At the time the news of the Sandy Hook shooting broke, I was a highschooler in a vo-tech school in Connecticut.
Friday in late December are usually unserious days in K-12! People had their sights set on winter break and work was thin. But I remember that day had a lot of commotion, a lot of seriousness, and then a lot of silence.
Being a vo-tech school, we had students from all over the state. Some kids left or were taken out early, some of them having had ties to the families in Newtown. Throughout the day, our school got emptier and emptier.
A lot of students didn't return to the building for the whole week or so until winter break started. Even though the seriousness weaned over the days, there was an unbreakable eeriness that just comes with the building being so sparsely populated. Our highschool was a small one (about 400 students total) which exacerbated it.
I lived with my parents at the time and I saw my mom gradually become a Sandy Hook "truther" as she fell deep down Facebook rabbitholes. It was bad. Although she eventually came around, that created distance between us that never recovered.
There's a lot of bad and mind-boggling news abound, but this is a very personally satisfying headline.
Hearing about Sandy Hook truthers, and seeing the outcome of the recent US elections, has really shaken my assumptions about how typical people think and process information.
I don't assume that I'm immune from this, or that I'm my not in some media bubble. But it's saddening regardless.
> I saw my mom gradually become a Sandy Hook "truther" as she fell deep down Facebook rabbitholes. It was bad. Although she eventually came around (...)
Mind sharing how she came around? My dad fell a similar hole but I haven't been able to rescue him yet.
She spends almost all of her time on Facebook, and I'm just guessing her feed changed eventually.
I remember her being convinced that the parents weren't reacting like she'd expect a grieving parent to. She was deep in Sandy Hook Truther groups.
I wish I could say it was arguments and logic and reasoning, or the pain being borne by the community around her. But I think she just believes everything she sees on Facebook, and Facebook stopped showing her Sandy Hook Truther stuff.
I'm not in his camp, but trying to play Devil's Advocate for your benefit:
Are you sure that your arguments are more solid than his?
E.g., are you and he both relying on outside source of information, which neither of you have the time / resources / motivation to verify?
And if so, are you and he just assigning different levels of trust in a given source?
When I've been in situations slightly similar to yours, I was disheartened to realize that my own justifications weren't as solid as I originally thought.
That is, I was still pretty well convinced of my own position, but I realized that the main reason for it was a judgment call and intuition, rather than an unassailable argument.
Friday in late December are usually unserious days in K-12! People had their sights set on winter break and work was thin. But I remember that day had a lot of commotion, a lot of seriousness, and then a lot of silence.
Being a vo-tech school, we had students from all over the state. Some kids left or were taken out early, some of them having had ties to the families in Newtown. Throughout the day, our school got emptier and emptier.
A lot of students didn't return to the building for the whole week or so until winter break started. Even though the seriousness weaned over the days, there was an unbreakable eeriness that just comes with the building being so sparsely populated. Our highschool was a small one (about 400 students total) which exacerbated it.
I lived with my parents at the time and I saw my mom gradually become a Sandy Hook "truther" as she fell deep down Facebook rabbitholes. It was bad. Although she eventually came around, that created distance between us that never recovered.
There's a lot of bad and mind-boggling news abound, but this is a very personally satisfying headline.