QueenCuttlefish

u/patriotact pleeeeease I need to know.

Also unrelated: the medical student who shadowed my grandma's doctor looked exactly like you. Holy shit. That dude was gorgeous.

My friend's family are Jehovah Witnesses while I'm Catholic. My university hosted the JW convention one year and my friend asked me to stay with her because she really didn't want to be there. (I really understood why after a couple minutes)

The lectures given and skits performed during that convention made my skin crawl... There was this underlying theme of "us vs them" and how everyone who wasn't strictly a Jehovah Witness was going to be condemned to hell. The only way to save them was to convert them, period. They also advocated to refrain from using the internet.

There's a lot of shit that's wrong with the Catholic Church, don't get me wrong. Though in my experience, the Church gives us a lot of freedom in comparison to other religions, especially after sitting with my friend during the convention.

The people I met at the JW conference were nice, to be fair, even after learning I wasn't a JW. They did strongly hope I'd come to the next convention and become a "sister." It was a strange experience, to say the least...

Edit: I'm sorry if this comes off as implying my religion is better than any other. I'm really ignorant of religions so reading other people's stories and beliefs is engaging and makes me think about my own. Tone is terribly conveyed over text.

He was in Florida, actually.

When I mentioned he looked like u/patriotact, his mentor looked at him and she said, "you know, I never thought of that but you really do look like him. You should watch when he performed at the White House Correspondence Dinner. Amazing."

Oh man I can watch that over and over again. "I don't know, you tell me. I'm watching the news."

Brown Asian/Pacific Islander here. My parents are from the Philippines. We call it a tsinela.

I feel you, man... I feel you.

Reading through your responses was fascinating. You speak with eloquence and experience. What you've been through is herculean, to say the least. What astounds me the most was your ability to develop critical thinking and to use research to prove or disprove your beliefs. Your ability to interact with others online with dignity is something uncommon and admirable.

What was the process like for you to discern between conspiracy and truth? Considering the beliefs your parents had and the environment you were raised in, how did you come to understand those beliefs as incorrect? You could have dismissed resources (as weird as that sounds), like Khan Academy, as conspiracy and prescribed to believe in sites such as InfoWars and Breitbart, especially with the current state of the United States in which reality itself is challenged by people in power.

Personally, I find it difficult to legitimately listen to the viewpoints of people (like those who trust InfoWars, conspiracies, and other things like that). How do you interact with people like that while maintaining your own composure?

Is it possible your internet friends had some kind of influence on you to seek out something different from how you've lived all your life?

I really hope for the best for you. You have a bright future ahead and insurmountable potential.