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Left leaning folks are swept up in rage machines too. Leaf through the BoingBoing BBS sometime to get a sense for it.
by RajT88 2y ago
Left leaning folks are swept up in rage machines too.
Leaf through the BoingBoing BBS sometime to get a sense for it.
- llamaimperative 2y ago[flagged]
- RajT88 2y agoI wasn't suggesting an equivalence, just that the phenomena of the rage machine exists on both sides. As an exercise, try coming up with some metric to measure it. Could be inflammatory posts, or the comment count on inflammatory posts. Compare BB BBS with some rough equivalent right-leaning place. You'll find it's worse in the right-leaning forum, no doubt. But the phenomena exists on both sides of the political spectrum. Many trends among one side of the political spectrum are mirrored to a lesser extent on the other side as well, and that's interesting don't you think?
- llamaimperative 2y agoI don’t find it that interesting because it’s obviously a consequence of our information environment. We have constructed algorithmic outrage machines and deferred thought and curation to them. It’s far more interesting to me how one side of the political spectrum was so totally swallowed by this system, to the extent that literally every single news story is received with outlandish conspiracy theorizing from rather mainstream right wing media. The null hypothesis is that actually both sides should be equally distorted, but it is very obviously the case they are not. That is what deserves inquiry.
- geodel 2y ago> but it is very obviously the case they are not. It not obvious and also doesn't seem true at all. Still one may continue to investigate with this assumption but then result will neither be truth or much useful.
- llamaimperative 2y agoYeah, it really is obvious. Here's one excellent example: the dominant right wing media apparatus knowingly engaging in a conspiratorial lie that fetched them a $787 million punishment. https://apnews.com/article/fox-news-dominion-lawsuit-trial-trump-2020-0ac71f75acfacc52ea80b3e747fb0afe https://apnews.com/article/fox-news-dominion-lawsuit-trial-t...
- ahmeneeroe-v2 2y agoHere is an excellent example that many people think you're wrong: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_elections https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_elections
- llamaimperative 2y agoYou must've forgotten what the conversation is about. It's about the degree to which each side is wrapped up in an outrage machine. That would be reflected in the election results, and not in the way you're implying.
- ahmeneeroe-v2 2y agowhen my side wins it's good and true and when the other side wins it's the outrage machine
- llamaimperative 2y agoThat's not my belief, which is why I didn't post the terrible evidence of election results. You did. I posted a court settlement for the crime of knowingly producing untrue, defamatory outrage at massive scale. Note how mine is evidence for my argument. Yours is evidence for nothing at all.
- Satisfy4400 2y agoIt seems to me there's plenty of conspiratorial thinking on the left. The rhetoric around Project 2025 comes to mind as a recent example. Same with rhetoric around for-profit prisons (e.g., I see lots of people saying our criminal justice system is primarily profit driven). If I had to guess, I'd say such thinking is more widespread on the right, but I find it very difficult to see these sort of things clearly since I'm generally left-leaning in my politics.
- standardUser 2y agoYou seem to have dodged the larger point that right wing rage is a mainstream phenomenon and a dominant force across television, radio, podcasts and social media, whereas comparably hateful and violent language on the left is mostly only in the margins.
- Satisfy4400 2y agoThe glorification of Luigi Mangione in some left-leaning circles seems to be a counterpoint to your assertion.
- llamaimperative 2y agoAddressed with polling data below. There is no evidence of a significant left/right divide on this issue.
- NickC25 2y agoThe only divide is pushed from the corporate media who desperately wants 1. this to be a left/right issue and 2. for everyone to stfu because United spends billions of dollars advertising on said media's platforms. Luigi's selfless act of heroism on the behalf of the American middle and lower classes should be treated as such. You'll find that United Fraudcare doesn't discriminate on left/right when it comes to denying care to those who need it most. The same can be said for the victims of United denying them services that they paid handsomely for over the course of several years.
- BlueTemplar 2y agoBut it is a left/right issue : this obviously wouldn't have happened in a socialist country. (You would still have had issues with higher status people sometimes getting much better healthcare of course.) The problem here is that people confuse left/right with Democrat/Republican and seem to think that Trump is on the right just because he used the Republican party : he is no more on the right than the Nazis, who deployed both left leaning and right leaning policies when those suited them.
- davrosthedalek 2y agoThe murder of the united healthcare CEO, or more specifically, the positive reaction towards it, seems rather associated with the left, doesn't it? People who want a certain party to be in power should hold that party to a higher standard. Independent of the party. Being "better than the others" is not good enough.
- llamaimperative 2y agoNo, not really. Harris vs Trump voters who... Approve: 5-11% vs 2-8% Neither approve nor disapprove: 6-12% vs 7-13% Disapprove: 65-71% vs 72-78% Not sure: 6-12% vs 4-10% Not a super substantial difference. The outrage machine wins again! Source: https://d3nkl3psvxxpe9.cloudfront.net/documents/Reactions_to_Murder_of_Brian_Thompson_poll_results.pdf https://d3nkl3psvxxpe9.cloudfront.net/documents/Reactions_to...
- TimTheTinker 2y agoThat data is super helpful. From browsing Reddit, my impression was that the left strongly approved.
- llamaimperative 2y agoTerminally online not-rich people across the spectrum approved. Other not-rich people seem to land in the "vaguely disapprove" realm IMO. Obviously the plutocrats are all terrified and think it's the worst crime ever.
- ahmeneeroe-v2 2y agoso the data shows that the left's approval of the murder is 37% higher on the low end up to a max of 5x higher (depending on how the confidence intervals map to reality). And that that the left is anywhere from 20% to 3x more likely to be undecided about the morality of an assassination.
- llamaimperative 2y ago
- ahmeneeroe-v2 2y ago>There are actual [people that I label with bad labels] just one or two hops away from the President! My latest understanding of the US political landscape is that 2008-2024 the left got very adept at defining things as bad and then attacking those things. In 2016 the right started to learn to counter that, and in 2024 that finally died. In other words, you'll need to try harder than just calling people nazis. You're getting downvoted because people don't buy that 1) tens of millions of their fellow Americans are lunatics and 2) that the left doesn't have their own moral failings.
- llamaimperative 2y agoTheocracy is bad and neo-Nazism is bad. Trump had dinner with Nick Fuentes, who 1) is an open anti-semite, 2) praises Adolf Hitler, and 3) calls for white ethnonationalism. I don't need to write a treatise to explain why this is bad.
- ahmeneeroe-v2 2y agoYou don't need to write the treatise because the era of that kind of "logic" winning elections is over. (ie the left being able to label whole political movements as bad because certain bad people associate themselves with it)
- llamaimperative 2y agoI didn't label a whole movement as bad, ya goofball. Well except for neo-Nazism and theocracy, the latter of which is explicitly counter to the US Constitution and the former is... well... you can defend it if you'd like. I said extreme ideologies (including the two I mentioned) are bad, and there's an asymmetry in their representation and proximity to power on the different ends of the political spectrum.
- standardUser 2y agoWho are the good white supremacists?
- flir 2y agoBoingBoing is still very much made in Doctorow's image. Michael Moore is an earlier example. Not suggesting equivalence, in fact I would be really interested to hear theories as to why right-wing polemicists are so much more popular (and numerous) than left-wing polemicists. On the face of it, there are a lot of left-wing things to be justifiably outraged about (especially right now). So why isn't left-wing outrage reliably bankable? I don't think it's a pattern tied to the zeitgeist, because you see it in talk radio too, which predates social media's Skinner box algorithms by decades. Side-question: why are there more left-wing political comedians than right-wing ones?
- llamaimperative 2y agoSee these are interesting questions. I don't have great answers. IQ gap between the sides?
- flir 2y agoMe either. I think that's possibly a self-serving guess, to be honest. But how would we test it? On the comedians question: some people think it's because it's easier to be funny when kicking up than kicking down.
- RajT88 2y agoThis is a just-so rationalization, which feels good, but people have looked into many of these, and they don't really hold up. The most common one is that poor white people are overwhelmingly voting for Trump. The average household income of a Trump voter is something like 75k - hardly poor (depending where you're at). Anecdata: I know plenty of Trump voters who are very smart. A friend's dad has multiple PhD's and accomplished career as a theoretical physicist. He's also pretty racist. My father is a retired engineer, and doesn't like Trump, but keeps voting for him, because the Democrats are on the wrong side of issues he cares about. (Gun control, namely) The reality is likely to be - they have used the mountains of publicly available data, and fine tuned their messages with the help of a highly partisan rage-baiting media ecosystem to capture more voters. It seems to me, the right wing is more organized, and manages to keep their voters and party members more aligned and on-message. They also have a much more voracious appetite for fighting dirty (rough talk, conspiracy theories, whisper campaigns, untraceable mailers giving wrong polling place info to black communities, etc.) - something the Democrats do not have the stomach for.
- cruffle_duffle 2y agoOne only needs to observe societies response to Covid to see how “left leaning folks get swept up into rage machines”. People were cheering on cars getting towed from popular hiking spots, skate parks getting filled with sand, crazy people “protesting” beachgoers, etc. if you dared to suggest schools should open you were a grandma killing MAGA hat wearing pariah. Don’t forget the level of censorship, vaccine passes, wishing death upon those who didn’t get vaccinated, etc. No sir, people of all tribes are fully capable of getting swept into rage machines. At the end of the day we are animals operating on animal instinct. No tribe gets to claim otherwise.
- standardUser 2y agoI mean, some people reacted how you describe, but the vast majority did not regardless of political leanings. Are you going to pretend that was the dominant reaction among left-leaning people just so you can be mad about it?
- armchairdweller 2y agoThere were indeed surveys showing that a fascist stance (like throwing unvaccinated into camps or taking their children) was, indeed, dominant (60% and more support) among American "democrats". So much for your "vast majority".
- throaway89 2y agoAnd the internet hijacks our brains so effectively; since it became ubiquitous, it is almost impossible for regular users to see how they are being conditioned.
- dmurray 2y agoWait, in my media bubble the American left is the one consumed by rage. The right is stupid or craven or greedy or just evil, but true righteous fury is reserved for those who saw a woman's rights not getting respected one time.
- harrall 2y agoI find the right goes into rage machines and sees their way of life changing and double down on keeping things the way they have been. I find the left goes into anger machines and ends up suggesting overzealous steps for necessary changes that take many people aback. But that’s not new. What’s not new is that now we have social media and mainstream media that wants to fan the flames by giving voices to the most extreme.
- kevin_thibedeau 2y agoThey aren't obstructing Congress. That has been ongoing since 1994 when rational negotiation by civic minded leaders was replaced with hostage taking to suit an ideology without regard for public benefit.