When first, second and third impressions were totally SHATTERED?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I work for a company where all the employees work remotely. I’ve met maybe a handful of them over my last 8 or so years…some hang around, others leave, but in that time there has remained a core group and Helen is one of those.

We employees communicate via a chat function, and FB as well. Helen is one of those people I’ve felt most akin to: she is smart, articulate and not at all averse to pulling up other workers when they start spouting racist, sexist or other -ist bullshit on chat. She’s also a mad Animal Libber, but seeing as that sort of shit doesn’t register on my SJW radar, I’m happy to let that pass.

Until yesterday.

Either my coworker has been bullshitting all this time, or she has suffered some sort of head injury. She has turned into a RABID anti-Muslim crusader, posting shite from sites like the Q SOCIETY, totally turning around my assessment of her as a critical-thinking and progressive liberal in a very liberal democracy.

I’m actually devastated. Not because she’s citing ultra right-wing idealogue sites (and using the same hateful language and justifications…there’s plenty of fuckheads out there) but because I had her pegged for a kindred mind for nearly 8 years!

My radar is definitely buggered.

2

Perhaps not. Often times people hold such beliefs without expressing them until they have become very comfortable with you. Then they let it out.

So maybe you’ve just been deceived by someone with a clever facade.

3

Any chance she’s been hacked?

4

Why not message her with something like, “Whoa, Helen! This doesn’t sound like you at all. Have you been hacked?”

Can’t hurt. It does sound very weird for her to change her tune like that.

5

I vote this.
I once dated a woman I considered to have a very good head on her shoulders until one day…
We were sitting on the couch watching coverage of the Presidential election. It was before Obama’s first win. They were talking about Hillary vs Obama. My lady friend then commented how she doesn’t think a woman should be President. And how being President is a man’s job. And how if you haven’t served in the military, you shouldn’t be allowed to be President.

That basically sparked a debate that ended with her saying: “I think I should go now.” and me saying: “Yes, I think you should.”
But yeah, talk about being blindsided. Jeez!

6

People change when you least expect it. You know the joke that a Republican is just a Democrat that has been mugged? It does have a kernel of truth.

I had a college buddy that seemed perfectly “normal” back then but became a rabid Republican/Trumpista since he got married and had kids. Doubly sad, because he married a “swarthy” foreigner. I guess he thinks his right wing friends will make an exception?

7

Might be something to that “head injury” thing.

8

I was surprised to see the rest of Geert Wilders platform (summarized on the Votemaster yesterday). Except for the anti-muslim rhetoric and getting out of the EC, it would have seemed very compatible with a liberal government. ElectoralVote

9

I have occasionally noticed a thing where blokes who are somewhat racist in tone (of the “we’re just better than them” variety not the " those bastards should all just die in a ditch " variety) will nonetheless be happy to marry someone of the "wrong " group. 'Cause sure all them foreigners are inferior, but that’s the way they like their womenfolk! Inferior!

Intersectionality for assholes…

10

I did reply to her FB post with essentially the same message, she replied that her dad was one of the founding fathers of the uber-right group (Q Society) and nothing more was said.

She was recently diagnosed with a serious but chronic and not life-threatening illness (name of illness not mentioned, but I’m thinking lupus) and since then she’s gone a bit psycho. I’ll blame the illness…:smiley:

11

Another possibility, aside from being faked out or her new illness is a change in circumstances or experience, or simply something like cognitive dissonance. I’ll give a personal anecdote as an example. I used to know someone that was very liberal for a couple years back in the mid-2000s. She very much supported gay rights, racial equality, all the typical sorts of thing one would expect from someone like that. I often saw her get into VERY heated arguments with people these issues and I have no reason to believe she didn’t really honestly hold these beliefs.

However, when it came to actually APPLYING her beliefs, a lot of this stuff went out the window. For one, soon after she had gotten new roommates, for reasons I don’t recall, she came to believe one of them was gay and she panicked about how he might bring guys back and have sex with them in her house. When I mentioned how she was pro-gay rights, pro-gay marriage (this was in 2006, so it was still a pretty contentious issue then) her response was along the lines that it was great, as long as she didn’t actually have to see or deal with any of them.

And similar along racial lines, all pro-equality in theory, but she always expressed concern with my non-white friends, and would downright go on tirades about how awful Arabs and Gypsies were. When I’d ask her about it, again, the response was that they just needed to stay where they belonged.

And, no, this isn’t limited to liberal views in my experience either, this is just the most blatant example of someone I’ve known. I’ve seen plenty of similar examples from conservatives or all sorts of other opinions not related to politics at all. My point is that a lot of people believe they believe things, but when actually facing situations that challenge those beliefs, they may have worked it out theoretically in their head, but when under pressure, that’s when one really finds out what one believes. Hell, even speaking for myself, I’ve found at times that ideas I was raised with but had since worked myself away from, I’ve found creep back up in certain situations, either from habit, or because I hadn’t actually really gotten all the way to the core of it.

So, maybe you didn’t know your colleague because maybe she didn’t really know herself either.

12

Data: any marriage that dissolves suddenly after 10+ years: “Who the f*ck is this person?”

But yeah, I’ve had monkeys come crawling out of the ears of people I (thought I) knew over a long time. Just mentioned one example, Forrest Mims - knew him as an electronics guru/colleague for quite a while when we both wrote for the magazines and Radio Shack, then out of the blue on a rare phone call, he’s telling me how Jesus runs his life for him. Yeesh.

13

I have nothing to add, just that when I first saw this, I thought it said ‘first, second, and third amendments’. Made it an interesting read.

14

it’s never lupus.