Comment by RajT88
5 days ago
Left leaning folks are swept up in rage machines too.
Leaf through the BoingBoing BBS sometime to get a sense for it.
5 days ago
Left leaning folks are swept up in rage machines too.
Leaf through the BoingBoing BBS sometime to get a sense for it.
I 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.
They 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.
One 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.
And 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.
I 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?
There 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".
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I 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?
I 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.
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You 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.
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BoingBoing 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?
I think most Americans don't want to be morally lectured. Today's far-left is most similar to the religious right of decades ago. Outside their fervent base, everyone else is annoyed by them.
See these are interesting questions. I don't have great answers.
IQ gap between the sides?
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I suspect part of it may be due to resources. The far right commentator has a pretty solid career path ahead of them, and support from large backers who find that far right beliefs don't threaten their profits. As a result, someone on the right who gets into this sort of content can get funding from both a certain percentage of billionaires/large companies, plus the right wing media machine and potentially foreign adversaries like Russia.
On the other hand a lot of far left beliefs are very unfriendly to capitalism/large companies/billionaires/foreign adversaries, to the 'abolish capitalism' or 'eat the rich' degree. So the far right folks can more easily afford to make it their full time job, since they have other sources of funding rather than just their fans.
I suspect that left wing audiences are also more skeptical of these types of figures, and more prone to infighting. So it's harder to bring together a large audience of fanatics for left wing content, since they're divided over 50 ways to 'solve' a problem.
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The 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.
No, 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...
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> The murder of the united healthcare CEO, or more specifically, the positive reaction towards it, seems rather associated with the left, doesn't it?
Not even close. Ben Shapiro and Matt Walsh have been blasted by their own fans and viewers for criticising Luigi Mangioni.
>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.
> 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.
Every piece of this understanding is wrong. For one thing, the far Right in American has been better and more effective at that than any part of the Democratic coalition, since at least the 1980s.
Theocracy 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.
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Wait, 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.