When Grandpa’s Wisdom Becomes a Weapon

Nostalgia and comedy on my newsfeed tied to a political comment intended to get you fired up or agree with the poster.

“Do y’all remember the good old days when the family would gather around the TV and watch HeeHaw?” It then continued, describing a reoccurring bit. Patient complaint to the doctor, “when I do this, it hurts.” The doctor replies without looking up. “Well don’t do that.”

Then the punch: “To all those who get injured at an ICE protest, what do you think the old doctor would say?”

My first instinct? Reply. Explain why this isn’t helping and point out how it reduces complex issues to cheap gotchas. As if this will change a thing.

This is the trap I wrote about.

The poster doesn’t care what I think. It doesn’t care if I agree or disagree. The only thing the poster truly cares about? My engagement. A thoughtful, data-driven comment becomes just another data point telling the algorithm this content matters, that it should reach more people.

The post is rage bait. Pure and simple. Designed to make one group laugh and nod, while infuriating the other side. Either way? Reaction. And it feeds the fire.

Nostalgia and comedy aren’t decoration. They’re the delivery mechanism.

We gathered around the television on Saturday nights to watch HeeHaw. Three generations squeezed onto couches, nobody checking phones because phones were still attached to walls. The doctor’s advice to the ridiculous patient was gentle humor that didn’t leave marks. We laughed together, predictable as the joke itself.

That memory is real and the warmth is genuine.

It makes me wonder why someone wraps their bait in memories. It’s like they’re borrowing everything we associate with those Saturday nights. Agreement. Shared values. Simple truths everyone recognized.

But why?

The HeeHaw reference makes the post shareable and it gives off a vibe of nothing more than harmless folk wisdom. It sucks you in, making you feel safe passing it along because it’s just a joke, just a memory, just common sense like Grandpa would have recognized.

But the warmth? It’s a facade. It’s camouflage hiding the actual function of the post, which, by the way, has nothing to do with HeeHaw or doctors or even ICE protests. Its function is to sort people into camps.

Comedy does the rest. The joke format makes disagreement feel like you must be missing the point. Like overthinking something everyone else immediately understood. Like, you can’t take a joke.

If I respond to explain why this isn’t helpful? Automatically I become the humorless twit. If I point out that comparing government violence to a vaudeville bit is reductive? I’m the one making everything complicated and political.

The comedy creates a permission structure. It lets people share something divisive while maintaining they’re just being lighthearted. And it makes any critique feel heavier than the post itself, which is exactly how bait protects itself from examination.

And here we are, in the very moment I’ve been writing about. A five minute observation that could go either way – respond or scroll past. Post appears. Instinct says respond. Fingers move toward the keyboard.

Then I stopped.

Even my thoughtful response. Especially my thoughtful response, would feed it. The only way to starve this fire? Not engage it at all.

Not because I don’t have thoughts about ICE or protests or government accountability. I do. But because this post isn’t interested in civil discourse. It’s targeting an immediate reaction. By keeping us sorted into camps, responding to each other’s bait, generating heat, it does what the engineer designed it to do: start a fight.

I see these posts constantly.

Inflammatory content dressed up in nostalgia and humor, designed to generate engagement regardless of whether people agree or disagree. Every time one crosses my screen, I’m at the same decision gate.

Their frequency makes it harder. When everyone’s engaging, when people I respect are sharing or responding, my silence feels like abdication. Like I’m not standing up for what I believe.

But engagement isn’t the same as challenging. Most of the time, it’s just feeding.

HeeHaw was genuinely wholesome. Our family laughing together was genuinely good. Today those good things are being used. Borrowed to make bait feel safe. Weaponized to keep us divided while making the division feel like common sense.

The old doctor would probably tell me something simple: “When engaging with this hurts more than it helps, what should you do?”

Well, don’t do that.

So instead of responding in the comments, I came here. To write about the mechanics of what’s happening. To examine why these posts work. To understand my own impulse to engage even when I know better.

This is how I starve that particular fire.

Not by ignoring that it exists. But by refusing to feed it while I figure out what actual light might look like.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​