Modern manners
Yikes, we have an anti-vaxxer in the family – and she’s a hardcore wake-the-hell-up one at that
You never think it’s going to happen to you, do you? For months I’ve been reading about it and scoffing, but now it’s reached my family: we have an anti-vaxxer among us. Not just someone who’s a bit nervous about the jab, either. A proper, hardcore, youlot-need-to-wake-the-hell-up crusader.
Dubious posts had been appearing on her social media for a while. But last weekend, while various of us were staying at my sister’s house in Kent, the family member in question forwarded a link with the message “Can I leave you to get it out to as many people as possible please?” I clicked on the link, which led to 18 videos totalling almost eight hours of “evidence” that Covid is a hoax. I clicked on a few videos and, long story short, they were offering the sort of conspiracy messages that you see scrawled on the back of the loo door in the pub. “Masks are a key component of the cabal’s agenda”, Bill Gates is an evil lizard and so on.
We laughed over lunch. My brother replied simply saying “Still angry then?” My stepmother asked her to stop sending nonsense. My sister replied saying “Please don’t send me this stuff!” although later realised she’d misspelt “don’t” and actually typed “dot”.
The next day, we were sent another link to a story that claimed the Australian authorities were gassing those in quarantine, and the situation escalated. This is a family newspaper so I can’t relate the language used but suffice to say my brother, who fought back, was accused of being part of the male liberal elite and told that he personified “all the world’s evils”.
We stopped laughing then because it was less funny. More troubling and sad.
Plenty of other families are facing similar. One friend says her mother sits in front of the computer all day reading virus conspiracies. A 60-something man recently wrote an anonymous newspaper article about his 30-year marriage being ripped apart by his wife doing the same, lost down a rabbit hole of lunatic theories. Last month, a Mumsnet post about one user’s anti-vax brother ran to nearly 400 messages of others reporting family members who’d also become ensnared by these claims.
What to do? Do you avoid the topic, or try and gently discuss it? Do you crack jokes about being 5G activated? According to one Mumsnet poster, the only solution is to change the subject. “What they’re doing this weekend (good). Bill Gates is trying to kill us all (ignore).” It’s difficult when you’re under bombardment, though. When my stepmother tried to remonstrate again, she was patronised and asked why she was too scared to watch a few videos. Trying to argue with this sort of defence is like wrestling in Fairy Liquid.
I understand completely that some people are vaccine hesitant and have wholly legitimate concerns, but there’s a vast difference between hesitation and forwarding on dodgy links to friends and family in the belief that you’re on the right side of “the most dangerous war ever waged”. That’s according to the bearded, middle-aged man who made those 18 videos, although having sat through various of his homilies, I wouldn’t trust him to babysit my pot plants. Oh, for the halcyon days when all we fought about was the Northern Irish backstop.