- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmit.online
- reddit@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmit.online
- reddit@lemmy.world
Politically-engaged Redditors tend to be more toxic – even in non-political subreddits::A new study links partisan activity on the Internet to widespread online toxicity, revealing that politically-engaged users exhibit uncivil behavior even in non-political discussions. The findings are based on an analysis of hundreds of millions of comments from over 6.3 million Reddit users.
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Some people just want to grill
I like to tell people who are serious about politics that I boned their mother.
See also: hexbear, lemmygrad.
True
See also: lemmy.world
No! We are the exception to all the rules. You dingus!!1!
Seriously I see so much worse coming from those accounts
AkA Chappo Trap House. I’ve never received so much hate from a community (expept on the_donald maybe). My crime? I think South Park is fun.
Far right spaces in general.
inb4 hexbear and lemmygrad are far left
They are not. Tankies are far right.
Tankies are far left authoritarians. The left/right spectrum refers primarily to economics.
There are political traditions that see the left/right spectrum as a “How hierarchical do you think society should be” question, where being sexist or intolerant of LGBT would be inherently right-wing because they’re positions that are advocating for forms of social hierarchies, and therefore would claim that an anarcho-capitalist, even if still right-leaning, is much less right-leaning than a nazi.
But where is the basis for defining it that way?
I think a more clear and commonly excepted interpretation would be basically more collectivist vs more individualistic. The issue with that for some people is that would make Nazism left wing, and nobody wants the bad guys on their side.
It matches the historical usage of the terms. As far as I can tell the definition has barely changed in modern times; a lot of people have just tried to redefine them based on their own misunderstanding.
Tankies aren’t leftists. They defend genocidal and authoritarian regimes, which are inherently right wing.
Tankies are leftist because the oppose private property and favor the state controlling the means of production rather than individuals or corporations.
You’re confusing authoritarian communism with social democracy and anarchism. Stalin was a leftist, he was also genocidal and authoritarian.
which are inherently right wing.
Why?
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no
Authoritarianism and enforced heirarchical structures (as well as support for such regimes) are very much a right-wing philosophy. They also espouse the same “both sides” philosophy that conservatives push (which is a justification for maintaining the status quo, and another right-wing position.)
What does right wing mean to you?
What about left wing?
congratulations on instigating a semantics argument
definitions are SO fun to disagree over!
Cancer
I’m political as fuck.¹ While I try not to be toxic, I will sometimes call out aberrant opinions or counterfactual assumptions when I see them and that can lead to toxic exchanges.
So, yeah, I think the virtue of having strong opinions about things controversial is going to inspire heated exchanges more frequently.
¹ Sex in the US is very political right now.
I will sometimes call out aberrant opinions or counterfactual assumptions when I see them
But why though? You’re not going to change anybody mind online.
You never changed your mind because of something you read online?
I’ve never had someone who is arguing with me on the internet change my mind.
Have any of your views changed as you learned new things?
My experience has been that people on the Internet don’t try to teach you new things. They just attack your person, make unsubstantiated claims, or make overly broad references like “go read a book.” Even when you just ask questions without making any claims of your own, they will assume that you’re implying some disagreement with them instead of taking the question at face value. It’s extremely frustrating.
Yes. A lot of folk are unfamiliar with critical thinking processes, and are glad to adhere to positions that affirm their base prejudices. Especially when FOX News or OAN main a broadcast itinerary of affirming culture-war rhetoric. Curiously no one pretends FOX or OAN are trustworthy sources, even for uncontroversial news stories.
But that isn’t everybody on the internet, and I think the dialog is improved by those willing to counter assertions contrary to facts, and generalizations based on stereotypes and hate rhetoric. We’re not just arguing with a frightened bigot, but telling every marginalized soul reading they are seen, and they are valid.
And yes, it can be extremely frustrating given we only see resistance to the end of every exchange. We never see the moment of revelation from resistance to doubt from apathy to empathy. The human brain takes time to change its mind, to notice the leopard bites in nearby faces, to see how justifications are dangerous when applied to people they actually care about. We all have a mother in Hackensack, New Jersey.
Yes, I did not mean to give the impression that it is everybody on the internet. There has even been a couple of times after arguing for a while that people have come off the spell and literally said something like “I thought you were just a troll, I didn’t understand you were asking the question genuinely”. But these are exceptions, unfortunately. I wish good faith was the norm.
Of course, but some keyboard warrior shouting at me in the comments never has.
Open-minded people learn and change their opinion when presented with facts and discussions
The key words there are “open minded.”
The person one responds to isn’t always the audience for the response.
When people are toxic to dissenters online they don’t think they’re open minded people
Because people other than the two arguing read that and learn things. If someone states factually wrong or hurtful information about, say, trans people, I would rather they be corrected than someone think that trans people are anything other than human beings being human beings from that prior comment.
OK this to me is the perfect example. You say trans people are human. (a sentiment which i agree with BTW). How has you arguing with someone online changed ANY off the current anti trans bills out there?
Instead of arguing online and accomplishing nothing maybe instead you should be doing real work in the real work to stop that from happening.
But no, people will bitch and complain online, and then throw there hands up in the air and say “well at least I tried.” when nothing changes.
So, are you suggesting that people aren’t allowed to complain about things, are you suggesting that complaining about things cannot be done in tandom with works that better the lives of trans, or are you suggesting that people that actually want trans people to have better lives don’t get to complain about things? Because every one of those implications are dumb as shit, especially if you have any historical knowledge of civil rights movements.
No, instead you’ve taken a stance historically used to oppress civil rights movements, using a false dilemma to essentially proport that one cannot talk about the issue because that is wasting time not doing some unknown thing about it.
And by virtue of your own post, why are you arguing with people about people arguing instead of helping trans people get the rights they deserve?
why are you arguing with people about people arguing instead of helping trans people get the rights they deserve?
I’m not arguing. I’m responding.
Definitionally, you argued.
Maybe you don’t change them, but they shouldn’t get a free pass and be the only voice present.
Leaving harmful public opinions unchallenged presents the illusion of widespread agreement.
How?
You’re also arguing for the audience, not necessarily the person you’re arguing with.
Doing my best to change this. I am extremely toxic without engaging in political behavior.
The first step is knowing there is a problem. Kudos.
Doing the lord’s work.🙏
I’m similar, I wouldn’t say I’m very toxic but I’m like stressed and determined in regular conversations. Struggling to just have friendly chats without being a know it all prick
This just in, the sky is blue and the Pope is Catholic.
The sky is currently black where I am, stop spreading disinformation
but if the Pope shits in the woods, and no one is around, does it make a sound?
Depends how many bears he has eaten.
they needed a study for that?
It’s worth studying even things that seem obvious, because sometimes what seems obvious is wrong. And the only way you’re going to find out is if you study it.
Really curious about the tool they used to quantify “toxicity/disruptive” comments. My initial suspicion would be that political commentary, regardless of human-perceived toxicity, might be biased toward “toxic” by an automated sentiment analysis.
In short: I am suspicious that automated tooling exists to reliably distinguish between toxic and non-toxic political discourse.
We also have to deal with the fact that toxicity has become an almost meaningless label. The way we seem to apply it now, feels like we’d say there was a lot of “toxicity” around the time of the Civil Rights Movement, too. Or even the Civil War.
We’ve conflated “angry, hateful, bitter, disruptive, belittling” with “caring enough to get upset”. There’s been study after study trying to blame social media for the rise in “political toxicity”, and every last single one of them seems to want to sweetly ignore the context of the moment in time we’re living in.
People are acting volatile because there are a lot of volatile events happening that directly affect people’s lives. And all these high-minded discussions about how people online are so mean and rude, or how people don’t listen to each other anymore, consistently sidestep that very crucial piece of context.
So I ask, what do we mean by “toxic”? Because I have a strong feeling a good deal of women were being real “toxic” on June 24 2022. Why is the story not about why? And why does that deserve to be grouped in with the same toxicity comes from the people responsible?
I think you’re onto something saying toxic is a pretty unspecific term to use when talking about such things. Maybe it would be a better conversation to ask: when do the ends justify the means?
I’ll even step the conversation back a hot second to: do the means even result in the desired ends?
I’d argue (supported by every study ever done on the subject), that it doesn’t. The issue isn’t that you haven’t called your MAGA uncle a hillbilly redneck enough. No matter how many times you get called a woke liberal snowflake, I don’t think you’re going to genuinely re-think your position on building a wall.
If there IS an amount of verbal rage that could turn you into a MAGA, then by all means, disregard.
But… If there isn’t, and you genuinely care about changing outcomes, then I strongly challenge people to consider if “the ends justify the means” is predicated on an earlier faulty assumption that the means even generate the ends at all.
Agreed. Always a good thought to have when one is considering going down that road. Is the future predictable enough to really expect that particular end?
I agree that I’ve heard a lot of the same studies. I wonder though about the nudge and shame effects however. By this I mean, we’re pretty sure peer pressure is a thing (or at least I haven’t heard of anyone disputing that in recent research). I’ve seen self-censorship and studies that seem to also show that works.
I don’t know if the world would be better overall if we went back to 1990s levels of people not taking conspiracy theories seriously, and it being a negative view from “the average person” if you were ranting that the earth was flat. That happened somehow - those were tamped down, and I’d argue it’s plausible that it was basically peer pressure.
The means might well not be to convince the MAGA uncle, but to influence his kids, your kids, and the rest of the family to treat him as “the crazy uncle” rather than a person to emulate. Similarly, while you’ll never convince hardcore woke or MAGA people they’re wrong, you might affect the wider view of what’s “normal” for others watching. We’ve all seen the alternative of not engaging / leaving leave the space to become a self reinforcing echo chamber.
Maybe?
I guess at this point, I think we’ve probably long since surpassed a saturation point. For anyone who could be shamed into change have been. For everyone who may see someone being shamed, they’ve already seen it.
And, for the relatively small number of people who are perhaps reaching an age where it might matter, is there a concern that they won’t be exposed to it if one person (say you) don’t run that M.O?
Being a loud angry voice is so… Easy. People convince themselves that roasting libtards or trumpets is somehow critical. Like, as if it’s what is keeping the other side in check. As if the hatred isn’t just a self-sustaining perpetual hate machine.
I’m honestly not that interested in that line of thinking.
I’m more interested in trying to understand people like Daryl Davis. That looks HARD… But actually results in actual positive outcomes.
Anything I think is preferable to just maintaining the status quo, teetering on a knifes edge where the stakes keep getting higher but the stalemate of which way things will break remains. I think it’s too important to do the “easy” thing if the easy thing isn’t likely to result in significant positive change
Oh, online IDK, I think it’d be hard to miss, but people do still end up in echo chambers. At home or in person? Who’s doing the questioning matters too. What your friends think can matter a lot - if everyone is quiet because they don’t want to become “part of the problem”, no one is part of the solution. “Friends don’t let friends drive drunk”. I’d say that might well apply to at least try to “Friends don’t let friends fall down conspiracy theories”, “become neo-nazis”, etc.
But given Daryl Davis, maybe we agree - the in person is way more important than online. But I will also say a lot of people report finding likeminded people online (in multiple contexts like religion, LGBTQ+, nerds, whatever) helpful in realizing “not everyone is different from them” and “not everyone thinks one way”. And if only the loudest voices are left online, then we only see extremes. If representation matters, so does moderate representations.
I for sure agree that a discussion between friends is critical, especially the moment they start down a rabbit hole. I will admit to roasting a buddy who starts saying that “Jordan Peterson has some good points”. I guess I don’t consider that “Toxic” because of the pre-existing relationship and context? Maybe that’s unfair of me.
It’s an interesting thought. It really goes back to the question of trying to define toxicity.
Didn’t check for their specific approach, but this is a pretty standard metric in research.
It mostly boils down to either full mechanical turk (crowd source people to mark whether a post is positive or negative) or generating training data through one. I think there is a Michael Reeves video where he demonstrated this while analyzing /r/wallstreetbets posts since he needed to fully understand all the jargon/stupidity. But the idea is the same. You use humans to periodically update what words/phrases are negative and positive and then have a model train on those to extrapolate.
But there are plenty of training sets and even models out there for interpeting. The lesser ones will see “asshole” and assume negative and “awesome” and assume positive. But all the ones worth using at this point will use NLP to understand that “My asshole itches” is not a negative comment but “It would be awesome if you played in traffic” is very negative.
Also, I am realizing “mechanical turk” sounds like it probably is rooted in racism. Quick google doesn’t make it seem like it currently is, but apologies if that offends anyone and would love an alternative term.
I did read the source, and they’re using a Google AI classifier product, “perspective AI”, and even in the description of the product, it raised questions about its suitability.
At this point, most people in the space are pretty comfortable with the idea that AI models don’t eliminate bias, in fact it can amplify it.
I’m not saying “there is no way to attempt to measure toxicity”, just that based on the specific design of this study, if the measure of toxicity was biased against ANY political discussion, that would be an alternative explanation to the results.
You should read the article, if not the study itself. Its design smells suspiciously like that of an honours thesis as opposed to a grad project. Not just because of the AI… Mostly by the way they defined what constitutes participating in political discussion.
I mean, from a quick test of Perspective using their web page, it is not flagging some pretty strong political statements (mentions of late stage capitalism, calling republicans fascists, accusing Democrats of turning the country into a communist nanny state, etc) and none of them are getting flagged. Whereas, if I tell that text prompt to “go fuck your mother”, it understands that is toxic.
Because… this is kind of a solved problem. There are inherent biases but the goal of this is not to figure out which black man we can frame for a crime. It is to handle moderation. And overly strict moderation means less money. So while there likely is a bias, it does not seem to be an overly strong one and probably actually reflects the perceived reality.
Honestly? It sounds like you don’t like the outcome so you are effectively saying “fake news”.
Honestly? It sounds like you don’t like the outcome so you are effectively saying “fake news”.
You must understand the irony in me warning about being careful about drawing conclusions, and you arriving at this conclusion.
What about the outcome would I even find objectionable? The outcome didn’t find a difference between right and left? I DO personally believe that political discourse has gotten extremely toxic. I DO personally believe that people who are politically active ARE in generally more toxic in general conversation. Every single thing in this article confirms what I already believe to be true
I STILL DO NOT LIKE THE STUDY, because I do not believe that the design results in data that necessarily supports the conclusion. I’m not going to give this study a hall pass on rigor because I agree with its conclusion.
Edit:
Also, on the topic of politics and Perspective AI:
Baseline Sentence: “No X could ever be as good a X as Y” Base values: X=CEO Y=Henry Ford
Test Sentence 1: X = CEO Y=Donald Trump +41% more likely to be toxic than baseline
Test Sentence 2: X = CEO Y=Joe Biden +37% more likely to be toxic than baseline
Test Sentence 3: Y = President Y=Henry Ford +61% more likely to be toxic than baseline
Test Sentence 4: X = President Y = Joe Biden +94% more likely to be toxic than baseline
Test Sentence 5: X = President Y = Donald Trump +102% more likely to be toxic than baseline
I gotta be honest with you: my results do not disprove my hypothesis that the system is intrinsically biased to skew any political sentences along the “Toxic” axis
I like to argue with people about politics. The internet is the safest place to do so.
Political topics are also the topics that are most strongly gamed by political actors using Persona Management software to make it seem like their opinion is in the majority. The idea that people who participate in things such as “forum sliding” aren’t toxic in their interactions is absurd, so we’re left with assuming a large number of these toxic accounts aren’t actually real people.
I’m not saying people deep into politics can’t be toxic. Plenty of them are, sure. However, it’s in the interest of people with political power (especially politicians with politically unpopular ideas) to make regular people not want to participate in politics. One way you do that is to make all political people seem unhinged, angry, and just terrible. People wonder why hardly anyone votes in elections, this kind of stuff is why, and it’s not on accident that these folks seem like the majority.
I’m fully convinced the majority of them are bots trying to make politics in general seem more toxic than it actually is to dissuade more people from even wanting to be involved. The intent is to drive political apathy.
Sources:
US government developing Persona Management software in 2011: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-operation-social-networks
Eglin Air Force Base is most “Reddit Addicted City” in 2014: https://web.archive.org/web/20160604042751/http://www.redditblog.com/2013/05/get-ready-for-global-reddit-meetup-day.html
One of many research papers on Persona Management and Influencing Social Networks from Eglin AFB: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1402.5644.pdf
Helpful Reading Materials:
The Gentleperson’s Guide To Forum Spies: https://cryptome.org/2012/07/gent-forum-spies.htm
Up until a few weeks ago, it seemed these bots were mostly absent on Lemmy.
But recently, I have noticed they have arrived here, too.
I fully agree with your analysis.
In what way? Lemmy has been very political from the start. It arguably got less-so after the influx of redditors.
What are you seeing in the last month or so that makes you think there’s something more abnormal happening than usual?
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If “trying to find common ground and building from there” is normal human behavior, then normal behavior is in the minority these days. I haven’t had an in-person conversation with someone that disagrees with me that is even remotely attempting to find common ground in a very long time. It’s definitely not typical in my experience.
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I haven’t had an in-person conversation with someone that disagrees with me that is even remotely attempting to find common ground in a very long time.
It’s because it’s not only untrue, but almost the exact opposite of the truth. Humans tend to defend themselves when they find their beliefs threatened, not open themselves up.
This is the heart of a lot of lots of couples therapy: learning how to express your discontent without making it about your partner. If interested, read up on “I” statements. And we’re talking about people in committed relationships shutting themselves down to each other. Imagine how easy it is to do when you label the person as “the other team.”
The funny thing is that I read this comment, and then looked at your post history completely expecting to find an obvious troll*, but no. You are consistently and commendably courteous in your disagreements, even as you collect an Olympian number of downvotes on what seem to be very innocuous statements.
*Every time someone says something along the lines of others not wanting to find commonality with them, I look at their post history. I am only rarely disappointed, lol
I do appreciate you saying that.
I try to be kind unless someone’s being an absolute turd, but I’m also trying to be less afraid to leave downvoted comments that I genuinely believe in. I kinda had a problem with deleting any heavily downvoted comments in my Reddit history, so Lemmy’s obfuscation of karma has been quite helpful in that regard, and it’s nice to see that some of those comments helped subvert your assumptions.
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Normal human behaviour is to try and find common ground and build from there.
This is wildly untrue. Even outside the confines of the Internet. People tend to circle the wagons when their beliefs are threatened, rather than try and find common ground. Which is why the way we debate ( and I’m debating now) is so ineffectual. You need to guide the person to come to the conclusion themselves (which is why the Socratic method is so widely respected), not tell them they are wrong and you are right and here’s why. It’s a low success method.
On the Internet, it’s even less true. Now I’m just a dehumanized bunch of words, not even an individual, so your mind is rushing to try and figure out to categorize me so you can make assumptions about me. This just compounds the above issues.
Your argument seems to rest on the claim that this is atypical human behavior. This is a false assumption, and thus conclusions based on it are faulty.
Argumentative accounts that personally attack and downvote, even though there is absolutely zero reason - there wasn’t even any disagreement on the main points, just anger on minor details.
That’s been here for a while. When I became a mod of c/politics some users stalked my profile to use it as proof my me being a terrible choice. They’re evidence was me not having a degree in political science, disagreeing with them on some issues, and having a complicated relationship with my mom. I said simply check the modlogs, and there haven’t been any complaints since.
Intriguing. I don’t totally know what I think about this argument. A purposeful initiative to make politics toxic to get people to stop paying attention. It’s not one I had totally considered before. You think that’s really going on?
I have had many experiences with real people not on the internet that seem to fixate largely on politics and believe so fervently that they are right that they allow themselves to become toxic. I always thought it was a kind of inconsistent latent belief in utilitarianism combined with overconfidence.
I’m not saying those people don’t really exist, there are tons of them out there for sure, but we also have extensive evidence of governments doing this.
GCHQ in the UK had JTRIG using many forum disruption techniques.
There’s also the Five Eyes and how they use information sharing to essentially do an end-run around being able to spy on their own citizens. Technically, they’re not spying on their own citizens, a foreign nation is, they just so happen to have an agreement with that foreign nation to get info on their own citizens.
The US definitely engages in this kind of stuff on foreign nations as well. They tried to create a social media service for Cuba to influence Cuban politics and do information gathering.
Do either the UK or the US have to spy on their own citizens if they can rely on each other to run influence campaigns in each others countries? The US had to apologize to Angela Merkel for tapping her phone.
Israel has many different programs aimed at managing the PR of the state of Israel online. From paying college students to speak positively of Israel online to having “Think Tanks” use teams of people to influence Wikipedia.
We know that Hacking Team was selling their surveillance software to oppressive regimes, who were definitely using it to oppress the population. If they’re using these kind of tools, they’re using online disinformation tools as well.
So once again, there’s tons of real life absolute maniacs when it comes to politics. There’s also incentive for governments around the world to run influence campaigns for pennies on the dollar with digital tools in the digital world.
I think you’re right that there are people out there trying to manipulate and influence social media - I mean even that platforms themselves do this to a certain extent.
The idea that they purposely try to make it toxic to push the more intellectually-honest, emotionally-controlled people out of the conversation is the interesting part to me.
This particular facet feels less like intentional manipulation and more like a side-effect of our platforms and how they function.
100% agree with you. The worst part is the bots are getting better and better. I have a policy that you respond once to clarify and then walk away. These are for obvious bad actors, but now they’re seeming more and more like decent people with a flawed idea until you keep talking and realize it’s a bot. I don’t know how to counteract that.
How do you know they’re actually bots? 90% of the time, when I’m debating with someone who is passionately defending their position, they’ll at some point accuse me of being a bot or a shill. I also can’t recall any time I’ve debated someone and have been convinced they are a bot.
I’m just skeptical as it’s a convenient ad hominem.
I have the same question. How do you distinguish an advanced enough bot from a genuinely dumb person?
Or “smart” person. There are almost certainly bots who espouse beliefs that align with yours too.
To be totally honest with you, I wouldn’t for one second be surprised if the bots are programmed to accuse humans of being bots.
I don’t know how to counteract that.
Simple. You don’t. When I’m debating, I’m usually not trying to convince the person I’m debating with. I’m trying to convince a disinterested third party who reads the exchange later.
I completely agree that it’s for the later people, it’s just a waste of time for me when it’s become a lengthy thread that nobody is going to read anyway.
The other thing they do is a bot attack of taking what people are saying, changing it, and then posting a lot of them to bury comments that they don’t want others to see. Not sure how to counteract that either.
Found a reddit mod with a dozen plus accounts. Made a new account to disagree with me, I pointed it out, and he denied it, but never used that account again.
It was probably just someone with no life, but I’d feel better about the world if he were being paid for it.
Are there any sources on this from the last decade?
Because I’m not sure if you noticed, but 2016 was kind of a big moment for politics and it triggered a lot of anger and controversy. Politics on social media are a very different thing now than they were in 2011/2012. Which is to say nothing of the well-documented uptick in foreign troll farms and manipulative content sorting, which may have been present in the early 2010s, but no where near the degree it was in the latter half, and still is today.
It’s also worth pointing out this uptick in “political toxicity” is mirrored in real life. You can’t blame the protests and increasingly violent altercations in real life on some psyops trying to make people not engage in politics.
And frankly…if the goal is to get people turned off from voting, they’re failing. Turn out has been going up.
Why, what happened in 2016? Did 46% of registered voters lose their goddamned minds and vote to put an entirely incompetent and demented convicted fraud and rapist sociopath who wears clown makeup in charge of the federal government or something? Why would that increase the fervor of fucking social fucking media for fuck’s sake jesus goddamned christ on a busted motherfucking crutch!!!
Sorry. You were saying?
I think most people have a friend or relative like this. They simply must bring their political views into every single conversation, all of the time. If you try to deflect or even outright tell them you don’t want to discuss politics, they will invariably say something like “but everything is political”. It’s exhausting. Then they wonder why they stop getting invited to things.
Reminds me of this key and peele sketch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3h6es6zh1c
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=e3h6es6zh1c
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Your apathy is part of the problem.
Yes, I am that friend/relative.
Not wanting to discuss politics 24x7 in all contexts and settings is not “apathy”. I vote. I participate. I donate money. I discuss politics at appropriate times and places.
Wanting to dominate all conversations with your political opinion is pathological.
It was meant to be a self depreciating joke, but now I can’t help myself. I think this topic ends up having everybody involved make a bunch of assumptions about each other before it begins.
However, I have experienced people say that they, “don’t want to get political,” right after being confronted for saying something misinformed, hurtful, etc. It can be weaponized as an excuse to avoid self reflection.
I know that isn’t the case for everybody, but I have seen, “don’t make things political,” used as, “don’t bring in politics at odds with my own.” It’s often not even recognized by that person as being hypocritical. Sometimes our own politics can become the default in our mind and everybody else’s view is the “political” one.
Apologies for missing the joke. And I agree that it can be a dodge in some contexts, too. Also agree that the word can be used incorrectly.
People who use “political” incorrectly like that remind me of the old South Park depiction of Michael Jackson, calling everything “ignorant”.
Yes, this is missing the point. I’m not saying politics should never be discussed. I’m not saying politics and personal lives exist in separate spheres. I understand that things like economic policies and laws impact individuals’ lives in profound ways.
I’m saying people who bring it up constantly and never give it a rest are obnoxious.
I unfollowed all the political subreddits I used to follow except stupidpol and red scare for exactly this reason.
In other news, water is wet.
In a turn of events that comes as a surprise to precisely zero Reddit users…
I think it’s the same here on Lenny, ik because I’m one :(
Right! Big surprise, politically engaged people are generally angrier. And angry people can be a bit of a dick.
That all checks out…
Ur mad cuz of things the TV said about trans kids and classroom litter boxes. I’m mad cuz your political party is a brainwashed cult bent on fascism.
We are not the same
Two sides of the same coin, I barely see a difference, you both invoke hate and make the world worse.
Edit: This comment makes it clear the truth hurts. You should look at yourselves for what you really are.
Enlightened centrist horse shit
Ignorant peon exposed.
I feel our anger is justified when the right’s thought leaders tell their followers bigoted things they know to be false because it makes them money
Clown take of the year, bot, congrats.
Hey look, a moron I get to block! Thank you for showing me your toxicity.
I can understand someone feeling different than how they were born, it’s all fine and dandy.
But another species?
It’s not a thing. The OP is giving an example of how their media misleads them and uses fear-mongering about differences in people to keep them in line.
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you don’t have to understand it, you just shouldn’t be a legislative genocidal asshole about it (not that that’s what you’re doing, but that’s what republicans seem to do to anything they think isn’t their slim sliver of a definition of “normal”)
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if you’re talking about furries, to my layman’s understanding of the subculture, that’s not how the vast majority of furries relate to themselves. From what I’ve seen, it’s not that they are the animal itself, they are the aspects of the animal, and those things are just little icons that they’re like boosting because they resonate with it. That said, there are at least a few people who DO feel that way, but I’m pretty sure they have a special category name (ferals? I think that’s what they’re called but I could be wrong, this is some deep lore I picked up years ago). If they do have that special name and I’m not just making that part up, then that implies that most furries do not feel that way about themselves.
But, acknowledging the existence of people like that at all does validate your question in my mind. I don’t really understand that extreme either. My only point is that most furries are what you would likely consider “normal”, they just have a particular hobby. It’s no more nefarious or odd than being into gender bending cosplay. You’re just taking something (yourself rather than an anime/video game character) and twisting it into something artistically different (a fursona instead of a cosplay outfit).
…no I did not intend to write that much defending furries but here we are lmao
hello, furry here.
Therians are people who believe they are an animal, they are technically separate i think but theres a big overlap. generally decent folks that get teased too much.
the big tell with the litter boxes thing is furries sell out some of the largest convention centers every year and extensively share photographs of the place. no litterboxes in sight.
Not even Rainfurrest?
Yeah just adult diapers there
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The litter boxes were emergency bathrooms for shooter lockdowns. Some clever villain tied it to “identify as” rhetoric, and politicians ran with new ammo to beat up their current punching bag.
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This but unironically
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To be fair, while I agree with the viewpoint here, I don’t think there’s anything that’s objectively good or bad, just morals and beliefs in a society. I hope that’s what the other chap is getting at.
Something we consider to be 100% bad, like physically hitting a misbehaving child, may in fact be seen as acceptable to people from another society elsewhere in the world, or in a different time period.
It’s all just about perspective, good and bad are relative constructs.
I’m still gonna stick to being our societies version of good, fascists and xenophobes etc can go screw, but I’m under no illusion that my beliefs or morals are objectively immutably good.
Just food for thought is all!
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