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Promoting negative emotions is a lot easier than promoting positive emotions. To a very large degree the platform of the right is currently heavily weighted tow

Promoting negative emotions is a lot easier than promoting positive emotions. To a very large degree the platform of the right is currently heavily weighted toward provoking fear and anger, negative emotions easy to stoke in people. This might change and we may have an ascendant party on the left with a primarily negative message eventually. And I'm not saying the current left never does this. But at the moment the right's playbook fits existing social media better.

whatshisface 8y ago
I hope to avoid a political debate, but the left has plenty of negative messages too. The rich are too rich and don't have to pay taxes, the poor are too poor, racism never completely went away, the corporate world is unfair to women, and so on. I doubt there has ever been a political movement without any negative messages. I should add in support of your point about social media having a propensity to negativity, these negative left-leaning messages tend to spread faster than the positive ones, just like on the right wing.
- cageface 8y ago
  Yeah I agree it's not intrinsically a left or right issue. It's more about the naive and simplistic design of the current platforms. I think we'll eventually see a second generation of social media platforms that incorporate the lessons learned from this generation.
- danans 8y ago
  > but the left has plenty of negative messages too. The rich are too rich and don't have to pay taxes, the poor are too poor, racism never completely went away, the corporate world is unfair to women, and so on. Those are hardly negative, and to equate their tone with far right rhetoric is textbook false equivalency. They are if anything just positions that one may or may not agree with about the just distribution of wealth and opportunity. None of them are even in same ballpark or kind as the current toxic rhetoric on the far right, such as "[Mexicans] are criminals", "Muslims are trying to impose Sharia law in the US", "blood and soil", "we can't rebuild our civilization with someone else's babies" (that one is paraphrasing from a sitting member of Congress). That is the rhetoric of racial and ethnic nationalism, which is almost totally a far right phenomenon on social media. There is no equivalent on the far left today, and that's not to say that it can't develop. But to do so with literally require a complete change of the people who make up the left.
  - whatshisface 8y ago
    You don't have to dig very far to find some stupid kids on Reddit going off on that "eat the rich" stuff - but the thing is, your "stupid kids" are their "horrible violent mob," and their "stupid kids" are your "horrible violent mob." In reality they're both a little bit violent and definitely both stupid. ;) Social media and regular media both contribute to this perception because everyone wants to forget about their own bad associations and focus on the bad associations of others. So, if you want to find out about nationalists you read left-leaning publications and if you want to find out about radical-to-the-point-of-silliness leftists you have to read right-leaning publications.
    - danans 8y ago
      > You don't have to dig very far to find some stupid kids on Reddit > Social media and regular media both contribute to this perception 3 of the 4 examples of right wing rhetoric I quoted were uttered publicly by right wing elected officials (including the highest current elected in the land), not by people entertaining themselves on Reddit. The fourth was shouted publicly by crowds in Charlottesville. The difference between right and left rhetoric is one of kind, not degree. Ethnic nationalism is not a motivating factor on the left today. Class tensions and frustration over the distribution of opportunity and wealth - yes, those are prominent left-wing issues and that rhetoric is often expressed via insensitive metaphors targeted at the very wealthy, but again, it's not even comparable to the rhetoric of ethnic nationalism.
  - chillacy 8y ago
    If you believe that there’s no far left then either you haven’t been looking very hard or your own notion of center is very different than mine.
    - danans 8y ago
      I never said there is no far left. They definitely exist, and I even disagree with some of their policy positions. I said that the far left doesn't use ethnic nationalist rhetoric. That acknowledges their existence.
int_19h 8y ago
There's enough hate, anger and other similar emotions on the left, that memes like these get made by other people on the left to combat it (with not much success, from my own experience). https://i.imgur.com/YFQ9zO6.jpg https://i.imgur.com/YFQ9zO6.jpg I would also like to remind that among the many pages removed from the very same Facebook because they were inciting hate and anger as part of the Russian propaganda ops, quite a few were targeting left-leaning audiences. In general, populists of all stripes are going to appeal to those emotions precisely because it's much easier to evoke them. So whichever side has a stronger populist faction at any given moment is the one that benefits most. In some places (like US) it's the right wing currently, in others, it's the left.

whatshisface 8y ago

I hope to avoid a political debate, but the left has plenty of negative messages too. The rich are too rich and don't have to pay taxes, the poor are too poor, racism never completely went away, the corporate world is unfair to women, and so on. I doubt there has ever been a political movement without any negative messages. I should add in support of your point about social media having a propensity to negativity, these negative left-leaning messages tend to spread faster than the positive ones, just like on the right wing.

cageface 8y ago
Yeah I agree it's not intrinsically a left or right issue. It's more about the naive and simplistic design of the current platforms. I think we'll eventually see a second generation of social media platforms that incorporate the lessons learned from this generation.
danans 8y ago
> but the left has plenty of negative messages too. The rich are too rich and don't have to pay taxes, the poor are too poor, racism never completely went away, the corporate world is unfair to women, and so on. Those are hardly negative, and to equate their tone with far right rhetoric is textbook false equivalency. They are if anything just positions that one may or may not agree with about the just distribution of wealth and opportunity. None of them are even in same ballpark or kind as the current toxic rhetoric on the far right, such as "[Mexicans] are criminals", "Muslims are trying to impose Sharia law in the US", "blood and soil", "we can't rebuild our civilization with someone else's babies" (that one is paraphrasing from a sitting member of Congress). That is the rhetoric of racial and ethnic nationalism, which is almost totally a far right phenomenon on social media. There is no equivalent on the far left today, and that's not to say that it can't develop. But to do so with literally require a complete change of the people who make up the left.
- whatshisface 8y ago
  You don't have to dig very far to find some stupid kids on Reddit going off on that "eat the rich" stuff - but the thing is, your "stupid kids" are their "horrible violent mob," and their "stupid kids" are your "horrible violent mob." In reality they're both a little bit violent and definitely both stupid. ;) Social media and regular media both contribute to this perception because everyone wants to forget about their own bad associations and focus on the bad associations of others. So, if you want to find out about nationalists you read left-leaning publications and if you want to find out about radical-to-the-point-of-silliness leftists you have to read right-leaning publications.
  - danans 8y ago
    > You don't have to dig very far to find some stupid kids on Reddit > Social media and regular media both contribute to this perception 3 of the 4 examples of right wing rhetoric I quoted were uttered publicly by right wing elected officials (including the highest current elected in the land), not by people entertaining themselves on Reddit. The fourth was shouted publicly by crowds in Charlottesville. The difference between right and left rhetoric is one of kind, not degree. Ethnic nationalism is not a motivating factor on the left today. Class tensions and frustration over the distribution of opportunity and wealth - yes, those are prominent left-wing issues and that rhetoric is often expressed via insensitive metaphors targeted at the very wealthy, but again, it's not even comparable to the rhetoric of ethnic nationalism.
- chillacy 8y ago
  If you believe that there’s no far left then either you haven’t been looking very hard or your own notion of center is very different than mine.
  - danans 8y ago
    I never said there is no far left. They definitely exist, and I even disagree with some of their policy positions. I said that the far left doesn't use ethnic nationalist rhetoric. That acknowledges their existence.

int_19h 8y ago

There's enough hate, anger and other similar emotions on the left, that memes like these get made by other people on the left to combat it (with not much success, from my own experience). https://i.imgur.com/YFQ9zO6.jpg https://i.imgur.com/YFQ9zO6.jpg I would also like to remind that among the many pages removed from the very same Facebook because they were inciting hate and anger as part of the Russian propaganda ops, quite a few were targeting left-leaning audiences. In general, populists of all stripes are going to appeal to those emotions precisely because it's much easier to evoke them. So whichever side has a stronger populist faction at any given moment is the one that benefits most. In some places (like US) it's the right wing currently, in others, it's the left.