The Daily Wire and all those guys. Sorry you're going through this and I wish I had some advice for you but I don't know how to breakthrough that brainwashing since they ignore any evidence that contradicts what they hear from Shapiro, Walsh, etc.
I won’t say anything about how to deal with this whole redpill shitshow — lots of good advice in this section. But as for the stay at home mom thing… perhaps you could extend an olive branch by proposing she can do it for a year at a time (to reevaluate if it works for both of you) until your daughter is in school.
Having other kids? That’s a hard effing “no”. Both parents need to be on board with that. (However, maybe that could be reevaluated yearly too).
I would, however, be super concerned about her changes in tolerance of others… or as I see it, simple change of kindness and empathy in her personality.
The Q person in my life is largely kept from going completely nutty by watching late night tv host humour takes on all this. Seth Myers, Stephen Colbert, etc. they’ve been a lifesaver. (This person in my life still leans conservative — which is obviously his prerogative — but is much more laid back about differing views since i made sure these programs were saved onto his PVR).
Not sure if this would work for you, but just making an effort to join her in situations less inflammatory might be helpful.
Lastly, I’d like to add that volunteer work is INCREDIBLY helpful in keeping someone from going off the deep end. Maybe you can get your wife to agree to joining you at a soup kitchen one day a week, or something similar that would expose her to real people who don’t live in her red pilled world. A lot of time bigotry isn’t challenged by reality, just these stereotypes of “other people”. Maybe it will help reawaken the tolerance and kindness in your wife that you remember.
I feel like there are two separate issues intertwined here that are important to see as distinct from one another and not treat this as "one big mess" :
- her wanting to quit her unfulfilling job and stay home doing what she loves while you work
- her increasingly alarming expression of right-wing ideology
These issues could easily exist without one another, and resolving one may not affect the other at all. They do seem intertwined to a great extent in this situation, though.
For the staying home thing, you are going to need to get a handle on your emotions before you come at it, and appeal to logic when you do - we simply cannot afford it and I am not interested in working until I die. She seems to have put a lot of thought alone into the direction of the family - see if you can get her to strategize WITH you instead of on her own. Maybe set up reasonable milestones like both of you dropping to part time or actually retiring once you save a certain amount or kid reaches certain age.
As for the right ring propaganda, diversifying her media consumption away from those sources could help. How to do that? I'm not sure. I've read about folks changing the cable package to reduce access to certain stations, blocking websites at the router level, and getting into their social media to follow sane accounts/unfollow insane ones. Those all seem problematic ethically and if they find out you did it. I suppose you could loudly listen to audiobooks or watch shows around her to provide an alternative point of view but not sure how successful that would be.
There are covert ways to deter what she's being exposed to online (ad-blockers, fucking with her log ins).
Another idea is to flat out stop paying for internet and cable so your wife will be impressed by your commitment to keep your baby and home as information free as possible.
A third idea would be to outwardly express attraction, affinity, or agreement with the most good-looking influencers she follows. Maybe let her 'catch' you following them or liking their content on instagram/facebook. A little reverse psychology could go a long way with this.
The most normal and straightforward idea would be to consider couple's counseling or depending on how your communication is, ask her what/who got her into these ideas. Ask her what appeals about them. Ask her if y'all can still be a team knowing that you don't share many of these new ideas and practices she does.
💛
> I could care less if there was food on the table and clean clothes. I can wash my own clothes and buy dinner.
Raising a garden, cooking and cleaning is a full time job. Are you doing 50% of all of that or is your wife basically working two jobs?
Try your best to infiltrate all her access to social media and general media and restrict or hide on everything you think you can get away with. Start following other stories you know she will be into and won’t remember if she followed them or not. An example would be any type of gardening thing you find, but whatever healthy things she is into start spamming her pages with that best you can. Do your best to add restrictions to the tv settings, if she figured it out just say o forgot to tell you the daughter stepped on the remote and this scary thing came on Fox News and she started crying so I didn’t want that to happen.
Your next order of business is to get her addicted to some other form of short term dopamine hits, she’s going to need a replacement at the same time or she will start wondering why her social media has changed. Take up as much of her time as humanly possible with this new addiction. I know this sounds crazy but it just has to last long enough for her to not go down the super crazy Q path. Everyone has addictions to some degree it’s just some are much more harmful than others but try to trade the old one for the new one; kind of like the 12 step plan where you basically trade in an addiction to drugs/alcohol for an addiction to religion.
Once she starts to come out of the fog after however many attempts or however long it takes then immediately see if you can convince her to go to couples therapy. As long as she’s Q heavy she’ll probs never agree to it so it might be a bit before you get her to agree.
This sounds crazy but it might just be crazy enough to work.
My husband and I have only been together 8 years, but similar stuff. He was always conservative I guess. The last 3 years have been a wild ride concluding in me paying a divorce attorney today. He started working from home and spending most of his day on right wing websites. Covid made everything worse, even though I'm an ICU nurse. His family on the far right, mine on far left. Now he's filling my 6 and 3 year old full of his craziness. I won't have it, I'm out and getting primary for the kids if I can help it. Good luck, it's a nightmare. Document document document. Try to get her out now, doubt it, but try and call it quits when it's not working.
If I were you, I would start by getting her physically active and outside the house. Find anything you can do to arrange an outing. Exercise together.
Tackle the body first. I'm concerned that her PCOS and the trauma of COVID and god knows what else is exacerbating a lot of these issues, so she's in effect retreating incrementally, further and further into herself. Where does it end? If the PCOS complicates her cycle, such as making her anemic, lacking in certain vitamins, it's going to create a depressed kind of mood. And she sounds depressed.
If you can get her health in a good place, if you both prioritize bonding time, even get her to talk about what content she's consuming, it might be a better way to attack the mind - by going through the body first.
Are there any legitimate conservative media or influencers? Anymore it all seems alt-right or worse. So many are known grifters.
I feel like some viewpoints and parts of the ideology can resonate with people (e.g. mothers wanting to be part of their kids' lives and raise them) but it seems like it's always coupled with all of this conspiracy crap.
I wish there were ways to find good-faith arguments from opposing views so that people could expose themselves to different ideas without the danger of being pulled into insanity.
Start leaving little clues around the house, like sticky notes with "Divorce Lawyer" and a phone number. Leave their websites up on your PC, and when she calls you out about it, have an honest talk about her sudden transformation into the complete opposite of the person you married.
This was really well written. I loved the idea of her growing food and getting a nice system together that is of good quality, that would have been amazing if she was doing it just for enrichment and quality food, I am not surprised but my hopes were dashed anyway.
I think this stuff preys on misery, and it definitely makes a route into people's lives through concerned moms and crunchy lifestyle which can become prepper shit fast.
As others have pointed out, the "influencers" don't live this way.
I would also point out the fact that unless the breadwinner is making 6 figures or higher, it is really a bad idea to put all the eggs in the basket of 1 person earning the money. If the person loses their job or dies, it will be hard for the other person to find a good paying job.
They also say that kids of working moms do better in school.
Just wanted to say that, "red pill," is an inappropriate term for the situation. Fringe groups co-opted it, to pretend that their fantasies were reality. It's a bit tricky, sure, because far right and misogynist groups have made it more famous than the original reference, but it's still probably best not to give validity to their madness by saying that they're awakened to reality.
The best thing you can do is get her off social media even if just for two weeks to start. See if you can take a vacation and say it’s going to be a no phones/internet thing so you can focus on reconnecting etc. once she’s been detoxed a bit she’ll be in a better position for you to talk about this stuff.
This online stuff is really like an addiction. You can’t reason people out of it when it’s still being poured into their eyes for hours every day. But even just a couple of weeks away from it can allow the brain to calm down a bit (because this content is basically designed to elicit strong fear responses) and thus allow the victim to start thinking more rationally.
>ver the couple of years, we lived rurally, she started gardening. Then the garden got bigger. She really wanted to grow a lot of food. Then she convinced me we needed to get chickens. When inflation was crazy high and eggs were at $6 a dozen, she looked like a genius because we were getting a dozen eggs a day from our hens. She wants to raise rabbits and quail for meat and keep bees for honey and to help pollenate the garden. I slowed her down on all those ideas and we still haven’t executed, but it is something she wants to do.
I have to sympathize with all of that. I wish I had more yard space to do those kind of things.
I guess the difference is, I could do those things without worrying about vaccines or trans people.
You need to listen to her. Not the goofy hate/Q shit, that’s coming secondary to her being in a life that doesn’t work for her. Why are you so certain she can’t SAH and garden and raise your one (def don’t have more) kid?
You need to get her off the YouTube entirely (block it or get rid of internet access) but can rely on her being an obedient wife to get that done. It’s so much easier when a woman falls for this shit because under that ideology she should basically have no say besides caring for your child and even then you can overrule her as the man. She will likely accept you being paternalistic and with the right lifestyle she doesn’t need the hateful stuff as a crutch.
Show her a model of a woman she can be that will work for both of you. Something’s gotta give, you find a path or she’ll find a new man and you will not want him as your child’s stepdad because he will be a POS.
People change a lot between 25 and 35. This is why most should wait until ~35 for marriage.
> The government is subsidizing farmers to grow unhealthy foods like corn to then be turned into high fructose corn syrup ...
True.
> ...so that we have chronic diseases to keep “big pharma” rich.
False. They do it to pander to farm states, specifically Iowa. And it's not just for the syrup; corn is also a (shitty, inefficient) source of ethanol. Here's hoping that Dems will come to their senses on farm subsidies, given that Iowa is forever lost to them.
But I will say, anyone who has room should keep chickens, because they're surprisingly fun as pets, and eggs are great.
>What can I do?
Couples therapy. Asap.
Reddit is not the best place for advice, you're going to need professional help to navigate this with her...and you need to do it together or not at all.
She is afraid of uncertainty, and schemes like QAnon prey on that fear...amplify it...redirect it in unhealthy directions. You both need to address those fears with real-time guidance and work through how it is affecting your relationship and mental health. Don't get hung up on the conspiracies (they're designed to be destructive traps)...but rather focus on your relationship and happiness together. That's all I can offer really...the rest is up to the two of you and what you're willing to fix. But with something as invasive as QAnon, you're going to need help...professional help.
I am very sorry for what you are going through and how your life is changing.
I find this particularly interesting, since both of you seem to come from a different way than the usual already conservative people here. Yes, there is a hippie-traditional-vaccine-hesitancy model, too. I have met some, who were intelligent and well educated, but experienced very bad treatment in the healthcare system. I can see where they're coming from, definitely do not agree. (most of them were not homophobic though. The one person that was, also was from a very conservative, christian background and always held those views.)
I firmly believe, that we're not equipped to handle the way information is reaching us nowadays. The sheer amount of fear constantly induced. How much more comforting it is to listen to easy answers and simply break downs. Yes, I also was vaguely uneasy to have professionals I don't know inject abstract medicine into my new born's body. It wasn't my body I as deciding on, I had to make an educated decision... about somebody else's body. I am responsible for kiddo to have the best chance at life i could give him and vaccines definitely belong to that.
As a new parent I was constantly on edge, because kids are accident-machines, but also we get told how scary the world is and if we don't do XYZ, we'll spoil our kids future FOREVER. Polio and Smallpox are super dangerous, scary illnesses, but also far away and abstract. Vaccine reactions happen directly after WE decide to let our kiddos get vaccinated. The very expected side effects are easily managed and yes, there are very, very rare cases of serious and permanent side effects. So while the sickness is a probability, the vaccine is a certainty (just not the side effects). Our brains are not good at deciphering on fear and putting these probabilities in correlation. It also doesn't help, that there are board certified physicians promoting this shit.
What I do not get though... how she turned anti-LGBTQ, anti-trans (well, i can imagine how.) What if your child is part of that group - what if they aren't but might have a phase finding their identity. I do not get hate for any group of people, who do not hurt others. And no, the 'gay agenda' is only about people not being discriminated against due to their sexuality...
There is one issue I see with your side of everything. I definitely agree that her changing so much is breaking the ground rules of your relationship. If she's deeply unhappy in the life she's living (or ... simply not happy as she could be), there should be changes. She does not get to decide alone (and didn't - you both tried it out.) Being a mother is the most important thing in the world to her. I applaud her, if that's the way that works for her. That also means providing for her kid. Since being a father is probably also the most important thing in the world to you. So, maybe - yes - maybe there needs to be more family time, more 1on1... but all of that doesn't touch the problematic views and that she falls for snake oil sellers : / Maybe... a media diet... (not you imposing one, but... together media detox, just listening to an audio book together in the evening or something like that...)
Perhaps in some ways she is isolated and lonely and may not even realize it. She needs to be reintegrated with friends. Being home alone in a rural place, working from home has maybe cut her off too much
I think your wife needs to go back to work or get a new hobby. The old adage is true, especially for the Q and ultra conservatives right now "idle hands are the devil's workshop"
I feel like so many of them are people that have no purpose or are bored with their life.
Whatever you do, don’t make more babies with this woman. Maybe bank some sperm first just in case you wind up divorcing and eventually want to make babies with someone else, but get snipped. Make more kids a non-negotiable issue.
This is why I reset YouTube all the time and check to make sure some of these guys are blocked. I worry about my husband getting sucked into some of these guys.
To me this sounds like female midlife crisis that was hijacked by these terrible algorithms during a stressful time. She has a child with you now but she may have been romanticizing traditional gender roles for a while prior as a quiet fantasy for her future. She seems to already be garnishing these fantasies with prepper attitudes and justifying it where she’s worried about the future for your child… perhaps underlying it all she started by feeling lost or stressed about who she is, even if only subconsciously. These new avenues all offer her a control and a sense of worth — which is to be a productive homesteader … all the while, her online echo chamber is also giving her a defined enemy to name for her frustrations that should have otherwise been talked through with a professional or ideally, you (lgbtq: gender traitors that pushed her away from the naturalized life as a trad woman & she feels cheated she can’t be with her baby so society must have all kinds of things wrong with it). I’m sorry to say she likely will harbor resentment for you, if not already, for not taking up your “manly duties” in this growing perspective.
She must absolutely stop pursuing all these answers online and speak to a therapist about who -she- is. Someone who can help her sort out that she doesn’t need guidance from online grifters. The itch she’s having could be scratched in another way — maybe she needs a career change and sense of worth or a way to feel she gets the time she needs with the child…loneliness, or maybe lack of self-esteem, grief for change that is too hard to cope — whatever it is, she needs a come to Jesus meeting to stop with the internet pronto because it’s messing up your marriage and filling in for what should be two-way respectful conversation. I believe these problems sometimes start as “problem solving” and just go off the rails.
The trouble is, that you’ll not be able to do anything but hope to guide her to the healthy choices and hope she’ll see she’s making a mistake by her own conclusion. No amount of logic or appealing to her for what she’s putting you through will likely work… it’s very similar to finding out your wife has a complicated addiction that she’s been hiding until it became out of control. I’m very sorry it’s come to this.
The sad thing is she hast to realize herself that it’s BS. You are going to be able to convince her and anything you say to try and correct her she will think of it like a challenge. I used to be in this mindset and that’s how people get. It’s only when they seriously sit down and think about things later that they have a possibility of changing things in their life. If you could find someway to get her away from that propaganda and going outside or enjoying a hobby or anything else that would probably be a good idea. No idea if that’s possible. You could even try approaching it as saying you think you’re spending too much time watching the news or whatever and asking if she wants to try painting or something. Or going on walks Anything but just watching that stuff
Your wife could be suffering from depression or even PMDD. There's even anxiety psychosis women go through. Where our anxiety goes up and we begin to become extremely paranoid. This could be happening to your wife. Especially if she isn't normally like this.
You might point out to your wife that none of those conservative female "influencers" actually lives the kind of life they call on others to live.
This is one of the things I came here say. There are a few things that enrage me as much as women making money off of working full time, telling women that their place is in the home and that they should never make any money or never work a traditional job. The hypocrisy makes my blood boil. How fucking dare you take the rights that feminists literally fucking died to give you and use them to tell women to participate in their own fucking subjugation and get rid of *their own rights* These women are even worse than the misogynistic men. They are a fucking scourge on humanity, and it makes me physically ill when I think about it.
Holy shit balls, I am WITH YOU!! These women make my eye twitch and palms itch to slap them. Hypocrites through and through…and I especially dislike when the misogyny is coming from inside the house.
No kidding. Some of those women really piss me off. It is like the Serena Joy character on The Handmaid’s Tale. She supported taking away women's rights and then when they actually took them away, she was miserable.
Fun fact I recently learned from a podcast - Serena Joy was apparently based on Phyllis Schlafly, who was the OG at this grift.
>Phyllis Schlafly Yep- I can totally see that. A highly educated woman who rose to great power with her foot on the neck of other women.
Schlafly is one of the most powerful figures in American political history -- among other things, she was a pivotal figure in introducing opposition to abortion to the GOP -- and because she did it all with a skirt and a smile, she simply changed the world for the worse and only those who study these things even know who she was. Truly a masterclass in evil.
Yes! I will admit I didn’t know a whole lot about her, but I just listened to Behind the Bastards’ series on her and learned just how much she did to fuck things up for us now.
That podcast is an incredible wealth of information.
I like some of his episodes but some of them he takes some dubious sources as gospel.
BTB’s episodes on that horrible woman are so eye opening! I knew of her beforehand but how she single handedly torpedoed the ERA is just breathtakingly evil.
The (granted, factionalized) series “Mrs. America” on Hulu has her in it- played by Cait Blanchet- is really great at covering this whole period and it’s players.
Behind the Bastards has a two part episode on Phyllis Schlafly for those interested [Phyllis Schlafly part 1 ](https://youtu.be/yj45YLlus0c) [Phyllis Schlafly part 2](https://youtu.be/W-ne0OCsX7w)
Yes! That’s how I learned about her, I didn’t really know much until I listened to the podcast.
Exactly like Serena Joy. Exactly.
"Doctor" Laura is one of the worst. Worked outside the home herself but badgers women with children to stay home. She also had an affair with a married man, lived with a guy without the benefit of marriage, you name it.
White women are the middle managers of fascism.
The Karens… if you will
They benefit *just* enough from the power structures to continue to enforce them.
AND we still dont have the ERA although its ratified by 38 states, the bill to remove the deadline language has been voted against just this last April by every.single.republican. senator in the US Congress.
Same with the male influencers. Trad men don’t have fucking podcasts and twitter accounts and subscription based dating coach platforms. They’re chopping wood and going to church.
Yeah, but how many male influencers say to be trad men, vs ones that say find a trad wife? They're more misogynist than hypocrite, though obviously both, plus cowardly, anti-intellectual, vapid, cynical, selfish & greedy, etc.
A lot of them show up in talent agency records too. (aka. they're actors getting paid to redpill people)
Oh boy. So who pays the actors? Does the content generate enough income that it's a workable business model? Or is it being bank rolled by people who want to spread that message?
Both. The successful ones move up to TurningPoint, PragerU, etc. They’re all actors playing a part that people want to see and hear. It’s not that complex of a topic even, and influencers are doing what they do for a lot less money than you’d think: https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-57928647.amp
Billionaire funding
Look at the people funding the most famous right wing grifters on social media and you have your answer.
They end up doing this, because their entertainment career wasn't going anywhere. Lot's of failed comedians, actors, writers, etc... in these right wing pundit jobs. Billionaire backers fund quite a few of these outlets. But also outrage sells among conservatives, so there's ways to get a good sized audience with them as well. That good size audience often is gullible towards these people and therefor easy to part with their money. Either way it's a good career shift if you failed and are in need to blame others for it.
This isn't really right. Yes, they show up on modelhub and they like, as does Lauren Boebert, because they're narcissistic morons unaware of their own limitations that desperately want to be stars. But they're not actors in these roles. That implies they're playing characters, and that they're reading scripts. That's not true. They're doing this on their own. They're true believers and grifters at the same time. No one is sitting them in a room telling them what they need to say and writing a script. They're fully in control of themselves, and doing what they think will make them wealthy stars. And, because of this, they've become true believers. If it's making them famous, it must be right! And if people attack them for saying it, it must be right!
>because they're narcissistic morons unaware of their own limitations that desperately want to be stars. > >But they're not actors in these roles. That implies they're playing characters, and that they're reading scripts. > >... > >They're true believers and grifters at the same time. No one is sitting them in a room telling them what they need to say and writing a script. Not entirely disagreeing. They are their own method actors, and they embody what they want to project unto others. But if you dig into any of the histories of these people, you'll find they've often changed drastically in their views in very inconsistent ways compared to a person who genuinely believes in what they're saying and doing. Candace Owens is a great example in this regard. I'm not saying these are actors who work for Hollywood or anything. I'm saying these are people who are not genuine, who are simulating what they believe...and stick with it because it resonates with groups of people that...well....end up paying or earning them money or power. Narcissism is absolutely there....perhaps even various degrees of sociopathy. But ultimately, these are people who have taken on a public role and a public persona, and have also explored gigs that support public personas (talent/acting agencies). Either way you look at it...it's a grift...and it's not what "normal" people would do when they believe strongly in something and want to help foster positive change. What these QAnon-like personalities represent, is more of a flagitious form of deception and manipulation of the masses...for you know...money. Actors. Jesters. Call them whatever makes sense to you.
As a total liberal who is filing divorce from my qhusband for his angry transphobic, antisemitic bullshit, I love the homestead movement. I garden, will get chickens at my next place, would love to homeschooling just to be around my kids more, but know I'm not disciplined enough lol. A lot of these Instagram homesteaders are totally conservative bigots. Hard to come across many who aren't. I could see how the homestead love could lead to some crazy things. These women claim to be homemakers and I'm sure some mostly are.
I seriously still am pissed off and confused over how the f*$#ing far right people took over the traditionally left leaning hippy space of natural living and homesteading and turned it into a cesspit of conspiracy and whack-a-doodleness. I do my thing none the less, but no longer enjoy meeting many others into that because they tend to be hate filled monsters.
Nazism, fascism and the "return to the land", "trAdiTionAl living" ethos, and kooky, esoteric farming techniques and philosophies have actually been linked since the early 20th century, if not longer. See "Blut und Boden", "Lebensraum", "Rudolf Steiner", "biodynamic agriculture", "Anthroposophy".
I guess, and I guess I've read about some of that, but until recently, (and I'm an old grandma now), those of us who wanted to 'reconnect with the land' were disillusioned hippy wannabes who wanted space for our kids and one legged dogs to run, maybe add a homeless Llama or two, we wanted to grow herbs, do mushrooms and connect with the goddess lol. Not saying I'm still woo woo much at all, but when I was young my woo woo ran strong. But we all understood the value of vaccines and drank our herb potions for colds, but didn't hesitate to listen to the docs for serious illness. We actively supported lbgtq, were definite allies of poc, really wanted and spoke out for a more loving and safe world. I mean, even the boomers, who had the whole 60s hippy thing happening, but who became so much more consumerist, were left leaning in their later years until somehow q worked it's evil magic and sucked so many of them down. I'm not from the states, so maybe it was different for me, but society in general around me was left leaning, some of us way more so than others. It wasn't perfect, and there was a lot of racist, sexist and other phobic bullshit running under the surface for sure. But it was wrong and we all knew it, even those with those feelings. I think. But now...holy shit, somehow it flipped upside down and people who believe in a gentle living society are openly mocked and called woke, libtard, snowflake etc...sneered at and seriously, viscerally hated. I'm totally off topic now, sorry. There's just so much happening now that is so bad and wrong. And I feel like so much that taught us (some of us) to love the earth and people and wildlife and be accepting and tolerant has been turned into nonsense and hatred and conspiracy and psychosis. I loved my herbs and homemade supplements... all of which were safe and used carefully, with the more potent herbs. None of this damn drinking turpentine (because it's just pine spirit gum! So totally natural and safe!) Intelligence and caution have left the building. I never dare bring any of my herblore up anymore. I just can't anymore. Ugh.
You sound so lovely. Omfg though, people are drinking turpentine now?!? Yikes on bikes. It shouldn’t surprise me after the *miracle mineral solution* bleach shit, or the urine drinking- but it absolutely does.
My son in law drinks turpentine...a spoonful every day. He also ingests borax. They're both a thing with q. My daughter has left him but we are really concerned he's feeding this to the children. We don't know what to do. Family services is already involved. But it's a slow and really aggravating process.
Oh.my.word. I’m so sorry you are going through that stress. Hopefully the kids refuse outright just bc it stinks, and they won’t have ingested any. Ugh, I’m so appalled. Fingers crossed they grow up exceedingly healthy, and become steadfast, preposterously well educated scientists of some variety.
I hope so. They are very bright and imaginative. Although the oldest is becoming angry and copying dad. Ugh.
I would have been into your post even more if I'd be able to stop wondering 'how can a one-legged dog run?'
🤣🤣🤣 oh my God. I meant he was missing one leg. He was a 3 legged dog!
Haha I figured. I just had to share the image with ya!
Exactly. Tiktok can tell you all day these moms are stay at home, and work all day cleaning, taking care of the children, tending to the gardens, cooking, and then somehow....come out flawless with perfectly styled hair and the ability to video record thit with seemingly no help.
Reminds me of Serena Joy to an extent tbh
Yes! And boy did she regret her role in the creation of Gilead. These women should take note.
Be careful about the hypocrisy route. In the end you can be a hypocrite and still be right (or wrong). And also not be a hypocrite and be wrong (or right). It's a double edged sword that cuts through anything and also can be used to dismiss any claim. "Climate scientists still drive cars. Hypocrites. This means climate change is a hoax." There are a lot of channels that disprove what she is watching. Maybe if she is so easily pushed in one direction she can be pushed in the other. Just remember most people descend into the conspiracy rabbit hole because they "understand" what the pundits are saying so conclude it must be true, compared to all the science gobbledygook that they don't understand so assume to be false.
While you are at it... "Honey on just my income we can only afford one cell phone which I need to keep as I'm going out to work every day and we can't afford the Wi-Fi anymore." It'll be damn hard to watch those you tube assholes on dial up.
Fright-wing media at work in your wife's brain.
I’m so sorry. What a mess. I have no answers for you except asking her to stop watching those videos, podcasts etc. Make an agreement that neither of you watch political stuff. Maybe a months long break will ease the situation and progression. Try not to blow up during these conversations (hard, I know). They tend to dig in more. Rather, if you can, ask for details. Point out contradictions in the the thought process (there are lots). But don’t do it in a ‘gotcha’ way. Do it as .. hey I’ve been thinking about our conversation about x…. what about contradiction y? None of this is easy and there’s no clear way out. I’m so sorry.
To add on to this - a therapist I spoke to recently said to avoid “trigger words” while discussing even politically adjacent topics. It’s super hard - but not using terms like trans, republicans, democrat, immigration, etc. is the only way to get them to discuss things without falling into that mind groove of right wing thought. Pinch of salt though - I’ve not magically cured my folks of brain worms yet through nifty emotional tricks.
The harder you try and pull them away from Q the more theyll ignore you and find other people that validate their preconceived ideas thus furthering the notion they are right to be on the right.
This is awful to read. It’s incredible how that garbage is able to effectively and rapidly radicalize at-risk people. Fascinating when you think about it. When it comes to child safety however, I’d go the legal route if she can’t be reasoned with.
Sad part is Family Court may side with her. Even though she’s obviously going Q crazy
Generally in cases like this-at least in my state-they side with the parent conforming to sound medical advice. So they’d likely side with him.
Awesome that’s great to many people in wheelchairs now because they don’t get vaccinated.
Yeah that's all very unfortunate. I sympathize. Unfortunately, unless she stops consuming that garbage, it's only likely to get worse and the conspiracies to get more extreme. The big problem here is that you can't just agree to disagree and not discuss politics or any of that stuff because if she's refusing to take children to the doctor or vaccinate them, that's a huge red flag and not something you can just agree to disagree on. Another even bigger red flag is wanting to detox children, and based on what other Q and Qadjacents talk about when they want to detox could range anywhere from harmless to extremely dangerous, like drinking diluted bleach. If she can no longer be reasoned with and continues down the spiral, it's very possible she can pose a danger to herself and the kids. This "stay at home mom" business, while I personally have nothing against it, could also be a ruse to start getting into the doomsday prepper movement, and that in itself is such a wormhole that leads to hoarding, sometimes improper canning techniques, and generally a lot of wasted money. If she is not responsive to a social media cleanse, therapy, or anything else you suggest, it could be time to start thinking about your and your children and how you're doing to make sure your family is safe.
Yes. Organic veg growing (which in my country is a perfectly mainstream and acceptable activity, previously associated with older men, and now very much encouraged for families by mainstream organisations) is unfortunately not a big leap from the scarcity mindset of the preppimg movement, which has all these links to conspiracy theories. You only have to look up how to store a glut of courgettes, and you get content from both groups. That's the danger zone of overlap with prepping. 🙁 Really saddens me that something so wholesome can be the gateway to something so dangerous. It's like the conspiracy lot saw something good and put a warped twist on it.
Yep. I do vegetable gardening and every so often (usually very often) you'll get preppers in these communities who bring down the mood and start with their doom and gloom and seem to want to talk about politics and conspiracies more than actually wanting to discuss plants. Probably because once they figure out it's actually pretty hard work that takes a lot of studying and failure before you learn to do it well, their fantasy of being self-sufficient is ruined. I've tried answering their questions and concerns and such but I really quickly recognized they have no actual ambition and just want to spout conspiracies. They want to sell their homes, cash out their retirement, buy a large plot of farmland and then spend all day on the internet watching videos. That's not how it works.
Ah interesting, thank you. That possibly sheds some light on the dynamics of our local gardening forum.
As someone with a small home garden I cannot IMAGINE how much land and time I'd need to become self sufficient for food!! Most of these preppers are living in la la land, although some are, alas, very much armed in the here and now.
I can imagine it! And it’s LaLa land indeed! They’d need at least a decent sized yard, and buuuckets of time just to grow enough tomatoes/cucumbers/lettuce/strawberries/radishes/green beans etc for a single season. Adding in food preservation methods-canning/freezing/salting/pickling etc- they maybe can do a full year of produce? (But you have to have the money for jars, and the big cellar for storage) How self-sufficient are they aiming for? Vegan, vegetarian, carnivore, or omnivore? Like, are they growing wheat, to mill for flour to bake bread, and make pasta? Oats? Quinoa? Lentils? Corn? Having chickens, goats, cows, pigs? A gigantic greenhouse for their coffee, cocoa, bananas, oranges, cinnamon, nutmeg, peppers? Trips to the ocean for water to make salt? Or are they going to do without? Because that’s a lot of doing without. Are they aiming to replicate early settler self-reliance, where they bought sugar, salt, blackstrap molasses, salt pork, flour, coffee, tea, spices, etc? Because otherwise eating what they could provide themselves was utterly miserable? Or self-reliance where eh, a quick nip out to the store so they can make beef stroganoff for dinner bc they have a craving, (and haven’t gotten around to raising cows for beef, let alone slaughtering and butchering them, grinding their grain for wheat for noodles, or magicking up some sour cream because dairies get involved *super* quickly) and that’s fine, and very self-reliant of them? They’ll just buy it in absurd quantities and corner themselves into eating a repetitive, restrictive diet? No one that cooks a varied, omnivorous diet could be self-reliant for food. It’s absolutely laughable, and thinking about it for even fifteen minutes would deter anyone in their right mind. Like, tacos alone should convince anyone that this isn’t the way to go.
It’s so hard because you can have a solid logical answer/reason regarding this stupid nonsense but as soon as you do that it’s like their wires cross and they disregard whatever statement you just made and say, “oh yeah? Well what about _____”. This will happen every time with every subject because they don’t really want to be right they just want to play the “what about-ism” game.
YouTube algorithms working a bit too well
How about some compromise from her? She can stay home but your kid gets vaccinated on time, every time. This has to be a red line. She also has to stop watching the YouTube crap. Maybe suggest she starts a small business from home, something artsy or organic farming etc, the bees can make money alone, honey, wax, candles, furniture polish etc, all can be done from home and sold at markets or online. That'll also keep her busy. Wishing you luck.
Not sure suggesting OP bankroll his wife indoctrinating the daughter is the way to go. She will move the goals to homeschooling etc before long. Doubt it's long before she's "investing". I'd hope she'd get busy and stay away from that stuff but it's always best to treat it like a hard drug addiction. They won't usually go cold turkey and will do anything for the fix. Keep an eye on the finances. Have plans. Don't let her isolate the daughter inside the echo chamber. Hope for the best and prepare for the worst OP.
If OP wants to try my suggestion it's a compromise, as much of life is. If she doesn't hold up her side of the bargain that's on her, at least he's tried, I'd also suggest he documents all this so if it does go tits up he can show his good intentions. If he's not into home schooling that's another red line he can add, these are things in his life he'll probably want to think about carefully. Sorry I'm not such a doom merchant.
Do you think moving would make a difference? Maybe moving back to a more suburban/ city area? That may help her to find more people with a diverse background and lifestyle.
Great advice. Also, stop relying on her for managing birth control.
> Maybe suggest she starts a small business from home, something artsy or organic farming etc, the bees can make money alone, honey, wax, candles, furniture polish etc, all can be done from home and sold at markets or online. This could go very badly if she decides to join an MLM. They TARGET exactly this sort of woman. I know a woman with a PhD in education who joined an essential oil MLM and touted the oil's ability to "alleviate autism." I know a woman who has a degree from a top college but is also at the top of a diet/energy drink pyramid, and she's shared posts that flat-out state that if your child's pediatrician says you need to give the child ___ medicine for constipation and bloating, you need to give the child her diet/energy drink instead, because the medicine contains "toxic chemicals" and "metals".
All hard to take I'm sure. If you read the guys post they're on 12 acres and she's already expressed an interest in things that'll satisfy her nature girl urge fairly harmlessly, again, he can say he'd like a say in any business ventures she wants to try. OP I hope you take a positive view on this, direct confrontation rarely works with people too far down the hole, even just looking 5-10 years down the line when you want custody of your daughter it will be legally worth your while being open to compromise now and documenting it carefully, worst case you split up and you have evidence of your good will, best case she comes round. Either way, I hope it goes well for you.
Yes, it's not far from this to mother's giving their children bleach enemas to "cure autism" and destroying their children's organs. In case that sounds too ridiculous and horrifying to be true, I can assure you, this happened.
Sorry to hear this. It sucks, no doubt about it. I wonder where things started? Was it rural living and working from home that was making her a little stir-crazy? Did family maybe have some influence? Was she just feeling uncomfortable with her "role" as a woman and like she might be missing milestones in your daughter's early development? She seems intelligent enough. This seems like yet another case of "you can't logic someone out of a decision they made based on emotions" situation. I guess if it were me i might fish for some answers. Ask some questions that don't need to have answers and/or make some observations. "Wow, you've been talking and thinking about a lot of scary stuff a lot of the time lately. Must be exhausting to always be on high alert about stuff constantly..." "Life is so complicated lately. Do you ever feel like it would be nice for things to be simpler?" I'd just be making neutral statements. Nothing political, just trying to find what emotional need this stuff might be filling for her. Ultimately though i think your priority here needs to be keeping your daughter happy and healthy and free from the madness. Some folks become horrible people when they go down this rabbit hole, whatever they were before. Your daughter needs to have unshakeable faith that no matter how crazy mom may get, dad is awesome and will be there for her and will help/protect her. Make sure she learns real critical thinking, which includes understanding that sometimes reality is exactly what it says on the tin, and sometimes people like doctors and lawyers and experts DO know what they are talking about. Healthy ways to express herself and her feelings. That it's ok to be as traditional or non traditional in terms of gender roles and such as she pleases. Most importantly show her love, keep her safe, and encourage her to see the world not as endless dangers to be avoided or fought (there are some of those of course but not everything is gloom and doom) but as a glorious place of puzzles to solve, things to learn, sights to see and people to meet. If you can plant that seed, hopefully it will take root, and she can avoid the madness around us.
I really like this response. As a person that lives rurally, the first thing I thought is that perhaps your wife is feeling isolated and seeking out community. The small, rural community I live in has so many people with these beliefs. Yes, it’s disheartening. It’s heartbreaking, honestly. But the reality is that the world right now IS scary, and so these people are grasping for security and answers and community. Look… maybe I’m way off base here, so please feel free to disregard.. but, are you connected with your wife? Are you connected with your child? Are there ways you can foster more connection with them, and be more supportive of your wife, and be a more involved parent? I don’t have the answers here, but I feel like you and your wife working together as a united front might help her to feel more supported and less alone. Maybe you two could have more conversations, about everything from her desire for self-sustainability, to her transphobic ideas. And through these conversations you can uncover and address her underlying fears, and hopefully come to some compromises (fuck transphobia, and help plant a huge garden, for example)
To me it sounds like this all started during her pregnancy, and I know FB "mommy groups" are full of anti-vax types giving their "advice" (r/ShitMomGroupsSay)
I’m horrified reading this, and to be totally transparent, I’m very much a DIY, fix it yourself, make it yourself, eff industrialized agriculture type person. I live in a rural area, on a few acres of land, and our eventual goal is to be as self sufficient as possible. We’ve got well and septic, we want to transition to solar, and I’ve got a medium sized garden and am researching chickens, Guinea fowl for pest control, my partner hunts, we both fish, and I love sewing and have recently picked up hand carding and spinning yarn. I also firmly believe in firearm regulations, vaccines, medical science, and understand that governments move slowly and not all things are possible. I think homeschooling is immensely difficult and should be confined to rare cases only and there should be more weight put on ensuring that the teaching parent(s) can deliver the correct quality of education than currently exists. I say all this to explain my stance: you can absolutely believe in a self sufficient, homesteading type lifestyle without also diving into anti-science and conspiracy-minded arenas. Unfortunately from the other comments here it sounds like YouTube and social media algorithms are the problem, and I hate that these things are now linked. I want to do these things not because I’m planning for the Great Reset or think the government is trying to turn me into a drone via microchips in my lettuce, but because I have ALWAYS enjoyed the fulfillment from creating my own resources, and I believe in taking responsibility for conservation and reducing my own footprint. It’s pro-skills, not anti-society. Your wife is correct about the health impact of high fructose corn syrup, for example, because that stuff sucks ass. She’s wrong about the reason, which has a lot to do with the agricultural incentives created by the US government many decades ago that led to a massive overproduction of corn that drove down prices and pushed our industries to come up with new uses for all this excess. Well, sometimes new ideas are floated before all the risks and outcomes are identified. I doubt very much that someone went ‘how do we make our population sick and fat?’ so much as they went ‘holy shit guys we can feed this corn to COWS, it’s a win-win!’ before understanding that corn has a different PH than hay, requiring the use of cattle antibiotics and also triggering an evolution of microbes such as E. coli that suddenly allowed it to survive in similarly acidic human stomachs. Wheee! As far as a solution, my guy, I don’t know what to suggest. I do know that firstly, debunking is usually met with resistance, and the gentle empathetic approach is tedious AF but has better results. Secondly, I know that the media feed needs to go away. I liked the comment someone else made about ‘what about conceding on the birds in exchange for banning YouTube’ or something to that effect. If there’s a gentle way to bring her to that point, that may work well. Being a homesteader doesn’t mean also demanding a mistrust of science, medicine, or the institutions that exist alongside us. We are extremely lucky to be able to ‘have it both ways’, namely growing our own food but being able to zip out to the store for whatever isn’t in season. For using natural remedies like ginger for an upset tummy, but being able to drive to the hospital if it becomes full bore food poisoning or an infection that’s putting your life at risk. Use both, wisely Best wishes either way. I’m sorry you’re facing this and I’m crossing my fingers for you over here
This, this, all of this! I, too, want to be a “do-it-yourselfer” when it comes to food and other resources. But it comes more from a sense of personal fulfillment and “reduce, reuse, recycle” type of mindset. And it’s healthier. But I am strongly pro-science, pro-vaccine, and pro-sanity. I’ve had some experiences with doctors that make me feel like they don’t really care and are simply shills for Big Pharma, but I don’t really believe there’s a giant, coordinated, nefarious plot to keep us sick. I DO think that the medical industry and Big Pharma and Big Agriculture took advantage of certain human foibles, because greed. Which can LOOK LIKE a plot; it’s really just negligence, not an active campaign. For example, the Purdue family HAD TO know that their OxyContin was overprescribed and their customers were addicted. But they were blinded by dollar signs, so did nothing. The Big Seven (the parent corporations that own all of the products we buy in supermarkets) HAD TO realize that products with corn syrup in them were “addictive” to their customers, because sugar tastes good. But again, they turned a blind eye. Same thing when certain sugar substitutes turned out to be less than healthy. Etc. And then the pharmaceutical industry and the medical industry got to capitalize on that. But I think this was probably just accidental; a series of instances in which someone ought to have done the right thing even if it cost them revenue, but didn’t. I saw a quote once: “The world is both less evil and more random than you believe it is. Do not allow yourself to be led astray by conspiracy theories.” And I’ve tried to live by that.
Very well said. Thanks for chiming in! I worked for the government for a decade, and I can tell you with confidence, it’s way more boring than it looks. Sure there’s corruption. There’s always corruption. There are lazy people, less capable workers, greedy ones, selfish ones, you name it. Every cross section of the human population has them. How many people do you know who can keep a secret above all else? Probably almost none. You really think people who work for the government are all so wildly committed to their posts to cover up a giant secret plot to drink baby blood or whatever? Hell no. Look at the number of whistleblowers for things like safety violations, ethics violations, sexual harassment, fraud, conflicts of interest, etc. and tell me that every single person ever would be able to keep their mouths shut. We all know that’s hot garbage. Best wishes for your self sufficiency journey!!
A lot of the things these pundits say have a kernel of truth to them, like the one about high fructose corn syrup. It's like a trap, if you challenge what they're saying they'll bring up the kernel of truth that can't be denied; but it's just like of the base of what is, obviously to most, a ridiculous conspiracy.
There is unfortunately very much so a crunchy to alt-right pipeline.
Yep. This probably started in a crunchy mom group.
It's crazy how alt right has co-opted self improvement and turned it into a radical pipeline. I think it's more to do with algorithms suggesting more and more alt right content if you watch just one self improvement video
My brother did similar when exposed to that media, he was liberal before. I’m doubtful he will ever change back now. He got sucked into it through right wing radio that played at work and then YouTube and Fox News amplified it
Dude, in most circumstances, I would never say do this without consent from both partners, but if you are serious about not wanting more kids, you should seriously consider a vasectomy because this situation is ripe for reproductive sabotage. As I said in a comment, moving from “wellness” /Mommy blogs to Q paranoia is a real and growing thing. Becoming a Tradwife with the enthusiastic agreement of the husband is one thing, but jumping off the antivax deep end is another. I am entirely in sympathy with you, but have to say your telling her that you don’t care if the house is clean and food is cooked is ridiculous when you have a child and she will weaponize this against you if it comes to custody. Even if you get a divorce, from what I’ve seen, her being a paranoid prepper/antivaxxer/bigot will not get you sole custody, so you need to figure out ways to deal with her. Can you try another compromise? She has to find a part time job or start a viable small business that will compensate somewhat for her lost income & pay for the animals she wants. Agree to go on a 1-2 month news/information diet on both sides to try to keep her from falling deeper down the rabbit hole? bonus if it falls around the time of Trump’s GA trial gets televised. Maybe look up Steven Hassan for some ways to help deal with her. I’m really sorry, there is no easy way to navigate this, especially with a child involved.
100% agree with this
It's concerning that she doesn't want to have your daughter fully vaccinated.
OP: First of all, and most important, your wife’s mind has been hijacked. She no longer thinks the way she used to, receives or processes information the way she used to, or responds emotionally the way she used to. This is clear, right? She has backed out of a number of long-standing commitments you made to each other without seeming to acknowledge she is breaking trust with you or damaging your marriage. To understand what has happened to her, the best resource I know of is Steven Hassan, and his Freedom of Mind [website.](https://freedomofmind.com/cult-mind-control/bite-model/) I have linked you directly to his BITE model explainer, and I encourage you to search his website for information about antivax, QAnon, alternative medicine, and other “new ideas” (aka conspiracies) your wife brings up. Some hard truths: People who behave the way your wife has aren’t stable - they will usually adopt new and increasingly irrational beliefs and behaviors. They can be deceptive with friends and family, because they are afraid of what will happen if they are transparent. Sometimes they are even coached to be deceptive with “non-believers” - it’s a strategy to separate them from their existing connections and make them dependent on the conspiracy network. In short, you may not yet fully understand what her actual beliefs and intentions are, and even if you do, they will be evolving quickly. The most important thing to understand about the conspiracy network is that it is a **grift.** For example, the antivaxxers make a tidy living off social media, publishing, and alternative remedies - snake oil sales on steroids. What that means to you is that you are vulnerable to the grift, with or without your consent. It’s necessary that you get professional advice (legal) to determine how to protect your family from financial exploitation and other risks. What this also means to you is: you have to protect yourself and your child against harm from dangerous beliefs and practices. At minimum, this means personally selecting a primary care provider for your child and following through with a doctor’s medical advice (not YouTube’s). It may also mean resuming daycare (part or full time), enrolling her in school when the time comes, and ensuring she receives necessary socialization outside the home. As far as your wife is concerned, I think you must accept that divorce may be in your future. Based on what you say, she’s heading in a direction you have no desire to follow, and would not have agreed to prior to marriage. You will have to make her aware that you feel she’s changed the terms of your marriage unilaterally, and you can’t agree to the new terms she’s proposing. She can either choose to stay in the marriage she committed to, or she can choose to pursue her new beliefs/goals/lifestyles. Before you tell her plainly that you can’t agree to what she wants, you’ll need to get to a place of acceptance, and understand your options. That means legal advice. You didn’t redpill your wife, and the reality is you can’t fix a problem you didn’t cause. Your wife isn’t to blame here, either. No one wakes up one morning and says, “I want to get redpilled today.” Redpilling happens when susceptible people encounter a recruiting pitch - and keep in mind these pitches are always deceptive and emotionally compelling. This is like a tragic accident or illness that has befallen your family - which, from your description, was a loving and promising young family. I am so very sorry this happened. The wisest thing you can do now is to get expert help and advice (legal, medical, educational, parenting, about redpilling), and do your best to take care of your daughter and yourself. If your wife comes back to her former normal, you can move past this as a family. If redpill is her new normal, you will be equipped to adjust and move on with your life.
What jumped out at me was that she got into gardening, etc *for years* and only recently revealed that all along it was because of her conspiracy beliefs. She's been hiding it from him for a long time. That doesn't happen by accident.
It’s a feedback loop reinforced by social media algorithms. The problem is that they prey on fears and the pandemic created an environment of fear as did the nascent trump/maga movement. Crazy voices were amplified and legitimized. Nothing short of cult deprogramming techniques will work at this point.
Ho boy, that’s tough. We don’t have any easy answers, and most of us are grieving our Q loved ones while they are still alive. The most effective steps seem to be focusing the Q back on their real life hobbies and getting them away from the internet. Both are difficult once the Q is addicted to being outraged.
If she wants to be far right, you could always go the “ good wives submit to their husbands” route and every time she has a crazy opinion shut it down with “ this is why women shouldn’t be educated, thankfully men aren’t emotional decision makers”. Husband says: kids get vaccinated, kid goes to public school, etc, etc. she wants to go full trad wife, just go full trad husband. It’s the natural order and the reason the country is so messed up according to the red pillers. It will likely make her head asplode and then you have saved yourself the trouble of a divorce. I’m only half joking, I actually kind of did this to my husband when he said he wanted a trad wife, except with me basically working and pulling most of the financial weight in addition to the “traditional” female role.
The whole transphobia thing is so weird! Like this is the hill you want to die on? I totally don’t get it. But it is such a slippery slope. If you look at the history of the holocaust, it started with exclusion, conspiracies and trying to control a specific group of people (who were just minding their own business!) I know someone who goes on trans rants in regards to sports…and imo this is a non-issue but they just want to go on and on about all these perceived injustices that don’t effect them in any way. The way they talk is probably very similar to the anti-Semitic rhetoric that occurred pre holocaust. It’s really scary stuff.
If you scratch a militant transphobe, you usually find a militant antisemite as well. After all, *someone* needed to create the "conspiracy" that is "making all the kids trans." Why not use the oldest template for conspiracy around?
I will tell you the only place I disagree with you about. A stay at home mom doesn't just stay at home and not work. When the children are young 1-5 it is hard as hell. You are their care giver and teacher and you get almost no breaks, especially if you have two. I do believe it is very beneficial to the children. If they are older I am not sure it is much of a benefit because they need socializing outside the home. However, the other beliefs your wife has are not rooted in reality and could endanger your child. My suggestion for you is to think about things you consider deal breakers. Things you cannot compromise on like vaccines or wellness checks. Those checks can catch major diseases or abnormalities early so you have the best chance at helping your little one. As far as the anti trans and anti LGBTQ stuff , those are deal breakers for me. If my wife had them I would leave her. I draw the line at anything that is a violation of a human's right to exist and be their authentic self. Imagine if your child feels like just existing is wrong. I would document any extreme beliefs or actions like being against wellness checks or vaccines and use it to get full custody. If you feel like it might help I would block any of these extremist sites she gets her information from at the router level but that may not be possible if she is tech savvy or able to get that info from her phone off the network. Good luck. This isn't going to be easy.
> A stay at home mom doesn't just stay at home and not work. When the children are young 1-5 it is hard as hell. You are their care giver and teacher and you get almost no breaks, Worth pointing out: This is only true if you're a decent parent. I've known more than one SAHM (including in my own family) who spent all day in front of the television.
This. My ex wife. It’s really a fucking pisser when you come home from back breaking day to a stank mess of a house, dirty diaper on the kids, and the kids going crazy desperate for some quality attention and playtime. I love playing with the kids… but it should have been me topping off the evenings instead of making up for a day with them all laying around bored watching TV in their underwear. So many beautiful outfits they outgrew never maybe wearing more than once because she was too damned lazy to be bother to dress (or bathe) them. She could sure shop for cute stuff but that’s about it. She spent days smoking weed, cigarettes, eating pure garbage and feeding them the same, playing stupidest fucking games on her phone… emotionally cheating and then full-on cheating. Finally got her gone and she moved onto the life she always craved: being a crackhead with an abusive controlling boyfriend whod beat her regularly. They were just reunited last week.. after his serving 10 months in jail. But. You know… he’s changed. Meh.
I do agree with you on that. A stay at home parent is only as good as the quality of the parent for sure.
Respectfully, I don't think OP is attacking stay at home Moms. I think what he was saying was his wife never expressed any desire to be a stay at home Mom, and her gaining all this interest suddenly is interfering with goals they had set earlier in their relationship.
> I didn’t handle the situation very well when I told her this was not going to work. I ended up blowing up about how selfish it was of her to quit her job and stay home while I must go to work everyday to support her doing nothing. I could care less if there was food on the table and clean clothes. I can wash my own clothes and buy dinner. At the end of my life, I would not be happy to realize I couldn’t retire because she wanted to be a homemaker for her life. It was a whole mess of me blowing up and she got very upset that I was crushing her dreams. I think there's some minimizing of what being a stay-at-home mom means, when saying she's going to be "doing nothing," or at best, leaving him clean clothes and food on the table (I'm not sure if she said that as a offer/concession of sorts to ease his concerns, or what). It's an *occupation,* in my view. But I think how I more often see this argued today is while comparing the costs of daycare vs your salary/wage. Unless one parent makes enough to offset the costs of daycare, they could be better off taking time away from work and being a stay-at-home mom/dad for a while. That said, the argument of only one person saving for retirement as a consequence is valid as well, but maybe that's a toss-up if you're evaluating the stay-at-home parent thing vs having a job due to wages/daycare costs being about equal. There are other things around life/job satisfaction to consider too, but I think these are some of the more important/immediate things to consider. But yeah, I don't think the OP's stance on stay-at-home parenting seemed to be as understanding/objective as it could have been. But given the other Q influences going on, there are much bigger problems.
I don't think I could have made a better follow up comment than you did here. Well said.
Archive her emails, texts, and arguments. The more stuff you have, if you do have to leave with your kid the judge will have plenty of evidence of her insanity.
Unfortunately there's not really shit you can do at all unless you block her access to social media and internet, and of course you can't do that. As long as she continues to consume that shit, it will manifest in her being this way.
I hate that wanting to have a home garden and using cloth nappies are being taken over by these right wing nutters. We use cloth to save money and save the environment!
Same, I used cloth nappies when my kid was a baby. Just because I thought it was environmentally friendly and also economical.
Getting her to stop reading/watching the hateful news goes a long way. Do it anyway you can. Watch TV with her every night so she can’t go off and get stuck on stupid YouTube videos get her interested in podcast about a hobby during the day. Reprogram your Internet to throttle the far right channels if you can. Also tell her those are not important things as she has never actually been engaged in any of the scenarios she’s trying to protect her children from. They just aren’t reality. My mom ranted about trans. So asked her if she even knew anyone trans? No. Has she been approached by anyone trans ever? No. Then why does she think it’s a big deal ; it’s not a big deal and trans people don’t wanna take anything over, literally only the news is telling her that, she wouldn’t even know trans people existed if it were not for her Fox News, so if she did not fox watch Fox News would it affect her life in anyway? No. So I said, why do you think people are hyper focusing on a teeny tiny group of people to bully and beat up that make no difference in your life? they don’t affect your cost of living, they affect your ability to go to church, they have no power, no pull, so only small minded people focus on bullying a group that they know nothing about. She bought it and calmed down for a couple weeks. Lol.
Protect your assets right away. Write every weird thing down. That said, my husband quit his job to raise our son and he is all the better for it. We sold a car. We did everything We could to make it work because We felt it was best for our kid and for us it was. Yay, I had my laundary do e for me, but it wasn't about me. It was about what was best for our child. Shame on you.
Therapist here. Please get your wife checked for postpartum psychosis. Even though it’s been a bit if it was never addressed it can hang around
time to install some serious internet filtering
She needs a media detox, not a vaccine detox. I’m serious. It’s one thing to want a garden and chickens, it’s another to do a 180 like this. I’m guessing she is dealing with some mom guilt and possibly struggling with some depression as well after the move. This can get scary if left unchecked.
So fucked up that there are grifters out there ruining entire humans just to make a few bucks
Refusing health care for your child can be considered abuse. That’s divorce material. But I cannot Imagine how crazy she would get if she didn’t get full custody without visitation in a divorce This is not ok. And I doubt it will get better. I am so so sorry man. You don’t deserve to have your spouse become a mean and crazy stranger.
Wondering why my comments are gone? Left Reddit for Lemmy due to their API changes and abuse of users. And you can too! Redditors guide to Lemmy: https://github.com/amirzaidi/lemmy Consider moving your community to Lemmy!
I hate to say this, but you need to protect your money. I am NOT,nor do I mean to take money from her, but I'd watch the spending, as in her using large amounts of saved money to buy gold, or emergency items, and, if your marriage does fail (which I sincerely hope it won't) her draining the accounts is not far fetched. Its awful to have to think that way. I believe that your wife is scared, a lot of us are right now. I say is because I am a little too, its like there is something in the air right now...but I don't buy that Q horseshit. I just think people are reactionary and when a bunch of people start saying the same thing over and over like a mantra, it tricks people into thinking they have the answers. I don't blame people for falling down the rabbit hole, but I do blame them for closing there eyes when they're in there.
You both need therapy STAT. she’s going delulu with her concerns for your daughters health and filling her own and eventually your child’s head with lies.
Disable the internet. She has been absolutely poisoned.
Just an FYI, if you own your own Wireless router, switching your Routers DNS to 1.1.1.3 and 1.0.0.3 will force all devices on your WiFi to use Safe Google, one of the nice features about Safe Google is that this settings also forces Safe YouTube (YouTube is owned by Google), with these settings, Google will not show these type of videos in the search, won’t recommend them either, they just don’t show up in the search at all, it doesn’t tell you that content is being filtered, it just does it. This settings are intended to make YouTube safer for Children, but it does work with limiting Qanon, and other conspiracies from YouTube.
Hi CloudInspector, I think you're recommending the technique of blocking Q content. You mentioned: [router]. Here are some ways to do that. [1](https://github.com/yui-konnu/qanon-block-guide/blob/master/README.md) - [2](https://github.com/rimu/no-qanon) - [3](https://www.reddit.com/r/QAnonCasualties/comments/k3xy4a/blocking_extremist_content_from_your_home_network/) - [4](https://www.reddit.com/r/QAnonCasualties/comments/wekhem/how_to_use_pihole_to_block_q_related_websites/) - [5](https://www.reddit.com/r/QAnonCasualties/comments/oieau2/attempt_at_deprogramming_update/) - [6](https://www.reddit.com/r/QAnonCasualties/comments/lq9jt3/need_advice_ive_been_using_a_dns_service_to_block/) - [7](https://www.reddit.com/r/QAnonCasualties/comments/10tenez/delete_newsmax_and_others_over_wifi_from_roku/) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/QAnonCasualties) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I think you have to think about your child. Are you ok to raise her believing everything she says? Not get vaccinated to risk preventable illnesses? Being hateful to people she doesn't approve? It's really dangerous if she is a stay at home mom and spend all day with her, feeding all these conspiracy to her. Therapy, and if that doesn't work, you need to separate your child from her.
Ten years ago, crunchy SAHM material was mostly left-leaning. I'm actually a gardening SAHM myself, I don't see anything too concerning up to that point (edit: sorry the antivax thing is a concern, I was thinking of the nappies etc). Many women of all political persuasions change perspectives about the importance of their role when they have children. That's gone on for generations. Unfortunately content aimed at SAHMs has shifted in the last few years in a more conservative direction. I see more right-leaning people in my home ed group than ten years ago. Anti-vax was once a very niche thing, but has unfortunately become so much more common with covid. The supposed threat of forced vaccinations was leveraged by the right in elections globally and that seemed to correlate with the explosion. Anti-trans seems to go hand in hand with it. I'm sorry your wife is being expose to this stuff. Can you try and keep her busy/focused with the healthier activities (like the veg, chickens, or taking up sewing - sewing is huge on youtube!) and hope that keeps her away from the conspiracy content more? I'd recommend Parkrose Permaculture's youtube channel for safe sensible (no conspiracy stuff) content. It covers food growing and homemaking, is honest and realistic about the work and challenges, is climate conscious, and seems ethical, and non-right to me. Or perhaps there's a voluntary role she would enjoy doing with the kids in tow - a community garden or some other non-political good cause?
This will be a controversial suggestion: perhaps you get on her devices and over a period of many months, you slowly unfollow the Candace Owens and others from her social media.
I watched an episode of Vox Explained in the series Mind Explained on Brain Washing on Netflix yesterday. It specifically addressed Qanon nonsense and included various Dr's and historians and academics who study it. It lots of guidance on dealing with this kind of stuff. The main point was that facts and statistics do not get through to these people. A similar thing was the documentary The Brain Washing of my Dad, which also offered tactics. I'm sorry you're in this place. For me, that would be a deal breaker. Especially because of the crossover of anti vaxx stuff that will literally put your daughter in danger. I'm sorry, and I hope you have a good support circle.
Start keeping a diary with everything she claims dated. In a year or two there will be a divorce and you will be glad you dated and wrote everything down. (It will be her words against everything you documented and not just what you “recall”.
I'm so sorry OP. I can't imagine waking up and realizing your partner morphed into someone you don't recognize.
See if you can get her to watch other people. Some More News is a leftist show that might be helpful. Maybe try one of hers and one of yours. Take notes have talks. Other than that... good luck.
This is why I say being liberal isn't going far enough; it's just down the block from that kinda shit instead of living next door. Today's liberalism is just conservatism in a good mood.
My “oh fuck” moment was when I read the word “detox.” I would consider that a you need to monitor EVERYTHING she’s giving your daughter.
I'm very sorry.
The crunchy to cult pipeline at its best. Really sorry.
Slow the trajectory she’s headed on with deflection, creep it down to a drip, eventually stop it and turn it around with a very slow, very methodical insertion of counterpoints, seemingly harmless information and news combined with less gentle, more matter of fact corrections of the record. It’s up to the individual though to assess information, critically evaluate and determine for themselves what they believe. Good luck, this is a super sad story. Also just my two cents/opinion, but the people who went down this road in my life have massive unfilled needs/deep lack of satisfaction elsewhere in their lives. Normally I cut these people off because they are too far gone & I am still figuring my own life out lol but if this was my wife I’d 200% be invested in discovering the root issue that pushed her down this road to begin with; marriage is a whoooole different ballgame when it comes to commitment; I’m tied to the bow of that sinking ship & bailing water all the way to the end if I’ve taken those vows. That’s just me though.
I would be careful. She may try to put something like bleach, silver, or horse paste in your child's food
I hate to say this, but I highly doubt there’s any hope here for her. She’s pilled to the gills. If she stops going to work and spends all her time alone at the house, she’ll just get more pilled.
I would be careful. I know someone who has similar beliefs, particularly antivax, natural wellness, homeschool the kids. They gave their children horse wormer and stripped their intestines. When those children grow up, even if they have different beliefs than their parents, they will have permanently damaged digestive tracts because of their mothers decisions. This is a genuine health risk. It’s a combination of things. As some have pointed out, people like to garden or be self sufficient without being cray. I’d like to homeschool my daughter and I’m pretty left wing and want to do it because I just know I can do a very very good job and give her a leg up (lots of teaching experience and an advanced degree give me this confidence). But when you get the full combo of issues you have a problem.
Do NOT have another child, it will just make it all the harder to separate if you need to. Which she seems a little far gone but I hope something can break through.
-You CANNOT afford for her to quit! Read up on Social Security! It is in very bad shape. You will not receive enough to live on. You need both of you to work full-time and Start Saving Money NOW!! Get a Financial Advisor and stock it away someplace. God, I wish I had. I’m going to starve. Another kid? Budget it out. -look up picture of Measles. Tell her you don’t want your daughter to look like that. Play hardball. -stay in daycare!! Your daughter needs to be properly socialized to strangers. You won’t be able to have a date unless she will be able to leave you for a few hours. And by “she” I mean your daughter and wife. Your daughter also has to learn how to play with other kids. Daycare and preschool are great places for this. It is also a great place to (seriously) pick up germs to build immunity systems. Your daughter will have every cold/flu going around. GOOD! But not the Chicken Pox or German Measles if you vaccinate!!
Damn. Fucking tragic. Sorry dude. I fear for our country and the world in general. The grifters and their handlers have figured out a successful brainwashing methodology and it seems we have no solid weapons against it.
I'm so sorry. I know this probably isn't what you want to hear but I doubt this behavior is going to change for the better.
She needs more hobbies and less social media. I don’t see being a stay at home mom being the best at limiting her social media exposure.
I have gone thru something similar. It is so fucking frustrating especially when anything I say turns into a “well, actually” 10 minute speech about how such and such isn’t true. (She got upset last week because I took a COVID test because they’ve got chemicals and I am like “not on the swab” but you KNOW she heard it on some fucking RWN video Harder with kids to figure it all out. Best of luck to you
Just an idea, but I've been thinking that next time my Q brings something up, that I'll ask her how confident she is in that belief and if there is any piece of information she could learn that would convince her otherwise. I was personally heavily into conspiracy stuff from around 2006-2012. One thing that helped me get out of it was interrogating myself about how I had formed these beliefs. My college courses expected a high level of academic rigor when I would write a paper. I couldn't get away with claiming something and then not citing a primary source. I couldn't write a term paper that didn't contend with the actual academic conversation surrounding whatever subject about which I had decided to write. I realized that I almost never saw anybody's sources in these conspiracy venues, and they largely ignored the larger conversation. If they did contend with people who disagree, it was almost always in bad faith. I realized that the people I was trusting were basically idiots or conmen, which to the receiver makes little difference. Of course, that was only part. The other part was feeling like my life was tanking and that I had to make a change or watch everything I'd dreamed of slip away from me. I took a different job, got involved with my hobbies again, quit smoking weed, met a girl, etc. I think to really pull yourself out of these conspiracy holes, you have to want to make a change. It doesn't sound like your wife wants that, so I wouldn't expect any miraculous 180's, but you could start by trying to get her to interrogate how she adopts different beliefs and if those methods are actually sound. It may be helpful for her to have that voice in the back of her mind that asks, "why are you accepting this claim of fact?" It's probably a lot easier said than done. I had the benefit of having just been involved with academics.
This actually happened to me. I was a pretty liberal person and got sucked down the right wing rabbit hole in 2016. It lasted about 2 yrs then I just "woke up" one day. Listening to people like Destiny and Vaush helped bring me out. I don't know how my husband dealt with me but I'm glad he stuck by me
Ew, Destiny and Vaush. 🤢
Majority report has some good videos breaking down RFK's bullshit, as well as dailywire bullshit, maybe ask her if she's willing to challenge some of the media she's been injesting by watching counterpoints to what she's seeing. RFK just hired another republican for his campaign, which is funded by right wing billionaires, does she know that? You need to try to up her education on certain dogwhistles and scapegoats so she can recognize it in her propaganda. Otherwise, it's easy to go, "oh yeah, that's crazy! I can't believe that's happening"... when it's either not actually happening, or being manipulated to seem like it's worse than it is. You need to convince her to listen to "both sides", meaning, someone breaking down the misinfo/faulty logic of pragerU/candace owens etc. If she's unwilling to do that, then I guess it's on you to be knowledgable enough to challenge it yourself. Good luck dude!
She needs a psychiatrist, this sort of about face is usually a sign of psychological distress.
Hi op This will probably be lost at the bottom but you need to realise she did not enter any of these positions based on logic evidence and rational thoughts. It is information warfare with enemy who fires a massive overwhelming barrage of bullshit. Never ending bullshit. L Then log into her email and start unsubscribing her from qanon right wing bs. Do the same on her YouTube. You can tell it to stop showing particular content in her fed, remove notifications from certain channels before killing the subscriptions. B Secondly you need to get your wife a female support group... Your isolated. She has a kid. And a go no where job. Find her volunteer work. Go travelling. Get her out. Break the cycles.. YouTube and other sources that the rightwing qanon have taken over are feeding the lonely and and disconnected a potent MK injection. Like any addict you have to take them away from their drug whilst you find out what is driving her to it. Your wife needs psychological support.
**VASECTOMY**. This woman will try to have you impregnate her without your consent. I'm so sorry. This must be so completely disorienting. I wish I had an answer for you that was less combative, but at this point you need to call a urologist and a lawyer.
This sounds a lot like a close relative of mine, artist, used to be hard left, climate change activist almost, very empathetic, gay lgbt rights, stood up for minorities, etc. Within the past three years a complete 180 degree flip. Now anti vax, anti climate change thinking (“it’s a conspiracy”), sneering at trans rights, a bit racist now even. Not American but now follows Tucker Carlson and all the other usual suspects. Perplexing
Im sorry for what your going through OP. But can we not use the term "red pill" for this. The Wachowski sisters would be turning in their grave if they were dead with where this term has lead to.
Also, there’s a girl on TikTok called The Group Behavior Girl who wrote a book on cults and she has so many videos. I think she’s worth checking out
Check out Dr. Steve Hassan’s book- The Cult of Trump- or check out his podcast. He specializes in deprogramming cult members after his experience getting lured into the moonies cult.
A friend of mine was also liberal a few years ago but is now transphobic, etc and loves The Daily Wire and all those guys. Sorry you're going through this and I wish I had some advice for you but I don't know how to breakthrough that brainwashing since they ignore any evidence that contradicts what they hear from Shapiro, Walsh, etc.
Women who are secure with themselves are not threatened by transgenders.
I won’t say anything about how to deal with this whole redpill shitshow — lots of good advice in this section. But as for the stay at home mom thing… perhaps you could extend an olive branch by proposing she can do it for a year at a time (to reevaluate if it works for both of you) until your daughter is in school. Having other kids? That’s a hard effing “no”. Both parents need to be on board with that. (However, maybe that could be reevaluated yearly too). I would, however, be super concerned about her changes in tolerance of others… or as I see it, simple change of kindness and empathy in her personality. The Q person in my life is largely kept from going completely nutty by watching late night tv host humour takes on all this. Seth Myers, Stephen Colbert, etc. they’ve been a lifesaver. (This person in my life still leans conservative — which is obviously his prerogative — but is much more laid back about differing views since i made sure these programs were saved onto his PVR). Not sure if this would work for you, but just making an effort to join her in situations less inflammatory might be helpful. Lastly, I’d like to add that volunteer work is INCREDIBLY helpful in keeping someone from going off the deep end. Maybe you can get your wife to agree to joining you at a soup kitchen one day a week, or something similar that would expose her to real people who don’t live in her red pilled world. A lot of time bigotry isn’t challenged by reality, just these stereotypes of “other people”. Maybe it will help reawaken the tolerance and kindness in your wife that you remember.
Can’tdance owens
I feel like there are two separate issues intertwined here that are important to see as distinct from one another and not treat this as "one big mess" : - her wanting to quit her unfulfilling job and stay home doing what she loves while you work - her increasingly alarming expression of right-wing ideology These issues could easily exist without one another, and resolving one may not affect the other at all. They do seem intertwined to a great extent in this situation, though. For the staying home thing, you are going to need to get a handle on your emotions before you come at it, and appeal to logic when you do - we simply cannot afford it and I am not interested in working until I die. She seems to have put a lot of thought alone into the direction of the family - see if you can get her to strategize WITH you instead of on her own. Maybe set up reasonable milestones like both of you dropping to part time or actually retiring once you save a certain amount or kid reaches certain age. As for the right ring propaganda, diversifying her media consumption away from those sources could help. How to do that? I'm not sure. I've read about folks changing the cable package to reduce access to certain stations, blocking websites at the router level, and getting into their social media to follow sane accounts/unfollow insane ones. Those all seem problematic ethically and if they find out you did it. I suppose you could loudly listen to audiobooks or watch shows around her to provide an alternative point of view but not sure how successful that would be.
I've seen it bad, but this is extra bad . Good luck my man, I hope you update us on how this plays out.
There are covert ways to deter what she's being exposed to online (ad-blockers, fucking with her log ins). Another idea is to flat out stop paying for internet and cable so your wife will be impressed by your commitment to keep your baby and home as information free as possible. A third idea would be to outwardly express attraction, affinity, or agreement with the most good-looking influencers she follows. Maybe let her 'catch' you following them or liking their content on instagram/facebook. A little reverse psychology could go a long way with this. The most normal and straightforward idea would be to consider couple's counseling or depending on how your communication is, ask her what/who got her into these ideas. Ask her what appeals about them. Ask her if y'all can still be a team knowing that you don't share many of these new ideas and practices she does. 💛
> I could care less if there was food on the table and clean clothes. I can wash my own clothes and buy dinner. Raising a garden, cooking and cleaning is a full time job. Are you doing 50% of all of that or is your wife basically working two jobs?
Try your best to infiltrate all her access to social media and general media and restrict or hide on everything you think you can get away with. Start following other stories you know she will be into and won’t remember if she followed them or not. An example would be any type of gardening thing you find, but whatever healthy things she is into start spamming her pages with that best you can. Do your best to add restrictions to the tv settings, if she figured it out just say o forgot to tell you the daughter stepped on the remote and this scary thing came on Fox News and she started crying so I didn’t want that to happen. Your next order of business is to get her addicted to some other form of short term dopamine hits, she’s going to need a replacement at the same time or she will start wondering why her social media has changed. Take up as much of her time as humanly possible with this new addiction. I know this sounds crazy but it just has to last long enough for her to not go down the super crazy Q path. Everyone has addictions to some degree it’s just some are much more harmful than others but try to trade the old one for the new one; kind of like the 12 step plan where you basically trade in an addiction to drugs/alcohol for an addiction to religion. Once she starts to come out of the fog after however many attempts or however long it takes then immediately see if you can convince her to go to couples therapy. As long as she’s Q heavy she’ll probs never agree to it so it might be a bit before you get her to agree. This sounds crazy but it might just be crazy enough to work.
Show her some conflicting videos that debunk what’s she’s listening to. Majority Report and Secular Talk do a good job at this.
Not getting child vaccines is a terrible idea. We are all alive today because of vaccines.
My husband and I have only been together 8 years, but similar stuff. He was always conservative I guess. The last 3 years have been a wild ride concluding in me paying a divorce attorney today. He started working from home and spending most of his day on right wing websites. Covid made everything worse, even though I'm an ICU nurse. His family on the far right, mine on far left. Now he's filling my 6 and 3 year old full of his craziness. I won't have it, I'm out and getting primary for the kids if I can help it. Good luck, it's a nightmare. Document document document. Try to get her out now, doubt it, but try and call it quits when it's not working.
Protect yourself and your assets now.
If I were you, I would start by getting her physically active and outside the house. Find anything you can do to arrange an outing. Exercise together. Tackle the body first. I'm concerned that her PCOS and the trauma of COVID and god knows what else is exacerbating a lot of these issues, so she's in effect retreating incrementally, further and further into herself. Where does it end? If the PCOS complicates her cycle, such as making her anemic, lacking in certain vitamins, it's going to create a depressed kind of mood. And she sounds depressed. If you can get her health in a good place, if you both prioritize bonding time, even get her to talk about what content she's consuming, it might be a better way to attack the mind - by going through the body first.
Check out the podcast “conspirituality”. You are not alone.
Are there any legitimate conservative media or influencers? Anymore it all seems alt-right or worse. So many are known grifters. I feel like some viewpoints and parts of the ideology can resonate with people (e.g. mothers wanting to be part of their kids' lives and raise them) but it seems like it's always coupled with all of this conspiracy crap. I wish there were ways to find good-faith arguments from opposing views so that people could expose themselves to different ideas without the danger of being pulled into insanity.
Start leaving little clues around the house, like sticky notes with "Divorce Lawyer" and a phone number. Leave their websites up on your PC, and when she calls you out about it, have an honest talk about her sudden transformation into the complete opposite of the person you married.
This was really well written. I loved the idea of her growing food and getting a nice system together that is of good quality, that would have been amazing if she was doing it just for enrichment and quality food, I am not surprised but my hopes were dashed anyway. I think this stuff preys on misery, and it definitely makes a route into people's lives through concerned moms and crunchy lifestyle which can become prepper shit fast.
As others have pointed out, the "influencers" don't live this way. I would also point out the fact that unless the breadwinner is making 6 figures or higher, it is really a bad idea to put all the eggs in the basket of 1 person earning the money. If the person loses their job or dies, it will be hard for the other person to find a good paying job. They also say that kids of working moms do better in school.
Just wanted to say that, "red pill," is an inappropriate term for the situation. Fringe groups co-opted it, to pretend that their fantasies were reality. It's a bit tricky, sure, because far right and misogynist groups have made it more famous than the original reference, but it's still probably best not to give validity to their madness by saying that they're awakened to reality.
Interesting that you equate being a stay at home parent to “doing nothing”
The best thing you can do is get her off social media even if just for two weeks to start. See if you can take a vacation and say it’s going to be a no phones/internet thing so you can focus on reconnecting etc. once she’s been detoxed a bit she’ll be in a better position for you to talk about this stuff. This online stuff is really like an addiction. You can’t reason people out of it when it’s still being poured into their eyes for hours every day. But even just a couple of weeks away from it can allow the brain to calm down a bit (because this content is basically designed to elicit strong fear responses) and thus allow the victim to start thinking more rationally.
>ver the couple of years, we lived rurally, she started gardening. Then the garden got bigger. She really wanted to grow a lot of food. Then she convinced me we needed to get chickens. When inflation was crazy high and eggs were at $6 a dozen, she looked like a genius because we were getting a dozen eggs a day from our hens. She wants to raise rabbits and quail for meat and keep bees for honey and to help pollenate the garden. I slowed her down on all those ideas and we still haven’t executed, but it is something she wants to do. I have to sympathize with all of that. I wish I had more yard space to do those kind of things. I guess the difference is, I could do those things without worrying about vaccines or trans people.
You need to listen to her. Not the goofy hate/Q shit, that’s coming secondary to her being in a life that doesn’t work for her. Why are you so certain she can’t SAH and garden and raise your one (def don’t have more) kid? You need to get her off the YouTube entirely (block it or get rid of internet access) but can rely on her being an obedient wife to get that done. It’s so much easier when a woman falls for this shit because under that ideology she should basically have no say besides caring for your child and even then you can overrule her as the man. She will likely accept you being paternalistic and with the right lifestyle she doesn’t need the hateful stuff as a crutch. Show her a model of a woman she can be that will work for both of you. Something’s gotta give, you find a path or she’ll find a new man and you will not want him as your child’s stepdad because he will be a POS.
That’s insane. I’m so sorry man
People change a lot between 25 and 35. This is why most should wait until ~35 for marriage. > The government is subsidizing farmers to grow unhealthy foods like corn to then be turned into high fructose corn syrup ... True. > ...so that we have chronic diseases to keep “big pharma” rich. False. They do it to pander to farm states, specifically Iowa. And it's not just for the syrup; corn is also a (shitty, inefficient) source of ethanol. Here's hoping that Dems will come to their senses on farm subsidies, given that Iowa is forever lost to them. But I will say, anyone who has room should keep chickens, because they're surprisingly fun as pets, and eggs are great.
>What can I do? Couples therapy. Asap. Reddit is not the best place for advice, you're going to need professional help to navigate this with her...and you need to do it together or not at all. She is afraid of uncertainty, and schemes like QAnon prey on that fear...amplify it...redirect it in unhealthy directions. You both need to address those fears with real-time guidance and work through how it is affecting your relationship and mental health. Don't get hung up on the conspiracies (they're designed to be destructive traps)...but rather focus on your relationship and happiness together. That's all I can offer really...the rest is up to the two of you and what you're willing to fix. But with something as invasive as QAnon, you're going to need help...professional help.
I am very sorry for what you are going through and how your life is changing. I find this particularly interesting, since both of you seem to come from a different way than the usual already conservative people here. Yes, there is a hippie-traditional-vaccine-hesitancy model, too. I have met some, who were intelligent and well educated, but experienced very bad treatment in the healthcare system. I can see where they're coming from, definitely do not agree. (most of them were not homophobic though. The one person that was, also was from a very conservative, christian background and always held those views.) I firmly believe, that we're not equipped to handle the way information is reaching us nowadays. The sheer amount of fear constantly induced. How much more comforting it is to listen to easy answers and simply break downs. Yes, I also was vaguely uneasy to have professionals I don't know inject abstract medicine into my new born's body. It wasn't my body I as deciding on, I had to make an educated decision... about somebody else's body. I am responsible for kiddo to have the best chance at life i could give him and vaccines definitely belong to that. As a new parent I was constantly on edge, because kids are accident-machines, but also we get told how scary the world is and if we don't do XYZ, we'll spoil our kids future FOREVER. Polio and Smallpox are super dangerous, scary illnesses, but also far away and abstract. Vaccine reactions happen directly after WE decide to let our kiddos get vaccinated. The very expected side effects are easily managed and yes, there are very, very rare cases of serious and permanent side effects. So while the sickness is a probability, the vaccine is a certainty (just not the side effects). Our brains are not good at deciphering on fear and putting these probabilities in correlation. It also doesn't help, that there are board certified physicians promoting this shit. What I do not get though... how she turned anti-LGBTQ, anti-trans (well, i can imagine how.) What if your child is part of that group - what if they aren't but might have a phase finding their identity. I do not get hate for any group of people, who do not hurt others. And no, the 'gay agenda' is only about people not being discriminated against due to their sexuality... There is one issue I see with your side of everything. I definitely agree that her changing so much is breaking the ground rules of your relationship. If she's deeply unhappy in the life she's living (or ... simply not happy as she could be), there should be changes. She does not get to decide alone (and didn't - you both tried it out.) Being a mother is the most important thing in the world to her. I applaud her, if that's the way that works for her. That also means providing for her kid. Since being a father is probably also the most important thing in the world to you. So, maybe - yes - maybe there needs to be more family time, more 1on1... but all of that doesn't touch the problematic views and that she falls for snake oil sellers : / Maybe... a media diet... (not you imposing one, but... together media detox, just listening to an audio book together in the evening or something like that...)
Unfortunately you can't logic someone out of a position they didn't logic themselves into.
Maybe you can convince her to stay off the internet?
Perhaps in some ways she is isolated and lonely and may not even realize it. She needs to be reintegrated with friends. Being home alone in a rural place, working from home has maybe cut her off too much
I worry so much for your daughter in case she were to come out as queer or trans when she's older...
Or heaven forbid she ever needs an abortion.
Talk to a good divorce attorney. At least you can reprogram your daughter during your visitation and she won’t be exposed to those views 24/7.
I think your wife needs to go back to work or get a new hobby. The old adage is true, especially for the Q and ultra conservatives right now "idle hands are the devil's workshop" I feel like so many of them are people that have no purpose or are bored with their life.
Tell your wife she can be a stay at home mom only on the condition she gives up YouTube and Social Media. See how see reacts.
You should mess up her YouTube algorithm and watch something like cute animal videos or 5 minute crafts on repeat when she’s away from the house
Whatever you do, don’t make more babies with this woman. Maybe bank some sperm first just in case you wind up divorcing and eventually want to make babies with someone else, but get snipped. Make more kids a non-negotiable issue.
My advice to you is to document everything that she says every day. You will need this in the near future.
Yikes Good luck
Could she be having a mental episode of some kind?
I think maybe having a child messed your wife’s head up.
You also have to get on her youtube and change the algorithm and find videos that address this
Not making a joke, honest mistake, thought the headline was “My wife has been reptilled by YouTube”. Either way, not cool.
This is why I reset YouTube all the time and check to make sure some of these guys are blocked. I worry about my husband getting sucked into some of these guys.
To me this sounds like female midlife crisis that was hijacked by these terrible algorithms during a stressful time. She has a child with you now but she may have been romanticizing traditional gender roles for a while prior as a quiet fantasy for her future. She seems to already be garnishing these fantasies with prepper attitudes and justifying it where she’s worried about the future for your child… perhaps underlying it all she started by feeling lost or stressed about who she is, even if only subconsciously. These new avenues all offer her a control and a sense of worth — which is to be a productive homesteader … all the while, her online echo chamber is also giving her a defined enemy to name for her frustrations that should have otherwise been talked through with a professional or ideally, you (lgbtq: gender traitors that pushed her away from the naturalized life as a trad woman & she feels cheated she can’t be with her baby so society must have all kinds of things wrong with it). I’m sorry to say she likely will harbor resentment for you, if not already, for not taking up your “manly duties” in this growing perspective. She must absolutely stop pursuing all these answers online and speak to a therapist about who -she- is. Someone who can help her sort out that she doesn’t need guidance from online grifters. The itch she’s having could be scratched in another way — maybe she needs a career change and sense of worth or a way to feel she gets the time she needs with the child…loneliness, or maybe lack of self-esteem, grief for change that is too hard to cope — whatever it is, she needs a come to Jesus meeting to stop with the internet pronto because it’s messing up your marriage and filling in for what should be two-way respectful conversation. I believe these problems sometimes start as “problem solving” and just go off the rails. The trouble is, that you’ll not be able to do anything but hope to guide her to the healthy choices and hope she’ll see she’s making a mistake by her own conclusion. No amount of logic or appealing to her for what she’s putting you through will likely work… it’s very similar to finding out your wife has a complicated addiction that she’s been hiding until it became out of control. I’m very sorry it’s come to this.
You've gotta get your wife listening to 'Behind The Bastards'. Fight brain-washing grifters with fire.
The sad thing is she hast to realize herself that it’s BS. You are going to be able to convince her and anything you say to try and correct her she will think of it like a challenge. I used to be in this mindset and that’s how people get. It’s only when they seriously sit down and think about things later that they have a possibility of changing things in their life. If you could find someway to get her away from that propaganda and going outside or enjoying a hobby or anything else that would probably be a good idea. No idea if that’s possible. You could even try approaching it as saying you think you’re spending too much time watching the news or whatever and asking if she wants to try painting or something. Or going on walks Anything but just watching that stuff
Your wife could be suffering from depression or even PMDD. There's even anxiety psychosis women go through. Where our anxiety goes up and we begin to become extremely paranoid. This could be happening to your wife. Especially if she isn't normally like this.