What to do with old friends?
I have a friend who I find really enraging recenty. We have been friends since we were in kindergarten, but I am finding it nearly impossible to connect with him all of a sudden. I linked something funny about punching nazis and he freaked out about free speech. He says feminism isn't necesary because women are equal, and seems to spend hours laughing at SJW memes. Feminism and social justice is a joke, but Nazis need protecting?
Despite the fact that its enraging, do you abandon a life long friend when he gets sucked down a free speech rabbit hole you can't follow him down?
goof_goat wrote
I guess one answer is it depends on how much you see this person. If you still have to deal with them regularly, it might be worth trying to convert them. if not, maybe just walk away unless you want to do a lot of work trying to convert them. i think sometimes it's good to just say 'we can't hangout anymore if you're going to believe all that bullshit. let me know if you wake up.' or something like that.
in my own life, i literally left the small town full of trump voters i grew up with and do not interact with them anymore at all. sometimes i miss playing video games with them or joking about all our in jokes. but i mean, you move on and find better people.
hooray_for_dead_cops wrote
One of my oldest friends is a Trump supporter. Right after the election, I asked him "bro, did you vote for Trump?" and he goes "fuck no!" but a week later, my girl tells me he's been posting all these right-wing and pro-Trump memes on Facebook. He's always been kind of an insufferable asshole but the whole Trump thing has really pushed me away.
He was never a leftist and is always eager to denounce socialism with "Allende this" and "Allende that" (he's from Chile) and I usually just try to avoid talking politics with him. Since his boy won though, he's gotten worse and he'll bring up politics constantly out of nowhere. I don't use facebook but every now and then my girl will show me some bullshit he posted. It's annoying as shit. And he's a "small business owner" now so he thinks he's all hoity toity.
A few months back, I did some work for him and in the car he's talking about how he worked his way up from the bottom and now he's a success and blah blah blah. I was like "yeah but dude, here you are bitching about people 'stealing' your tax dollars and not working toward success and whatnot but you stole all your clients from your old boss." He didn't have shit to say to that. Not to mention the fact that he was undocumented for damn near 2 decades until after he got married.
I was already keeping my distance a bit but since he's decided to get all political and shit, I'll see how he's doing every few months and wish him a happy birthday since it's a week after mine, but I don't really hang out with him or call him to talk anymore. I didn't drift away because he's a Trump supporter (though that ain't a good look!), I drifted away cause he's a dickhead. If he respected boundaries and wasn't constantly trying to shove his dumbass political beliefs down my throat, it might be a different story.
Mance wrote
I think you define your friends as people you enjoy spending time with. If you do not enjoy spending your time with a person, then I don't think that they are your friend. Friends come and go over time.