Elderly family member and politics

[DawnM]

I have an aunt who not many in the family speak to anymore, including her own children.   She is pretty out there when it comes to religion and politics.   

She keeps sending me political GARBAGE and I am not sure whether to just ignore or tell her to stop sending them.   I don't want to engage in a discussion with her, so that is why I haven't said anything.

What would you do?

She is in her 80s, her views won't be changed by anything I say, others have tried, so it isn't worth a debate but I do hate the crap she sends.

 

[HomeAgain]

I ignore it until I'm asked to comment.  I hold the opinion that I don't argue with the unarmed, because they will double down and nothing good will come of it.

[TheReader]

My grandpa did that; we actually marked his email as spam. Every so often we would flip through the spam folder and see if anything was a "real" email and not just spam from him. 

It was highly effective. Engaging will get you nowhere, in my experience. 

[MercyA]

If I were feeling ambitious, I would set up a filter to route emails from her to a specific folder in my email account. Once in a while I could check the folder for anything non-political and delete the rest.

[Arcadia]

I just ignore the text and emails regardless of age. They don’t take no for an answer. In our case, it was more extreme evangelism and MLM. For elderly relatives, they are already hard set on their views and memories so it is even more difficult.
My husband don’t agree with his parents on politics and at the moment his parents are still mentally alert enough to not upset the money tree. However, my in-laws are one of the causes of my husband’s “bad listening habit” because he is so used to tuning out crap. It is a lot easier to ignore when you don’t need to entertain phone/video calls because parents may need your medical/legal help. 

[AmandaVT]

5 minutes ago, MercyA said:

If I were feeling ambitious, I would set up a filter to route emails from her to a specific folder in my email account. Once in a while I could check the folder for anything non-political and delete the rest.

This is what I do for my uncle that loves to send the forwarded emails that people sent years ago. Also dirty jokes. They all go to his folder and every once in a while I check to see if there is a real email in there!

[DawnM]

I should have clarified, this is through FB messenger, not email.

[kbutton]

4 minutes ago, DawnM said:

I should have clarified, this is through FB messenger, not email.

If she has other ways to contact you for something actually important, I'd unfriend her, leave the conversation, etc. on Facebook. 

[DawnM]

Just now, kbutton said:

If she has other ways to contact you for something actually important, I'd unfriend her, leave the conversation, etc. on Facebook. 

There is absolutely nothing she needs to contact me about, I just feel bad for her since not many in the family will talk to her.

[kbutton]

7 minutes ago, DawnM said:

There is absolutely nothing she needs to contact me about, I just feel bad for her since not many in the family will talk to her.

I would see if there is a way to block her on messenger but only unfollow her on FB then. She'll be able to see your posts, but she won't be able to send you her political stuff. 

[Katy]

Block her and don’t feel bad. If she cared about other people she wouldn’t engage in these behaviors. If she wants contact she’ll call. 

[marbel]

Do you feel an obligation to your aunt? I can imagine feeling sad for an elderly person who has no family in her life anymore, even if it's due to her own actions.  

I might just leave the messages unopened in messenger. Just ignore them. She might stop if she sees they are unread (or maybe she won't notice that and just keep sending). 

Or you could respond to the fact that she messaged you, without actually responding to the message, kwim?  "Hi Aunt Jane, how are you doing? I/the kids am/are doing this...."  That way you maintain contact without actually engaging in her nonsense. 

I would probably not be able to bring myself to block a relative like that. I don't think it would be wrong to do it, I just am not sure I could do it myself. 

 

[City Mouse]

There is a way to turn off notifications in Messenger just for one person/group. I don’t remember how I did it, but I was able to turn it off for a couple of group messages that my lovely DH included me on. 

[maize]

I would ignore.

My grandmother used to do this. I loved grandma, just ignored the political spam.

[Grace Hopper]

I would leave her messages unread. If there is a true family emergency wouldn’t you expect to be contacted by some other means? 
 

I would likely also maybe, to show you care about her apart from her politics, occasionally drop her an old fashioned snail mail card or letter. 
 

Totally agree with others that it is not only a waste of time to engage, a mistake to even acknowledge. There’s no changing of mind. 

Edited July 5, 2022 by Grace Hopper

[kirstenhill]

3 hours ago, City Mouse said:

There is a way to turn off notifications in Messenger just for one person/group. I don’t remember how I did it, but I was able to turn it off for a couple of group messages that my lovely DH included me on. 

This! I had a friend who was constantly sending dumb stuff in messenger -- little pictures, quotes, etc.  For no apparent reason.  You can "mute notifications" (in the desktop version there is three dots that you can click to get a drop down menu, and that's one of the choices), then they don't get notification that they are blocked by you, but you can just go on your merry way and never be notified that they sent you any messages.  Eventually friend stopped sending them to me...maybe because she noticed that her little "messages" were never being seen? I'm not sure I really care.  I know I could unfriend the person but I am the type to not necessarily do that, especially if it is someone I may run into in person from time to time.

[Clarita]

I just ignore the garbage. That's what I do with my mom. If it comes up in conversation I "ask about the weather". I don't unfriend or block my mom (we only use a messenger app), because I do communicate with her otherwise. 

[gardenmom5]

My brother is very similar.  He's constantly sending stuff - his adult kids range from "no-contact to minimal/very controlled contact. 

My sister and I are in the barely any contact with him column. (no other living family.) He's divorced his third wife (thankfully no kids) and is shopping for a new wife in the Philippines (not kidding).   Texts are ignored.  All his emails go into their own folder (settings) so I never even see them unless I want to look.  (you know - make sure he's alive.) I have several email addresses (ranging for family to business to etc.)  - and I've pretty much channeled him into my "etc" account. He works at the same company location as 1ds and they're both engineers.  I want to track what (different) dept he's in, and have hopes they never cross paths. (If he finds out - I fear he will interfere with 1ds under the "premise" of "being helpful".  He's not.)  Phone numbers can be blocked - or at least screened and you can decide if you want to pick up or not.  If I do pick up - I very much manage the direction of the conversation and limit how long he gets to speak before I say "buh- bye".

Boundaries - control how she can contact you - and basically ignore the whacked out stuff.   She is likely lonely - if you feel up to it, you can contact her when you choose to about sane things (i.e. gardens, the weather, no religion or politics) and only discuss sane things.  It may or may not work.   

I told my brother to stop forwarding me links - and he blew his stack.  He "was done trying to have a relationship with me and wasn't going to ever contact me again".  For three glorious weeks  . . . . so much for never contacting me again. . . . (and yes, the forwarding links has continued. They go straight to a folder I never look at.)

[Spryte]

I would ignore the garbage, respond to the actual emails (the real ones), and maybe send a sweet thinking of you type thing here and there. She’s in her 80s, I’d figure this won’t be forever and just let it go. But I get it if you feel you need to address it or handle it differently. I might feel differently if on the receiving end of a barrage of garbage emails.

Threads like these make me appreciate my tiny, non-communicative family, yikes!

[Shoeless]

Ignore it. You wont change her mind. All you will end up doing is making an old lady upset, so its probably better to ignore her nonsense.

[LucyStoner]

This is hard.  What happens if you just ignore her FB messages?  

I get left wing political garbage/conspiracy theories from my dad and some of his family and right wing political garbage/conspiracy theories from some people in my decreased mother’s family and my MILs husband.  I ignore it all with abandon because life is too short.  Sometimes I find it amusing to see when the crazy overlaps and my dad and my MILs husband land on the same garbage opinions but from totally different paradigms.

My dad?  He sees us all the time.  So I’m not friends with him on Facebook and I filter out a sizable amount of that he says.  My MILs husband kept picking fights with my friends on FB so I quietly unfriended him and since my MIL isn’t on FB I just gave them the impression I closed my FB account.   We text and Skype with my MIL all the time.  

Elderly people often don’t have the best sense of social media and reciprocity in social media based communications.  
 

 

[Starr]

We give the over 80 crowd a pass at our house.

[HS Mom in NC]

When people send me unsolicited private messages, emails, texts, about political/religious topics (even those I philosophically agree with)  I tell them, "Please stop sending me private messages/emails/texts/ about politics/religion." There's nothing mean, negative, or combative about politely asking someone to stop. If they send anything else after that or respond with any negativity to me, I don't respond to them directly, I block, unfollow, unfriend, mark as spam, whatever seems appropriate to me in the situation. 

Will it change their minds about believing or spreading that kind of stuff?  Of course not, but that's not the point.  The point is someone sent me something unsolicited and I politely asked them to stop.  That's how normal healthy relationships work in those scenarios. I'm not obligated to perpetuate someone's fantasy that they can send that kind of thing with no social consequences.  I'm not into make believe. Whether they respond in a healthy way by saying OK (that's happened several times) or they respond negatively (that's happened a few times) I treat adults like peers.  If they don't rise to the occasion and interact in a healthy way it's their problem, not mine. 

Also, I cut my FB friends list down to about 150.  That's the number sociologists agree is number of people a person can classify as "knowing" in most situations.  It was interesting to ask myself which 150ish I really wanted to know about and keep up with.  I unfriended everyone else.  I'm not someone who tends to struggle with social media because I'm not one to care much what others think, I'm not prone to thinking social media is anything other than a person's highlight reel, I'm not prone to jealousy, and I don't look at what others are doing and pressure myself to doing it too, so social media has generally been good for me.  Since I cut it back to 150 it's been even better because I realized it was really cluttered having FB friends I wasn't all that interested in mixed in with those I was interested in.  Now I just see posts by those who interest me the most and then I get off social media faster and more satisfied.

[Tanaqui]

If you're willing to keep talking to her, then I suggest you take a multiprong approach:

1. Set up a folder in your email for her. Once a month or once  a week or whatever, skim the emails to see if there's anything you actually should reply to. Then delete them. Do NOT reply to anything that is not strictly personal.

2. Plan to call her on a regular basis. Put an alert on your phone and everything so you call her once or twice a week, or once or twice a month, or whatever you like. When you call, keep your conversation 95% smalltalk and 5% everybody's lives. If she tries to talk politics, say "Oh, I don't really care about all that - I want to talk about you! What's been going on in your life?" or "Oh, but I really called to talk about the kids - guess what they did this week? They....!" Just blatantly wrangle that topic back on topic.

3. If she can't be diverted, say good-bye and hang up. Don't argue with her, just do it. Also, no matter what, set a timer and end the conversation after it goes off. You can tell her in advance that you only can call for five or fifteen minutes if you like.

[Farrar]

I'm just going to say... especially for relationships like this where you have so little invested in the first place... there's the minor guilt of letting go, but there's also the minor guilt of letting someone send offensive messages to you. Yeah, you're not going to change her mind, but sometimes it feels good to just say, hi, this wasn't okay with me, and cut the person off. Plus, the cutting off guilt for someone this small in your life is one time. The "I am allowing someone to put me on the other end of offensive messages without my objection" emotions can be ongoing, over and over. So I guess what I'm saying is that I'm on board with any of the above advice if it works for you. Hide her, ignore her, just don't open them, tell her you're happy to hear from her but don't like political messages from any perspective... whatever. But I also feel like I want to give you permission to draw a line in the sand and then never think of her again if that helps. 

[easypeasy]

Can you set up her email address to automatically go to your SPAM account? If she's doing this on FB, add her to your "acquaintances" list and take her off notifications and you shouldn't see anything more that she posts.

I've been so sad on FB to see people I was friends with pre-Covid who now never like or comment to any posts of mine anymore, but who continue to forward/share political garbage. It's like they can't even engage on a normal social level anymore and that makes me sad. After a while of being ignored by them for regular engagement, I do the above and never see their stuff unless I purposefully go to their personal page to check and see if they're posted anything family-update/personal related.

[HS Mom in NC]

I want to be clear that cutting off auntie's ability to send you crap messages (blocking text, email, private messages on unfriending, unfollowing on social media, etc.) is not the same thing as cutting her off from a friendly relationship with you. Those are 2 distinctly different and unconnected things.  It's not all or nothing. You can politely ask auntie to stop sending you messages then block her if she doesn't comply and at the same time continue to call her for pleasant chats on the phone, visit her when you're in town, and send her a cards by snail mail for her birthdays holidays, and anniversaries, or just because.  It's not either/or, it can be both/and if you want.