New political polarization casts rivals as alien, unlikable, contemptible

Post by matwood » Sat, Oct 31, 2020, 1:43 PM UTC

throwaway894345 wrote: post #114

matwood wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I see anecdotally is that the left has become more inclusive, and the right as become more extreme. People have fled the right either to no party or to the center left. That leaves behind the extremes on the right which have become emboldened by Trump and their shrinking bubble. It's like evaporating water out of a glass of salt water. The water left behind becomes more and more salty. If you have ever had a sal…

> What I see anecdotally is that the left has become more inclusive, and the right as become more extreme. I think there are some on the right who have become more extreme, but I interpret this as a reflex against a rapidly growing extreme leftism (apologies to anyone offended by this term; I don’t mean it as a value judgment as much as a literalism). I’m a liberal, personally, and I certainly feel like the left is m…

Post by nabla9 » Sat, Oct 31, 2020, 1:48 PM UTC

ecocentrik wrote: post #116

nabla9 wrote: post #70

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People in social media spend several hours per day following politics but almost nobody of them is engaged in any real political work. They are engaging with politics to satisfy our own emotional needs and intellectual curiosities. That’s political hobbyism/consumerism. It's not different from being sports fan. Making noise from the couch but not having no effect in the game and annoying people who don't follow. They…

Keeping informed has been always been a prerequisite of American democracy. "wherever the people are well informed they can be trusted with their own government" Thomas Jefferson ( https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/jefferson/60.html ) Engaging in the political dialogue is not wasted energy. Low level engagement on social media might be about as impactful as filling a stadium to see a politician speak during a pandemic but…

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Oct 31, 2020, 1:52 PM UTC

Post by treeman79 » Sat, Oct 31, 2020, 1:57 PM UTC

arkitaip wrote: post #81

navidfarhadi wrote: post #61

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It’s possible to (mostly) avoid political stuff on those websites if one wants to, instead of refusing to use the sites completely. Just as an example, I rarely visit r/all, but I do visit specific subreddits that I’m subscribed to like r/privacy, r/pihole, and r/thinkpad. On Facebook, I never browse my newsfeed, but I am a member of a group for my apartment complex in the Stockholm area which lists local events and…

It is virtually impossible on Twitter, I know because I've used every tool possible (tweet deck, lists, occasionally muting people, changing the feed layout) and it just doesn't work because (a) Twitter is designed to bleed content from one tribe to another (b), because people have one feed where they combine work, private life and politics and (c) the metrics Twitter use are based on designs that agitate and divide.

Post by treeman79 » Sat, Oct 31, 2020, 2:00 PM UTC

agumonkey wrote: post #101

bogwog wrote: post #33

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Social media might need to be controlled in the same way cigarettes are. At the end of the day, both are drug dealers. One of them sells nicotine, the other sells dopamine. Not sure what that would look like though. Cigarettes have scary labels and enforced age requirements. Maybe social media would have to change the way likes/upvotes/etc work to be less polarizing, in addition to an age limit enforcement?

It's fun because, just like cigarettes, internet has been 'sold'. It was a new eldorado of information and choice .. It started slightly innocently but at some point it became a product.