I took a break from the JTF forum for a while and I made a lot of friends offline of all different backgrounds and was having a good time hanging out and such but unfortunately a lot of these friends were leftists.
I had met them through pop culture fandom meetups and conventions and I thought we all had a lot in common other than politics and that we were really enjoying each other's company. I really did have a great time for a while. We got to cosplay together, go out to the mall or to eat together, share jokes and music and just general friendship stuff. There was a little teahouse where we used to meet up and drink boba tea and there'd be videos to watch, board games to play, and even a DJ sometimes when we could just hang out and have fun and talk about the shows we liked.
It was nice because when I was younger I didn't have a lot of social connections so even though I was in my 30s when all this was starting it was still nice to have a group of friends who I enjoyed spending time with and who seemed to enjoy spending time with me. People would hug me when I showed up and would welcome me to join the board games and card games and such.
After 2016 happened and I admitted that I voted for Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton, one by one they started to dump me. Some of them were asking me how I could do this to them, and why did I want them to die. They seriously thought that because the media had painted Donald Trump as some kind of extremist racist homophobe that by voting for him I was putting their lives at risk. I told them that no, that wasn't true. One woman told me that by voting for Trump I was a "very toxic person" that she could no longer associate with. Some people really took issue with the fact that I was not happy with Muslims or Islam as well.
One woman I had co-hosted a bad movie night with (Troll 2 and Birdemic if you were wondering) decided to dump me as a friend after they felt I was too homophobic when I was honest about what the Bible says about homosexual behavior. We had been pretty good friends prior to that but as soon as I was open about what the Bible said she thought I was "hateful".
Someone else, a disabled lady who I had so much in common with (we both really liked animals and did work to help them, we both liked the same tv shows, we both enjoyed cosplaying/fan conventions, we both had similar experiences when we had been in school, we were both the same age, etc.) was furious with me that I didn't want to support Obama care because I didn't want to pay for late term abortion.
I explained to her what happens during a late term abortion and how I just don't want to have a part in paying for that.
She called me a liar and told me to rot in my own filth. This was after knowing her for several years, feeling like she was a close friend, and even helping her out financially a couple of times when her home had gotten flooded out or when she or her pets needed help with medical bills. I felt really hurt by this and didn't understand why after several years of feeling so close to her that she could say something like that to me over something as stupid as Obama care.
One black guy in my friend group that would go to the meetups that I knew said he had to move out of Texas because he was afraid for his life because he was afraid since DJT was president that the cops would feel free to hunt him down. This particular person was a gentle nerdy guy and I tried to tell him that I didn't think that the cops were out to get him as long as he wasn't doing anything he wasn't supposed to be doing and that in a cosmopolitan city like Houston he really had nothing to worry about on that front, and that neither I or other Republicans were out to get him generally speaking even though obviously there were some vicious racists everywhere.
He remained friends with me when many other people didn't because he could tell that I wasn't out to get him and we'd met enough times in person along with the rest of the group to know I had no ill will towards him or anyone else. He moved off to a blue city in another state where he says he feels safer. I told him I'm glad that he feels safer where he is but I still don't think that he was unsafe here in Houston.
I was able to keep a few other friends too, maybe around 5 in total from what had been a group of about 30 something people that I used to meet up with and hang out with regularly. Most of these friends who stuck around are people closer to my age or even a bit older, in their 40s and 50s now. Every younger friend except the one guy I mentioned and one other younger friend dumped me for being a Republican.
I was able to go hang out with a few people at Dave and Busters about a month ago and play games together which was nice but it's nothing like the big groups that used to get together.
I think it's because us older people lived during the time of the Cold War and know that communism is bad. Even the friends I have that still lean a bit leftist of my age group seem to understand why I'm a Republican and don't act like it's a crime against humanity.
I'd have a lot more friends if I were leftist and atheist but I don't feel like I can do that. I'd be betraying my own morals and I'd be betraying God too if I just gave up my principles to make a lot of friends.
Someone else I've known since the 90s messaged me one day to tell me that he was offended by my being conservative and suddenly blocked me. This person was one of the longest term friends I'd ever had and it was really weird to me that he just suddenly didn't want to talk anymore. Leading up to that, we'd had, what I had considered to be several respectful and productive conversations about election integrity, the covid jab, etc. I thought these were friendly discussions, not debates or arguments. However one day he just decided that he couldn't be friends with me after talking for literal decades.
It's sad when I feel a connection and a lot of commonality with people but politics/religion get in the way of the friendships. I guess all this upheaval and turmoil is one way to sort the true friends out from the fake ones but it can still be pretty jarring and disturbing.
There was something about Donald Trump in particular that set people off and gave them Trump derangement syndrome and made them believe they couldn't be friends with anyone who would vote for him.
I'm not posting this as a sob story just to kind of explain where I've been and what I've been going through since I've been gone from the forum.
I took away a lot of good things from this time and I do still have some quality offline friends but it's been quite the roller coaster.
Topic: Socializing as a conservative (Read 738 times)