Comment by try_the_bass
3 days ago
I don't know that I agree with this. I think my information bubble is largely liberal-flavored, and my experience doesn't align with this. I've instead found that those who otherwise embody the most "political correctness" are often the least tolerant of having their views challenged. In fact, my experience has been that the more vocally "progressive" a user is, the more likely they are to resort to cheap zingers and gotchas (politically-correct ones, of course) when their views are challenged (even politely!), instead of engaging in a cooperative way.
I saw this the most in the pre-Musk Twittersphere, but it has metastisized since then. Of course, it's unclear if these types are genuine, trolls, or simply a product of the medium itself, so take it with a grain of salt.
> You're way underplaying the aplifying role of anonymity and connectedness
Fully agree with this, though. I suspect this draws out the worst behavior regardless of professed political/moral affiliation
A hasty edit left out an important caveat of my prior comment. I was talking about my experience in real life.
Online I would say that every discussion across the political spectrum seems to be dominated by intolerance. Also the left, I agree.
I'm specifically concerned with how those communities affect the real world people I talk to outside of the internet, and there I find that the "anti PC" crowd takes their philosophy along with them much more readily.
> I'm specifically concerned with how those communities affect the real world people I talk to outside of the internet, and there I find that the "anti PC" crowd takes their philosophy along with them much more readily.
My experience tends to align with this, as well. But I don't actually see it as a problem in the same way you do.
After all, if someone's online behavior and their "real world" behavior align, doesn't that just mean they're being authentic?
Which my experience tends to agree with: the "anti PC" crowd, in my experience, is more "authentic" than their "PC crowd" equivalents. I don't agree with their views per se, but they tend to be more internally consistent about those views, which is commendable. A lot of "being PC" plays out as posturing, which often feels inauthentic and fake. I think this is consistent with what you're saying, but it's really a critique of both sides in different ways.
I think lack of perceived authenticity is a large part of the Democratic party's current struggles with membership. Or at least it's a thing that makes me take them less seriously and to see their ideas/proposals in a poorer light, and I can only assume there are some (many?) people who feel the same.
Left-wing fediverse is a good illustration, too. The way things work on Mastodon, if you try to spin up a node, you quickly find out that many such nodes will ban you e.g. simply because you run Pleroma (because it's "made by fascists for fascists"), or even just because your block list doesn't have a sufficient similarity to theirs.
This isn't really anything new though. The same thing used to happen on IRC where the network would semi-frequently split because some relay was k-lined due to some internal politics.
This seems to be an inherent feature of any federated, but otherwise rule-less system.
It's not quite the same thing. It's one thing if the users of some node lose access to another node because it ends up on the first node's blocklist. But in Mastodon, the first node doesn't just block the offending node; it also blocks other nodes that don't block that one, by association, effectively trying to coerce the entire fediverse.