Thanks for reminding about something

Djembro, RO, supports 🇺🇦🇬🇪

@djembro@universeodon.com

@magical_cat
Good for you for reaching out. You had a good reason: you live in a community and may need to cooperate. You came to the sickening realization that this person’s mind has been infected with toxic disinformation. In your place, I wouldn’t necessarily pursue a neighborly relationship, but I’d stay alert to opportunities for a different relationship. Maybe there are places where your interests overlap. Maybe you hear complaining about WiFi and you realize you can help and so offer. I think compassion can be a great guide. People who suffer from the consequences of a “disinformation lobotomy” are in a sort of prison. Two books I recommend are Anthony de Mello’s Awareness and Timothy Snyder’s On Freedom. Keep up your exploration. It takes courage, which you obviously have.

May 8, 2026, 07:45 0 boosts 0 favorites

Thanks for reminding about compassion. Real problem for me was that this “disinfo shower” felt on me in response to literally to “hello, I am your neighbor.” type of smalltalk.

I am not very experienced in “martial art of smalltalk”, like how to properly dodge of disinfo hits or “misidentity kicks”.

Example of the latter below. Many people think by default that if someone starts talking in russian, they seems to speak how they admire putin as a strong leader and how good to have “othodox brothers” russians as neighbors, so on. Misidentification of “everyone who starts chat in russian likely to love putin”. type.

Not all people speak this way, but I noticed that people infected with kremlin disinfo about different topics are tend to mention this. And they seems to seek validation of their beliefs, agreement with them or something like that.

I don’t know how it is done to dodge divisive topics like disinfo, how to turn talk to topics I want to talk about. About house repairs or rumors that our house can be demolished by mayor office order. I guess there are some books like “сто лучших боевых приёмов смолтолка” (Kagi Translate was able to identify and describe wordplay here!) or “The top one hundred small talk power moves” but I never knew about their existence.

I remember I seen an article, it was about USA context but it applicable here in Georgia country too. Imagine if GOP took full power (Senate and Rep majority, stuffed election commissions and electoral college courts and sheriffs with MAGA loyalists), and Dems are in defense position or even “survival mode”, regardless of how many of them actually are. So, that article described interesting thing. Such people like my neighbor by default live in “identity defense mode”. And if person they talking with somehow prove they are not threat to their identity group (e. g. does not demand to force abortions on white people, contary to possible disinfo about Dems), such people are relax, and go to “common person mode”, exiting from “identity protection mode”. After that it is possible they can be contacted with. But I don’t have such “we have a common ground” skill. Even I spotted one common ground spot – he said that if it will be known that our house really planned for demolition, he will not allow this to happen anyway, like “I bought this apartment, this is mine, so I will not allow that”.