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People often confuse the “right” thing to do with the “nice” thing to do.

I used to compare Qa with addiction, but that’s false because addiction has a bottom, a point when nobody wants anything to do with you at any level. But with Q, your father will never truly feel alone because he’ll have the rest of the Kool-aid drinkers, so he’ll likely never hit that bottom and try to reconcile.

You’ve done the right thing for your kids and yourself. Part of being a parent is protecting their impressionable minds from toxic ideologies; not only would your fathers health be an undue burden on them, but he would surely be spewing his garbage the whole time and trying to indoctrinate your children.

Be strong and remember: The only familial obligation you have is to your children.

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10 Things I Hate About You: How Q Anon Took My Sister

My sister used to be a liberal as recently as 2016. She got an art degree. She experimented with stripping in college as a feminist act. She used to love people regardless of color.

But it only took 6 years to change her. Shitty social media, people who know how to prey on her anxiety, take advantage of her neurodiversity, and weedle results out of her low self-esteem, that's all it took. It took 10 steps.

Step 1: Sell fear and distrust as a remedy for health anxieties. Her partner encourages her to get into homeopathic remedies, including crystal healing, oil pulling, smoking tons of weed, and other internet cures.

Step 2. Use that subtle distrust against government and civil devices. She begins to latch on to conspiracies that are mostly health related - chem trails are poisonous, radio waves are cancerous, salt crystal lamps clean your wifi of negative ions, manifestation, etc.

Step 3. Weaponize fear. Around the pandemic, she is nearly assaulted by a man on the train. This amplifies her anxiety. She is afraid all the time. She buys the biggest pepper spray keychain I have ever seen. She starts to talk about learning how to shoot. She wants someone to buy her a bow and arrow for xmas. When dad says he won't, she says "Don't worry, I will find some other way to get one".

Step 4. Separate her from her community and family by leveraging her growing distrust. The pandemic hits, and she is anti-mask. She starts up a convo about Fauci on her birthday that I mistook as a genuine question about why it took so long to make the mask recommendation happen when he first was against it. I start to answer in a conversational way and she runs across a road to avoid talking to me. She begins to arrange mid-pandemic birthday parties which she never used to care about and guilt me for skipping holidays by saying our dad might die before the next one happens. I refuse to attend, and consider never going to family birthdays she is organizing again.

Step 5. Preach the gospel at any cost. Family members start informing me of alt-right talking points she has been sharing. She believes Donald Trump is a genius who, along with Ghislane, is busting a child sex ring run by democrats. She starts sending me videos of god knows what, which I pretend I watched, and I try to ask her questions to lead her out of her delusions. That was a terrible idea. I learn that she believes that the world is degrading and only those who know the "truth" are able to understand that we are at the lowest point in human history, a shift will happen, and some day we will be delivered. Or something. I express shock and pity. She rightfully got pissed at me. She starts making her own videos and posting them to instagram. She spends a lot of time on her phone, or in her room now.

Step 6. Convince her she doesn't need help. Dad tells me they have had convos about her going to therapy and she expresses interest, but ultimately does not do it.

Step 7. Create a "them vs. you" mentality, because if they don't agree they are harming you. She's anti-vax. She starts to date right-wing Q anon men she finds online. She tells everybody in the family that she won't talk to them if they get vaxxed. She stops talking to our mom for about a week after mom gets one. She gets in a text argument with me where she calls me a "useful idiot".

Step 8. Lower their ambition to leave the community by convincing them they are undesirable without it. She has a brief crisis where she believes she is infertile because she slept with a vaxxed guy, but she stays with him because he owns a gun store. After breaking up, she begins to surround herself with virtual friends and dates only if they share "her beliefs". She says that she is desperate to find a man and have a baby because that is her value as a woman.

Step 9. Turn her self-doubt and insecurities into hate for non-supporters. Her opinions have gone all the way down the Q hole. She now does not want to have kids, but feels guilty because her "genes are so good she is morally obligated to pass them on". I didn't think this was racist until mom mentioned she "now hates black people, and especially gay people" even though she dated two black men within the last year. Now I suspect it's something to do with her promoting the white race or some shit.

Step 10. Profit?

We were never close. We had a really difficult childhood that pitted us against each other, completely different interests, and clashing pride. I never expected to be her best friend, but now I'm wondering if I can even call myself her sister. I am waiting for the day she decides my interracial marriage is "a sin". I am waiting for the day she hurts my dad, or a stranger, or herself. She does not trust me, or anyone else in the family. We do not trust her. My oldest sister has already decided not to talk to her after she came out as a Trump supporter last election. I am unable to reel her back, and have considered cancelling social engagements she is invited to. My parents are enabling and protecting her, because they believe she will go no-contact with them, or something worse might happen to her.

Every day I ask myself if this is the day I will admit that I am not a good enough person to love her anymore.