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Conservatives haven't spent decades opting in to getting all their information from Fox News and AM radio hosts spewing hate because it's more accurate. People

Conservatives haven't spent decades opting in to getting all their information from Fox News and AM radio hosts spewing hate because it's more accurate. People want to consume what agrees with their beliefs. As long as Americans continue to believe they are a magical place with magical people that you can't compare to anywhere else for advice, that the Civil war was fought over "state's rights", that we disliked the Nazis in the 1930s, that certain TYPES of people are intrinsically better than others, that we are a "christian" nation, we will never get better. Hell, even media made for people who don't actively hate LGBTQ types STILL treats the civil war like just some small kerfuffle and it's fine that two brothers on opposite sides of the war just needed to reconcile and love each other and that's totally fine even though one of them signed up to fight and die for a regime who's entire purpose was the continued enslavement of millions of black people for the crime of being born black. A significant portion of our country is outright TAUGHT IN SCHOOL that the civil war was a war of "Northern" (read: those goddamned coastal elites) aggression. The south fired the first shot for fucks sake. Why do you think those people would EVER choose to consume news that tells them: "Sorry, you've kind of been lied to for a long time and actually your ancestors were kind of bad people doing kind of bad stuff and also uh we genocided the indians and also the Nazis were pretty popular here and holy shit you should see the horrible stuff we did under the guise of 'science' when we discovered Eugenics let us claim black people were inherently inferior. Because their skull was the wrong shape. No I'm serious" How do you get someone to believe something they absolutely do not want to believe in and they don't even respect the primacy of material fact like "The southern states literally said they were fighting to maintain slavery IN THEIR SUCCESSION DOCUMENTS"? You can't force another human to respect and understand reality when they spend their entire existence and have built their entire worldview around "No, the people telling me my country did bad things in the past are actually the enemy"?

scarface_74 2y ago
As much as I am aware of the perils of states rights, I’m almost in favor of a smaller federal government that lets each state fend for itself and let the Blue richer states have higher state taxes and lower federal taxes. Then for instance like minded states could form alliances. A true Federalist country. And yes I am well aware of my own hypocrisy only living in GA and FL my entire life and I know that the south would even be worse for people of my skin color if it weren’t for the civil rights legislation of the 60s, the official abolishing of segregation, etc
ethbr1 2y ago
I listed to a great discussion about the consolidation of conservative media (~1980-2010) on the radio. Murdoch aside, it generally happened because of profit chasing. It was easy and profitable to capture conservative audiences with centrally-programmed partisan content (read: Rush Limbaugh). Progressive-partisan political shows didn't do as well (read: Air America). Furthermore, stations couldn't mix partisanship without pissing off their listeners. So you ended up with stations choosing conservative programming because it was more profitable, and then becoming conservative-programming stations because that because their audience. With the net result of a huge disparity between the availability of conservative and progressive radio programming. ... compound that over a couple decades, and here we are.
- mrguyorama 2y ago
  You probably shouldn't "murdoch aside" conservative media control. He's a huge huge huge part of it himself, in the entire english speaking world! Sure, profit chasing plays a part in it. A big reason why Youtube and Facebook push you down right-wing hate rabbitholes at the slightest hint that you might bite is simply that hate, oversimplification, and bullshit lies just drive engagement better than a 30 minute video essay on just how complicated this one tiny subsection of homelessness is and how much human labor and time it takes to work on it. Humans like easy answer. Humans "engage" more (in ad-company parlance) with hate and things that cause anger. In a free meme market, the most shallow, most hateful content will always rise to the top. But letting those incentives play out that way is a choice. Letting everything consolidate, an activity that is known to be detrimental to a free market, as long as they lower prices for a couple years before taking advantage of their monopoly is a very dumb choice. Reagan made plenty of dumb choices, but there were enough smart people in his cabinet to tell him exactly how this would play out. You don't live through the cold war and not know that owning the largest media narrative is power. And oh boy is it.
datavirtue 2y ago
Next time you're riding around, tune into local AM. Very dystopian.

scarface_74 2y ago

As much as I am aware of the perils of states rights, I’m almost in favor of a smaller federal government that lets each state fend for itself and let the Blue richer states have higher state taxes and lower federal taxes. Then for instance like minded states could form alliances. A true Federalist country. And yes I am well aware of my own hypocrisy only living in GA and FL my entire life and I know that the south would even be worse for people of my skin color if it weren’t for the civil rights legislation of the 60s, the official abolishing of segregation, etc

ethbr1 2y ago

I listed to a great discussion about the consolidation of conservative media (~1980-2010) on the radio. Murdoch aside, it generally happened because of profit chasing. It was easy and profitable to capture conservative audiences with centrally-programmed partisan content (read: Rush Limbaugh). Progressive-partisan political shows didn't do as well (read: Air America). Furthermore, stations couldn't mix partisanship without pissing off their listeners. So you ended up with stations choosing conservative programming because it was more profitable, and then becoming conservative-programming stations because that because their audience. With the net result of a huge disparity between the availability of conservative and progressive radio programming. ... compound that over a couple decades, and here we are.

mrguyorama 2y ago
You probably shouldn't "murdoch aside" conservative media control. He's a huge huge huge part of it himself, in the entire english speaking world! Sure, profit chasing plays a part in it. A big reason why Youtube and Facebook push you down right-wing hate rabbitholes at the slightest hint that you might bite is simply that hate, oversimplification, and bullshit lies just drive engagement better than a 30 minute video essay on just how complicated this one tiny subsection of homelessness is and how much human labor and time it takes to work on it. Humans like easy answer. Humans "engage" more (in ad-company parlance) with hate and things that cause anger. In a free meme market, the most shallow, most hateful content will always rise to the top. But letting those incentives play out that way is a choice. Letting everything consolidate, an activity that is known to be detrimental to a free market, as long as they lower prices for a couple years before taking advantage of their monopoly is a very dumb choice. Reagan made plenty of dumb choices, but there were enough smart people in his cabinet to tell him exactly how this would play out. You don't live through the cold war and not know that owning the largest media narrative is power. And oh boy is it.

datavirtue 2y ago

Next time you're riding around, tune into local AM. Very dystopian.