Today I learned that a friend of mine from my youth has decided to associate themselves with QAnon and other batshit crazy conspiracy theories. I haven’t seen this person in probably 12+ years, but it’s still very surprising. My immediate thought is that we had a roughly similar upbringing in the same neighborhood, schools, and church and that the education we received (writ large) should have been enough to inoculate us from such nonsense. I mean, it worked for me!
But that’s not how this works, is it? Your adult life and who you surround yourself with into your 20s, 30s and 40s can radically change you. Nature is part of it, but nurture keeps working on you well into adulthood. And social media has transformed what used to be an occasional laugh into a community you suddenly find yourself a part of. And then its too late: these are your friends. This is your identity. This is what you talk about when you’ve got nothing else. It becomes comfortable and you forget what it all actually means.
“Show me your friends and I’ll show you your future.”
Carl Oberg 