I was lucky that I didn't need to make any hard choices whether to get the shots or lose my job, I work at a factory with only about 90 employees so they were under that threshold where it was mandatory, and thankfully the management weren't ideologically captured. But what really turned me against it was my D&D group. I met a couple at a local game store who had just moved to Ohio from California and were looking for people to play with, and this was just as I was looking to getting into tabletop, so it was perfect. I could tell they were liberals, but they weren't insufferable about it at the time. Then, two years later, covid happened and they stopped having sessions IRL and moved it online over Roll20. At first, this wasn't too bad, but I could tell covid was breaking them. They got more and more political, the DM started bringing in more people into the Discord group he made just for us to use during sessions, and eventually the topic of someday having IRL games again came up - on the stipulation that everyone must have had all the covid shots. I said I wasn't considering it, they said I couldn't come over if I didn't, and I replied with 'noted'. Weeks later, I got into an argument with the DM's wife over the earnings gap between men and women, where I correctly pointed out it was because of women on average making different life choices than men, not some chauvinistic conspiracy. This was the 'last straw', because apparently there had been an 'elephant in the room' with me for a while, and they couldn't understand why I'd even want to be friends with them if I had different political opinions than them. I cut my losses and left the group.

I wonder how they're doing now? The DM was like 500 lbs when I last saw him, lol.

I was lucky that I didn't need to make any hard choices whether to get the shots or lose my job, I work at a factory with only about 90 employees so they were under that threshold where it was mandatory, and thankfully the management weren't ideologically captured. But what really turned me against it was my D&D group. I met a couple at a local game store who had just moved to Ohio from California and were looking for people to play with, and this was just as I was looking to getting into tabletop, so it was perfect. I could tell they were liberals, but they weren't insufferable about it at the time. Then, two years later, covid happened and they stopped having sessions IRL and moved it online over Roll20. At first, this wasn't too bad, but I could tell covid was breaking them. They got more and more political, the DM started bringing in more people into the Discord group he made just for us to use during sessions, and eventually the topic of someday having IRL games again came up - on the stipulation that everyone must have had all the covid shots. I said I wasn't considering it, they said I couldn't come over if I didn't, and I replied with 'noted'. Weeks later, I got into an argument with the DM's wife over the earings gap between men and women, where I correctly pointed out it was because of women on average making different life choices than men, not some chauvinistic conspiracy. This was the 'last straw', because apparently there had been an 'elephant in the room' with me for a while, and they couldn't understand why I'd even want to be friends with them if I had different political opinions than them. I cut my losses and left the group.

I wonder how they're doing now? The DM was like 500 lbs when I last saw him, lol.