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The original was posted on /r/newzealand by /u/Proud_Plankton_4630 on 2025-05-05 20:52:30+00:00.
I am a fairly well educated professional living up in Northland and my goodness I feel like I am a minority when it comes to vaccinations and COVID discussions. I feel like everyone I meet is a loud, arrogant, Jacinda-hating, 5g fear mongering, chem trail conspiracy theory looney. I am losing my mind because I keep getting into these shitty conversations and have to pander to clients / locals as they spout this nonsense.
Recently I was floored when somebody told me that sea level rise is a hoax because he has " been fishing on the same rock for 65 years and my feet haven’t gotten any wetter". When I tried my best to politely explain why it wasn’t and in our area it’s gone up by about 15 cm in that 65 years, to my surprise, another stranger jump into the conversation and support HIM. Like, I didn’t even know this was a debatable topic. In this instance I even supplied numbers from reputable sources, and yet I am STILL the dumb asshole apparently. This happens with COVID constantly, vaccinations, government stuff, and many environmental issues (chemtrails, 1080, climate change, etc). I’m at the point where I’m compromising my interegity to avoid these conversations, and I feel like I can’t open my mouth in public. It’s frustrating, because I know it isn’t like that in other parts of this beautiful country, but my life, lifestyle and livelihood is tied up here.
Does Northland just breed this type of thinking and does anyone have any advice on how to navigate these topics? I’ve tried, but I swear my brain just shuts off when they ‘counter argue’ me with some nonsense fact or mock me. I guess it bothers me because these people (some of which I know due to small community) have little to no education and live in an echo chamber, yet tell ME that I need to ‘do my research’ and stop depending on mainstream media. I have a PhD; I don’t even think they know what it means to ‘do research’. And I don’t depend on mainstream media for my information, I don’t have tv.
It would be nice to get some advice on how to shut down some of these conversations in a polite, professional way. I’ve wanted to just fact check on the spot - just take my phone out and Google stuff - because they say things with such conviction that in the moment I second guess myself only to go home, google it, and see that they were indeed bullshitting. Only a lot of the time I don’t have my phone on me (out surfing, training, or little cell service), and the one time I recently tried it, it didn’t matter.
I don’t know, I’m at a loss.