The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
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I'll start with what I think you should do before moving on to some more fun ideas.
What you should do. Take the good, try to avoid the bad. Simply leave if she starts ranting about politics. Always be pleasant and kind when she doesn't. It's okay for people to be wrong. Lots of good people are wrong about politics. You aren't going to change her mind, and the stakes are literally nothing. Just let her be wrong, and of course say nothing incriminating on your own end.
Options that are more fun:
"My problem is that only rich white people would use euthanasia"
You're a rich, white person. Are you considering it?
Wow, Susan, you really are passionate about politics.
Sooo... anyway. Anyone catch the 49ers game this weekend?
If you want someone to change their negative behavior, you must negatively reward them for exhibiting that behavior. By arguing, you are giving them what they want: a soapbox. You don't give attention to the naughty child, you ignore them.
Your best bet is to be dismissive. Your words and actions should say "having an opinion about politics is cringe and weird", and "you are not qualified to have an opinion because you are low status". Naturally, this is dickish behavior, and I don't recommend being a dick. But it'd probably work.
More options
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