As in, not known to you IRL.

I’ve occasionally brought it up before, but a while back in my reddit days I was in a thread where a “professional deprogrammer” had popped in and was talking about how to “deprogram” conservatives and get them to shift left in their views. It centered around restoring their sense of community and belonging with more balanced viewpoint folks IRL and away from their online echo chambers.

I asked them if they had any way to convert someone you encounter wholly online and they said that it was basically impossible, IRL you have a decent chance, but not online.

I’ve been thinking about that quite a bit, so now I’m curious if anybody here has actually gotten an online conservative to come to the dark side light side?

  • FundMECFS@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    52·
    2 days ago

    If it means anything, I started my journey on lemmy as an armchair socialist who in practice was more a welfare capitalism type person. Now I’m a full on anarchist (anti-capitalist). So a steady stream of influence, especially when people make good points and it helps make sense of my suffering, has shifted my political views strongly.

    (But the basis for that shift was already kind of laid out, I’ve been fascinated by anarchist critiques for a while, and one of my favourite political authors was one. But the sort of being in a community of likeminded people [lemmy] and having significant suffering at the hands of the current system that made me more strongly shift towards those views).

    On the other hand. Simply having a few conversations with my vaguely left wing partner about my views has led her to go from vaguely social democrat to anarchist.

    I think the lesson is change is possible, it’s just a slow series of events that add up. Usually there isn’t one thing that straight up switches a person.