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Extremist content on Reddit, Discord worrying trend for young adults in India
31–40 of 101 posts
Re: Extremist content on Reddit, Discord worrying trend for young adults in India
#32I'd like to understand why so many young people find extremist content so persuasive and engaging. I can't stand it, and I instantly close any website that allows for extreme content.
This is well studied. The summary is that they target isolated or vulnerable people. It's the same with cults, diploma mills, and multi-level marketing schemes.
Re: Extremist content on Reddit, Discord worrying trend for young adults in India
#33I'd like to understand why so many young people find extremist content so persuasive and engaging. I can't stand it, and I instantly close any website that allows for extreme content.
Because it's a lure of empowerment. My vote doesn't matter. Media is controlled by corporate interests. But I can bully/attack/kill some other group and make a real impact.
The above is obviously not at all my own opinion just trying to explain the rational. It used to be that you could "make a difference" at a local level. But local "sense of community" has been replaced by online communities.
Re: Extremist content on Reddit, Discord worrying trend for young adults in India
#34I'd like to understand why so many young people find extremist content so persuasive and engaging. I can't stand it, and I instantly close any website that allows for extreme content.
This last 2 year window has been particularly frustrating for young people and blaming "others" is frequent in these situations. I think externalising things to an out-group is just human nature (which of course needs to be confronted and denied)
Normally, it would be a minority who were in the position of the extent of time we're spending online, in discussions. More people in the space, more opportunity for pervasive negative messages, and racist/extremist messages to do their insidious work.
Why to they find it engaging and persuasive? because its recruiting, and so they get responses which are positive feedback. And, it provides an "unimpeachable" blame for the problem state young minds find themselves in: its those other people. Not you: you're one of us.
Re: Extremist content on Reddit, Discord worrying trend for young adults in India
#35Quoted post unavailable.
Pretty sure the government tried paying people to install toilets in their homes but most refused and all continue to go in the streets as well - the occasional concerned citizen has even been assaulted for requesting that people not do it.
Re: Extremist content on Reddit, Discord worrying trend for young adults in India
#36I'd like to understand why so many young people find extremist content so persuasive and engaging. I can't stand it, and I instantly close any website that allows for extreme content.
Good times give you lone wolves. Extreme times drive people into the arms of extreme ideologies.
And it's just as much a problem of visibility and perception as it is one of reality.
Re: Extremist content on Reddit, Discord worrying trend for young adults in India
#37Re: Extremist content on Reddit, Discord worrying trend for young adults in India
#38I'd like to understand why so many young people find extremist content so persuasive and engaging. I can't stand it, and I instantly close any website that allows for extreme content.
As someone who was a teen on the internet in the 2000s, I think it at least partially has to do with lack of perspective or a reference point — extremism isn’t registering as extremism due to not having a measuring stick.
Additionally, anything that engages an individual’s emotions is likely to be attractive at that stage of life, thanks to teenagers on average having emotional centers that are overdeveloped relative to the rest of their brains.
A lot of this extends into a person’s early 20s as well, depending on how quickly they mature, their life experiences, etc. Personally speaking, in retrospect I didn’t have my head screwed on even remotely right until at least age 26 or so.
Re: Extremist content on Reddit, Discord worrying trend for young adults in India
#39I'd like to understand why so many young people find extremist content so persuasive and engaging. I can't stand it, and I instantly close any website that allows for extreme content.
In short, unanswered questions.
I have a close friend who briefly flirted with (actual) extreme right wing beliefs, and has, thankfully, settled on a less warlike disposition. The question he asked, and which was never given a straight answer, was (in paraphrase), “why are others allowed to say, and even wish and will evil things upon my identity, but I am forbidden from even mild criticism of other identities, under pain of real material loss?” It is a real question, describing a real phenomenon, and since no one “respectable” could give him a straight answer, or even acknowledge the legitimacy of the question, he turned to people who did, even as they answered wrongly.
Re: Extremist content on Reddit, Discord worrying trend for young adults in India
#40I think the far more worrying trend is trying to silence anyone with different political ideologies. Like their handpicked example of a user discussing "'destroý' Islam". Note, they added the quotes around destroy. But the actual content is reasonably thoughtful discussion of appointed supreme court judges and only claims "to end radical islam".
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