I have a cousin, 35, Male, who has always been susceptible to conspiracy. He listened to Rush and other right wing favs when we were younger, and after a mildly messy divorce, I’m afraid he’s pivoted to blaming women for everything (including, and especially, male urges).
Along with his heroes, he’s committed to anti-intellectualism. I almost miss the tea party days.
Recently he’s been reading self published books with titles like “Analyzing the ROI on Pursuing Women,” and “Why women deserve less.” They bizarrely juxtapose tidbits from economics onto ravings about value and gender that don’t make sense. Weird that he trusts random opinions and not researchers who at least provide rigorous reasoning for their theories, but I digress.
As a lady, it’s hard to care about the dude, but I do feel like I should say -something-. Does anyone have ideas?
His parents are worried, visiting as often as they can, and trying to encourage him to develop some offline hobbies or join a church community (he’s religious, but recently rejecting “organized”religion).
Your suggestion about disrupting habits and offering other things to focus on sounds pretty practical! I’m going to see if I can find a podcast or two he might be interested in.
We are working on warming him up to therapy. I found seeing a therapist for a year pretty helpful and emotionally balancing after some issues with Covid isolation+ a move.