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This sounds a lot like what Scott described as 'phatic' speech.
I mentioned recently that I work in a caring profession and spend most of my time talking to people. One of my lessons from that work is that while occasionally you meet someone who wants to have an in-depth, substantive conversation of a particular issue, by far the majority of all social encounters are phatic. The goal of the conversation is not to arrive at insight, but rather to make a person feel heard, appreciated, and validated. Even if I am going to forget everything we talked about by lunchtime - and I confess that I usually am - my purpose in the space is not to learn or assimilate facts, or engage in some kind of analysis, but rather to convey to the person I am caring for, "You are important, and I care about you".
This goes especially for when people want to talk about politics. Smile, nod, show sympathy, but don't get into an argument or even an analysis. Sometimes people will say things I disagree with strongly and I'll just file away that disagreement and ask an open question. If someone rants about this or that politician, there are a lot of ways to politely engage in and redirect that conversation without either lying or making it a contest. Gaza is one that comes up sometimes, and I have gotten pretty good at noncommittal ways to move that one along.
People are usually not trying to share facts, and if you treat every conversation as an exercise in collaborative truth-seeking, you are the creepy weirdo, not them. Sometimes the correct response is to just nod, smile, say "yeah, I know where you're coming from", and then say something else. If someone says to me, "ugh, my job was awful today, I hate capitalism", I don't jump in with facts and arguments about how 'capitalism' however defined is not the reason why work is tedious and boring. I say, "oh gosh, sounds like you had a hard day, can I get you a cup of tea?", and then we move on.
Now you are correct that this kind of conversation is politically productive, and the kinds of complaints you can make are reflective of overall shifts. To use the above example, I pretty much never hear "ugh, I hate capitalism" from older people, but younger generations are much more likely to use that phrase as a generic statement of unhappiness. That does reflect a shift in values and political priorities. This goes for politicians as well - whether, in a particular local context, someone uses "ugh, Trump sucks" or "thanks Obama" or "let's go Brandon" as a casual complaint is genuinely reflective of something, and your phatic response to that serves to normalise that complaint. The same goes for praise as well; I have noncommittally nodded along to a lot of praise of Jacinda Ardern. But I tend to think these conversational changes are downstream of larger changes, and that the direction of the stream cannot be reversed by arguing or quibbling on this casual level. From an activist perspective, the way you should respond to or change the view of the "I hate capitalism" girl is not to argue with her on the spot, but to change the affect she associates with the word or concept of capitalism. You can't change the direction of the ocean currents by pushing the froth on the surface in the opposite direction; and we're mostly talking about conversational froth here.
I think this is remarkably wrong. A big part of the reason these yutes complaining about capitalism, or sexism/racism, or the ‚destruction of the planet‘ are unhappy, is because those are deeply incorrect, anxiety-and-depression inducing beliefs! You could actually solve most of their long-term problems by convincing them they are false (which isn‘t easy, I grant), instead of patronizing them every day by making them feel good for 5 minutes. They could have talked about the weather if they wanted to wallow in their misery, but no, they‘re practically begging you to save them, and you say „no thanks you‘re just being phatic kiddo“, tap them on the head and go on your way.
I think I'd be more sympathetic to that if, well, I hadn't tried that. It usually goes badly.
Yes, there is probably a useful conversation to be had around capitalism and climate and hope for the future somewhere down the line, and I've had those as well, but it is almost never helpful to respond to a person expressing irritation or exhaustion with, "actually, you're wrong, here's why".
I think it's worth it. If an expert debater and religious authority with a knack for youth online culture like yourself isn't going to dispel their harmful illusions, who is?
Clearly you rate me higher than I myself do.
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