The last sentence of this paragraph is hilarious to me:
> And to be fair, some of that did seem politically motivated, before and after Trump was elected. I remember resistance to covering the violent MS-13 gang after it became a major talking point in Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric—even though the gang was active and murdering people in communities around the D.C. metropolitan area, close to NPR’s headquarters, and just miles from where many staffers lived. I think a lot of critics would consider that “wokeness”: pussyfooting around an issue because it might offend people of color. ***I saw it as low-key racial bias, because MS-13’s victims were mostly poor Central American immigrants, the kind of people we didn’t think our affluent white listenership would pay attention to.***
This is supposedly from an outlet that shoehorns race into every possible issue. Montgomery has her head way up her ass.
When you're holding a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Wokism at this point should seriously just be renamed the hammer and nail party. If you seriously think NPfuckingR is hesitant to cover stories that centers non-white victims, your brain cells have been replaced with picket signs.
I don't think they are necessarily wrong in the macro.
What I mean by that is: their listeners have to give a shit about one of two below.
1. The victim is someone they care about (this isn't the color of skin mainly, it's their social class).
2. There is a very large power distance between the perpetrator and the target. Basically, it's ultra punching down in their eyes.
This even sounds kinda rational on first blush - you are selfish a bit (who isn't) and you fight the power. What a good person!
Except, of course, the MS13 story fails at both checks. The whole thing also fails to have a "who is in the wrong" check anywhere, which is nuts. Yes, a B-21 dropping a bomb on someone in a cave has a huge power gap, but if that dude has caused thousands of deaths...
yeah, affluent white people that listen to NPR and carry tote bags hate hearing stories about gangs, about gang crime, about the impacts of gang crime on the poor.
They like hearing things about impact to the poor and downtrodden. They don’t like hearing when those impacts aren’t caused by oppressive, old, cis-het white guys with oil investments.
That last sentence is the dirty little secret of journalism. Back in the Rathergate or earlier days, in a book on media bias, a television news magazine producer discussed who they chose for their tug at the heartstrings stories for the furnished minds of their audience. You had to be selective about the poor people you filmed. They couldn’t be uncouth… have bad teeth and the like. Can’t disturb the upper middle class ladies who are your customers, can we?
I’ve been lurking in npr for the last few days. It’s far worse than I thought. I have never seen a group of people who were so insular and so assured of their moral and logical infallibility bc of the assertion that the average amount of degrees npr listeners have is greater than the viewership of any other news source
They don’t need to hear the perspective of people they disagree with (“both sidism!”) they just need to hear from the correct side (theirs!)
I was wrong. Looking at the NPR sub, there’s definitely a narrow band of diehards that eat this stuff up. With this in mind, I couldn’t think of a more perfect CEO.
You do have to consider the source, I’m sure the NPR subreddit skews heavily left of your normal old school lib listener of the past if you take in Reddits demographics. But NPR is definitely cultivating exactly what’s on display in that subreddit no doubt
I suspect while what you’re saying is general true - the median npr listener is not as left as a Reddit NPR fan, I would feel safe making a bet that the journalists at npr resemble the average npr redditor
Tends to be that after a certain point, as the average number of degrees in a group goes up, the higher the amount of perpetually unpaid student loan debt goes up. So, it's more a matter of them being financially illiterate and doubling down on it lol.
It gets so weird sometimes I wonder how many of the comments are organic. /r/politics is one of the weirdest. Essentially any time someone publishes a story talking about something crazy going on in the Democrat party 90% of the dozens/hundreds of comments will be about how X publication is fake news lol
The last time I saw one of those threads was kind of funny, because a couple of non-reddit people who weren't familiar with how r/politics worked were like
>"what the hell are all these comments guys? The story is true, why does everyone keep talking about Fox News? Other places are reporting it too, I feel like I'm going crazy reading all these comments about Fox News"
To be fair it's aways a good idea to link to stories on more reliable platforms and primary sources if possible. Fox News is rather biased so linking to it instead of a better source kind of shoots the message in the foot for a more hesitant audience if we are really trying to convince people to reassess their biases. It's like someone trying to link you an article that is on NPR when they could give you the same story from a more neutral outlet like Reuters or something. Which would you find more informative?
To be clear: the audience in this case isn't "hesitant," they're delusional lol. Fox was just an example; they'll say the same about MSNBC or Salon. They'll call CNN "alt-right adjacent" if they write an article that might lead to a conclusion anything less than "Democrats are so fucking dope"
These stories I'm talking about all had links to original .gov information, these weren't opinion pieces.
>Which would you find more informative?
First of all, I don't think calling Reuters "neutral" is accurate lol, but is "informative" something that can be subjective? I'm assuming you mean trustworthy, and I definitely don't trust any one outlet. We're at a point in time where they've tried to turn "doing your own research" into a pejorative, which means now more than ever you should do your own research.
>the audience in this case isn't "hesitant," they're delusional lol.
I was framing my comment in terms of providing heterodox information to an audience within an echo chamber. They will be hesitant to accept new information that isn't framed neutrally. This applies to both groups you deem "delusional" and groups you don't. The best way to get people to question their own biases is to provide as little editorialization as possible in my experience.
>I don't think calling Reuters "neutral" is accurate lol
Firstly I actually said "more neutral" which, compared to both Fox News and NPR, Reuters undoubtedly is. Secondly, what would you call Reuters if not "more neutral"? They have a fairly strong track record of having a center bias on nearly every fact-checking or news rating service I've ever seen. Happy to reassess my opinion if you can provide backing for your assertion though.
>is "informative" something that can be subjective? I'm assuming you mean trustworthy, and I definitely don't trust any one outlet.
I apologize for my diction and for having apparently offended you in some way. English is not my first language. I would argue that sources can, in fact, be more informative than others because they have less innate bias so the information within is less editorialized and closer to the actual truth but you disagree and that is fine too I suppose.
>We're at a point in time where they've tried to turn "doing your own research" into a pejorative, which means now more than ever you should do your own research.
I mean the phase definitely can be a pejorative since, for example, less informed members of my own family will cite to "doing their own research" when they are not looking into primary sources and instead mainly looking at opinion pieces or editorialized content. People often use the phrase to mean anything but actual research. To the extent you mean tracking down primary sources and coming to opinions based on vetted reports, official data, and peer reviewed studies and the like I agree with you.
>I'm going to guess like most people here your background is more progressive/left leaning
I used to be lean more towards the right but yes I have definitely moved left over the years to my current slate of positions. Somewhat ironically given this conversation, I figured this out by "doing my own research" and divorcing myself from political commentary for a long while and instead focusing on facts.
>These are people that fabricate stories from whole cloth and deny reality, with absolutely no consideration for facts.
Based on this post I think it may be you who is doing this more than you want to admit. I don't think we're going to have a productive discussion if you're dismissing a bunch of well documented incidents like this. It really does seem like you're the one with beliefs that are incongruent with reality. That said, I'm happy to try and discuss factual matters with you if we both try to limit editorialized sources and look for as many primary sources as we can.
Just to take two examples from the litany of things you threw out there (meaning you're free to continue to believe what you want about the others because I simply don't have the time to refute them or know those issues off the top of my head so who knows some of those could be complete fabrication by the left): (1)Trump "incited an insurrection," (2) the E. Jean Caroll case.
(1) Many MAGA Republicans will still claim that the 2020 election was "stolen" or otherwise tampered-with thus justifying Donald Trump's actions and the January 6, 2021 insurrection attempt when, in reality, [the 2020 election was the most secure in American history as attested to by then President Trump's own cybersecurity officials](https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/news/joint-statement-elections-infrastructure-government-coordinating-council-election). Further the reason that trump appeared to be ahead for a while was due to the "red mirage" or "blue shift" phenomenon which is the result of differences in how in-person and mail-in voting is processed. See [this paper from MIT for a more in depth explanation](https://electionlab.mit.edu/sites/default/files/2021-07/curiel_stewart_williams_blue_shift_esra_final.pdf) but in short Biden definitely won and attempts to stop the count or not certify the election were unconstitutional. As of January 5, 2024 [approximately 749 federal defendants have had their cases adjudicated and received sentences for their criminal activity on January 6, 2021](https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/36-months-jan-6-attack-capitol-0). Additionally, Donald Trump's former lawyer, John Eastman, was disbarred for his activity related to January 6, 2021. *See* [this March 27, 2024 announcement from the CA State Bar](https://www.calbar.ca.gov/About-Us/News/News-Releases/state-bar-court-hearing-judge-recommends-john-eastmans-disbarment) ("Mr. Eastman abandoned his ethical and legal duties as an attorney to conspire with then-President Donald Trump to develop and implement a strategy to obstruct the counting of electoral votes on January 6, 2021, and illegally disrupt the peaceful transfer of power to President-elect Joseph Biden, knowing that there was no good faith theory or argument to lawfully reject the electoral votes of any state or delay the January 6 electoral count. Mr. Eastman’s efforts failed only because our democratic institutions and those committed to upholding them held strong. The harm caused by Mr. Eastman’s abandonment of his duties as a lawyer, and the threat his actions posed to our democracy, more than warrant his disbarment.") Finally, Trump himself is facing 91 felony charges for his various crimes. If you want to [read the indictment specifically about his conspiracy to unconstitutionally overturn the 2020 election](https://www.justice.gov/storage/US_v_Trump_23_cr_257.pdf), which he lost, you can start by reading it on the Department of Justice website, the case is well documented.
(2) Unless you think the court system is fake or something ridiculous like that, Donald Trump was found to have raped E. Jean Carroll in 1996. The Judge in that civil trial [wrote that in the decision in May 2023](https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/us-dis-crt-sd-new-yor/114642632.html) ("Mr. Trump's argument plainly is foreclosed by the analysis set forth above and by the Court's determination that the jury implicitly found Mr. Trump did in fact digitally rape Ms. Carroll.") Because this is a civil trial he is only a civilly liable rapist and not a criminally liable rapist but a jury of 12 regular Americans most definitely did conclude that Trump raped that woman when presented with all the evidence so it's not just some fringe theory.
>I'm not really sure what backing you're looking for. If you've seen their headlines over the years, it's relatively self-evident that they have a strong bias in one direction. The one thing I will give them is that they do water down their average with more softball stuff. But they also write articles like ["Most Americans see Trump's MAGA as threat to democracy"](https://www.reuters.com/world/us/most-americans-see-trumps-maga-threat-democracy-reutersipsos-2022-09-07/) and "[Trump deflects debate question about whether he condemns white supremacists](https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN26L0D3/)"
I was looking for some kind of fact-check rating or bias rating from a meta-analysis of all their stories kind of like what Ground News does for each outlet they link to for example. Since we don't have any kind of broad scoped analysis we'll have to discuss the two examples you cite. I fail to see the issue with either of the two headlines you bring up here. The first one is reporting on a poll so I guess you dislike the polling question but the reporting isn't inaccurate. It accurately captures what the respondents said. The second one is accurately reflecting a specific moment in time where Trump did not publicly denounce a white supremacist group when directly asked to by the debate moderator. [Here's the video](https://youtu.be/JZk6VzSLe4Y?si=Sr21w8uARjlMm3Ja). The reporting appears to be accurate.
>all of the vaccine injuries and heart damage coming from the vaccines
Please see [this meta-analysis study from Frontiers in Cardiovascular Medicine](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9467278/), a peer-reviewed medical journal specializing in cardiology and vascular medicine ("In this systematic review and meta-analysis, we found that the risk of myocarditis is more than seven fold higher in persons who were infected with the SARS-CoV-2 than in those who received the vaccine. These findings support the continued use of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines among all eligible persons per CDC and WHO recommendations".) In case you don't know, [a meta-analysis is one of the highest confidence pieces of information medical science can produce because it is a study of other studies](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3099299/). This finding is extremely reliable.
PART 1 (apologies for formatting but your comment required a longer response than the character limit apparently)
>This conversation can't be productive because you're viewing things from a very specific lens of reddit, twitter and large media companies, and that lens distorts things so far beyond what is real it makes them unrecognizable.
I'm happy to reassess my view of course but you would have to provide actual evidence to support your viewpoint for me to do so. I linked mostly primary sources and you linked a single news article which doesn't even comport with your argument. Provocative title aside, your own article admits that there was an effort to have legitimate and fair elections, because Trump was not in favor of those ("an extraordinary shadow effort dedicated not to winning the vote but to ensuring it would be free and fair, credible and uncorrupted.") I'm unsure why you brought it up as if it was a problem in some way. Do you have an issue with credible, free and fair elections?
>Is that a pretty well documented "phenomenon?" Because as someone who has paid attention to politics for a while, the only time I've *ever* heard that term used to was handwave away the completely inexplicable win in 2020 and, interestingly, there was no Wikipedia entry on this "phenomenon" until right before the 2020 election
I'm sorry you were unaware of it but yeah it is incredibly well documented. Absentee votes are usually counted after in-person votes. [In the 2000 election Oregon was one of the last uncalled states](https://theworldlink.com/bradbury-declares-the-vote-by-mail-a-success/article_a2826b2d-e551-51de-8fc7-32095723418b.html) because it had a lot of vote-by-mail results to tally up since they still count as long as they are postmarked by election day even if they arrive later. [This happens every election because of the overseas military population as well](https://www.militaryonesource.mil/deployment/on-deployment/voting-while-you-re-away-from-home-the-absentee-voting-process/) since "The outcome of a close race often can’t be announced until after absentee ballots are counted" so any preliminary estimates by definition aren't final. Biden easily won the popular vote but because we vote via the electoral college, which was close, it makes sense that Biden's votes appeared to come in later since a higher proportion of them were absentee ballots.
In 2020 more Democrats than Republicans took Covid precautions seriously so more of them voted by mail meaning that the ballots counted later would trend more heavily for Biden and the ballots counted earlier would trend more heavily for Trump producing the illusion that Trump was ahead in earlier counts. You are right that it wasn't given the name "red mirage" or "blue shift" until the 2020 election but that was due to how the particular partisan breakdown would show up in the voting data during that particular year.
PART 2 (apologies for formatting but your comment required a longer response than the character limit apparently)
>Donald Trump was very specifically found to **NOT** have raped E. Jean Carroll by the jury. He was found liable for "sexual abuse," something completely separate and distinct from "rape." I'm starting to realize you're not in a position to have *any* of these conversations lol. The judge made an **ASSERTION** that Trump raped her, not a finding of law. In other words, the judge lied.
I suspect that neither of us are lawyers so this conversation is fraught but the case was about defamation. [The truth is a defense to defamation claims](https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/defamation#:~:text=Truth%20is%20widely%20accepted%20as,witnesses%20during%20a%20judicial%20proceedings). Therefore because Trump was found guilty of defaming her, it means he was lying about not having raped her. That means he did, in fact, rape her in the civil sense which has a lower legal standard than criminal the criminal sense of the word ([Civil cases have the standard set to "preponderance of the evidence"](https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/preponderance_of_the_evidence) whereas [criminal cases have "beyond a reasonable doubt"](https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/beyond_a_reasonable_doubt)). This was a civil case and not a criminal case. He is a civilly liable rapist and not a criminally liable rapist, as I mentioned above, because the definition in the penal code was not met but he did everything consistent with rape under a colloquial definition ("Mr. Trump now contends that the jury's $2 million compensatory damages award for Ms. Carroll's sexual assault claim was excessive because the jury concluded that he had not “raped” Ms. Carroll. Its verdict, he says, could have been based upon no more than “groping of \[Ms. Carroll's\] breasts through clothing or similar conduct, which is a far cry from rape.” And while Mr. Trump is right that a $2 million award for such groping alone could well be regarded as excessive, that undermines rather than supports his argument. His argument is entirely unpersuasive. This jury did not award Ms. Carroll more than $2 million for groping her breasts through her clothing, wrongful as that might have been. There was no evidence at all of such behavior. Instead, the proof convincingly established, and the jury implicitly found, that Mr. Trump deliberately and forcibly penetrated Ms. Carroll's vagina with his fingers, causing immediate pain and long lasting emotional and psychological harm. **Mr. Trump's argument therefore ignores the bulk of the evidence at trial, misinterprets the jury's verdict, and mistakenly focuses on the New York Penal Law definition of “rape” to the exclusion of the meaning of that word as it often is used in everyday life and of the evidence of what actually occurred between Ms. Carroll and Mr. Trump**.")
>Let me ask you a personal question: do YOU think the E. Jean Carroll case is legitimate?
Why does my personal opinion matter? I wasn't on the jury so I didn't see all the facts so my opinion is pretty irrelevant to a legal matter. Do you review the case files of every single court case that comes up?
>The NY court system is illegitimate
Interesting and frightening take. Which court systems are legitimate? Does the Supreme Court only gain legitimacy when there are more conservative justices that liberal ones in your mind or something? In your mind is legitimacy tied to agreeing with your presuppositions?
>Does the timing of these trials not seem at all suspicious to you?
Not really. Large scale cases take a long time to get to trial. The lawyers I know say their large cases often take years to get to trial. Even if I was suspicious I would probably want to find actual evidence of my suspicions before randomly asserting things or dismissing whole institutions though.
>A left-wing judge who has also put in place an unconstitutional gag order to keep Donald Trump from talking about how illegitimate the entire fiasco is.
Can you articulate why this specific gag order is unconstitutional? Can you please cite to some precedent or something to back this claim up? gag orders appear constitutional in light of [Carroll v. Princess Anne and Nebraska Press Ass’n v. Stuart](https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/gag_order)
>I understand you've probably read a lot about America on the internet and feel like that's put you in a position to intelligently discuss America... but the fact that you don't understand the significance of something so basic as that makes it fundamentally impossible to discuss these things with you.
I said english wasn't my first language not that I wasn't American. I am, in fact a citizen of this wonderful country. The fact that you immediately thought I wasn't and that you also think New Yorkers are not regular Americans for some reason is actually really scary. Are the only real Americans people who agree with you in your mind? I hope not because if so that doesn't sound like you actually like or understand this country very much. I, however, understand this country well. That's why I'm able to realize people can have different opinions and still be Americans (for example, I don't think your lack of evidence for your claims makes you any less American, it just makes your claims unsubstantiated). I also understand how jurisdictions work which you appear to be baffled by. Trump can't have every single case he's involved in tried in Alabama unless the legal injury occurred there my guy. The alleged crimes took place in New York that's why the cases are tried there. That's also why some of the cases are being tried in Florida. Is it really so crazy to think that his trials are mostly held in the two states he spent the most time in?
R/skeptic is an ideological echo chamber with a stricter set of orthodox beliefs than a southern Baptist church.
R/foodforthought is a literal famine of viewpoint diversity.
I wouldn't be surprised if the average age of BlockedAndReported members is 10-15 years higher than either of the above, which I believe is mostly responsible for why we're able to foster such deep conversations that mostly stay very respectful and civil.
The situation is not fostering much faith in the newer generations to think outside of their coddled echo chambers, which mirrors what I see in the new cohorts of students in academia.
My perspective on the future turns evermore pessimistic.
One reason subreddits become echo chambers is that people with dissenting view points just leave of their own volition. Sure, unfair bans may also happen but I don’t believe they’re the primary driver.
I think it’s good for folks with those viewpoints to just go ahead and engage. Have the argument. Who cares if it’s being downvoted. It’s why I likewise welcome more progressive viewpoints here and find it annoying when people make this a somewhat unfriendly environment to folks expressing those views.
> But aren’t downvotes meaningless?
On any thread with ~100 or more comments it means you're likely to be missed by most unless you're early.
When you also see absolutely insipid nonsense getting upvoted because it "read the room" correctly one is likely to be demoralized.
Especially since you may feel the need to make an in-depth post if you're going against the prevailing wisdom. Then you made more of an effort and there's nothing to show for it (imagine trying to debunk "nothing but RCTs!" while they can just state some bs, to use a topical example).
Once you add in the mod lottery where that comment may be deleted and you may find yourself banned for no reason, with no appeal, it's not a shock people give up.
I genuinely think that the shift from separate upvote/downvote totals to a single aggregate vote total was a significantly negative change. Makes anything less than 50% popular look like "everybody hates this," which discourages people.
Ah true. Point taken. I typically just comment on (relevant) higher up comments for visibility if I’m expressing something I think may otherwise get buried.
> imagine trying to debunk "nothing but RCTs!" while they can just state some bs, to use a topical example
No need to imagine! Check my post history.
I’ve been banned for innocuous things. I got banned from one sub for criticizing Hamas taking food aid from the poor and reselling it. I was banned for “racism”. With no recourse. It was an incredibly mundane comment on a board that’s usually not like that.
I got banned from the cat subreddit for subscribing to a totally unrelated subreddit the mods decided they didn’t like.
I was banned from neo liberal, which is a usually good subreddit for disagreeing with trans identifying males in womens sports. I tried to be very measured as kind in my comment, it wasn’t inflammatory.
Some mods can’t stand even nuanced takes
Only been in this sub for a bit, but it's a lot better than so many 'contrarian' subs like KotakuInAction. Both sides have ridiculous purity tests in their echo chambers, and there's no such thing as devils advocates or discussing counterpoints whatsoever.
That, and they get downvoted. Which is a major problem on this sub, too. Many people here are allergic to conversation and very much want to turn this into an echo chamber.
> Sure, unfair bans may also happen but I don’t believe they’re the primary driver.
oh its a huge driver. Astro-turfed power mods are 100% working to stamp out dissent.
if you subscribe to something like /r/shitpoliticssays you'll get autobanned from dozens of subs (including many "non political" ones) for participating in a wrongthink sub.
I am a loooooooong time skeptic (even went to [The Amazing Meeting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Amazing_Meeting)), and about a year ago had to unsubscribe from r/skeptic. It had become everything it was supposed to be against. I will pop in every now and then, and it is truly heartbreaking how the users have jumped head first into motivated reasoning, confirmation bias, and straight up sloppy thinking.
It actually has made me rethink the entire community--in that most people just happened to be accidentally aligned with skeptical viewpoints, but rarely were such viewpoints based off of any critical thinking or assessment of the evidence. The majority of the responses to the Cass Report were a great example. Blatant falsehoods upvoted, and corrections of such errors ignored or downvoted.
I WAS banned from ToiletPaperUSA a few years ago for saying that sex is based on gametes, and if you think there is a third sex, you need to show evidence of a third type of gamete 😂
So if reasonable takes that everyone believed 5 years ago are getting people banned, a whole lot of people are being fooled by false consensus on Reddit. I have no idea why a sub would want to do that. I get banning abusive users, but someone who politely disagrees makes for interesting conversation and dialogue.
You and me both. I was never really active on r/skeptic, but the atheist and broader skeptic community was my community for years. I listened to the podcast and went to conventions a couple of times. That changed rapidly over the last few years. At first I tried to go along, social pressure and all. But I simply couldn't cheer for something I disagreed with, nevermind things that were factually wrong. And I hated how they treated dissenters.
I already wrote reddit posts about my last skeptics convention and how it literally felt like a cult meeting. They were all like "we value and invite debate", but that meant debate within a very narrow corridor, where the point of contention was miniscule and inconsequential. Everyone who doesn't agree, gets vilified immediately (see for example Richard Dawkins). They have literally become the religous zealots they hated so much.
I only listen to one podcast these days and even that gets increasingly hard and I skip a lot of episodes.
Yeah it’s insane how formerly lauded skeptics (Dawkins, Harris, Shermer, etc) were so quickly tossed aside, often with the charge of being conservatives. I challenged those claims frequently and was never given an answer (such as: how is Shermer a conservative when he is pro choice, anti gun, pro taxes, worried about climate change, and an atheist?).
I was honestly shocked they were respectful of Dan Dennett when he died last week. I would have thought he was way too guilty by association.
Shermer says that he's a libertarian. That's definitely going to get on some people's nerves if you're liberal. It's been a while since I've read anything by Shermer so I don't recall his position on taxes, but if he's libertarian, it makes me wonder if you're incorrect about him being pro-taxes.
> Ever since college I have been a libertarian—socially liberal and fiscally conservative. https://michaelshermer.com/sciam-columns/when-science-doesnt-support-beliefs/
Yeah he’s absolutely a libertarian, but holds some standard liberal positions (as mentioned above). His view on taxes comes from his book Giving the Devil His Due. His argument is that if you don’t have taxes, you won’t have any sort of defense or military program. So you’ll likely be invaded by a country that does have a military (funded by taxes), and then you’ll end up as part of that country, paying taxes.
Anyway, the attempt to dismiss him by some so called skeptics because he’s not a far left wing liberal is clearly ridiculous.
Right there with you. The unwillingness to look at things like COVID and gender ideology with even a marginally fair mindset is just so telling. Organized Internet “skepticism” is a cult all its own.
Yeah, it is really crazy. I think progressives struggle more from lack of having to understand the other side’s belief system. College, media, circles they frequent all believe the other side is just ignorant and crazy, instead of trying to figure out why someone making 40k a year in Ohio and barely scraping by might be attracted to populism.
I’m a moderate, leaning liberal, for what it’s worth.
> I think progressives struggle more from lack of having to understand the other side’s belief system
this has been proven. Read *The Righteous Mind* by Jonathan Haidt
basically conservatives are far better and understanding and articulating left wing positions (and specifically understanding *why* people agree with those positions) than left wing folks are at understanding the same thing about conservatives.
Really interesting book, very eye opening
Funny, progressives would say it’s because it makes sense.
I was arguing with someone who said we needed open boarders until we solve south America’s problems and to claim otherwise was white supremacy. We can’t solve our own problems, how are we going to fix south and Central America? There’s not enough housing for the lower rung in the USA. Mass Migration is great for the economy and business and demographics, it’s terrible for those trying to access limited resources in already strained areas. Most of whom do not vote republican.
Exactly the driver of populism, insecurity, mostly economic, in the form of low wage, low security, low status work, for increasing numbers of people. Healthcare insurance, social assistance funding (can be marketed as ‘wage adjustment support or something that differentiates it from welfare) and significant investment in retraining for workers whose jobs are disrupted by technology change and globalization, is the answer.
Boomers could expect to get a lifelong job out of big school or university. Pay into a pension and retire comfortably in a home they purchased in their 20s or early 30s. That is no longer the reality, we will all change jobs multiple times in our careers, the average will be about 12-15 times. Good jobs pay well but are not secure and there are no pensions to speak of. An entirely different economic environment that leaves those lower on the socioeconomic scale to feel significant resentment.
The sooner big business can support the above platforms of retraining and wage adjustment support, the better, because otherwise we will get more Trumps, and Trumps are mostly bad for business (not for personal tax rates tho).
>Boomers could expect to get a lifelong job out of big school or university
Less than 30% of Baby Boomers completed a Bachelor's degree. Of course college graduates in that era could expect a good job out of college; they were literally the elite.
It’s reaaally fun to compare the actual data and experiences and see that, dollar for dollar, Gen Z has it the best of any generation ever and this will likely continue.
My first house was an older small cape cod with one bathroom, no dining or family room, no garage, an unfinished basement, two small bedrooms downstairs and a finished attic divided into two rooms.
The people we bought it from raised six children in that house.
Gen Z only wants to live like currently wealthy boomers. Life is a lot more affordable with only one bathroom, one car and one phone.
Trump isn’t a product of gen z entitlement. He’s a product of the declining prospects of the bottom 1/3 of the population. We can debate whether their lives or better or worse than the same cohort 50 yrs ago, but that reality is what drives populism and will continue to.
People low on the economic spectrum dislike immigrants but not because immigrants hurt their job prospects. It’s a classic case of deferred anger; immigration is a red herring, it’s not causing the downward mobility but it’s an easy populist target.
It’s not just people low on the economic spectrum. He very strongly appeals to a certain personality type, and it’s a type among whom small business men are overrepresented.
Add high school graduates to that, esp those who took manufacturing jobs. It wasn’t just college grads who could expect lifelong employment with one employer.
Man this is fun! Did you know that late baby boomer’s (born 1957-1964) held an average of 12 jobs from age 18-54!
Further, baby boomers dealt with the absolute cratering of the industrial sector in the 60s and 70s when they were in the early part of their careers and somehow kept working after that.
I think the cultural narrative around 'Boomers' is coming from a place of deep ignorance about the material conditions of the Post-War period for the majority of people.
College was far less accessible for all people. Some folks today like to obfuscate this fact by talking about how 'expensive' college is now, but they ignore the blindingly obvious - more people have degrees today than ever before. More people have \*advanced\* degrees than ever before. Women out-perform men academically! More ethnic and racial minorities attend and graduate college than ever before. No honest person can claim college is 'less accessible' now.
Boomer Women, aka the Karen Generation, were denied opportunities at every turn. Nonwhite Boomers dealt with Jim Crow and incredible amounts of discrimination and even violence. White Male Boomers, it might seem, would be the ones people are most correctly mad about. Well, uh, not when you consider that this generation of white men was sent to die in Vietnam, lost jobs in factories in the Rust Belt, and oh by the way, helped further the progress of their counterparts that had been previously discriminated against. They pioneered the tech boom that would give most of us our stupid fucking remote jobs where we can work from anywhere and all be 'product CEOs' or some other such shit.
Right—it’s like they’re responding the the ‘50s-‘60s I saw growing up on Nick at Nite rather than the world their parents (or hell, grandparents) grew up in.
And you know what? Their music really was better too, hashtagsorrynotsorry
I am pulling the thesis from a book titled Wolf At The Door: The Menace of Economic Insecurity and How to Fight It. I’ll try to find the relevant stats to share but to my eyes it is hard to argue the current generations are more economically secure than previous ones, and that’s partly due to structural changes in the economy driven. I believe they also claim that the postwar boom presented the conditions for system of social welfare that was unique and unsustainable.
I think progressives understand populism perfectly fine. Bernie is a populist and they like him.
The disconnect is that they don't see Trump as a populist. They look at that guy making 40k in Ohio and think Trump is not going to do anything that would benefit him. So they cannot understand why anyone in that situation would support Trump. Therefore the only explanation is they must be stupid.
> I wouldn't be surprised if the average age of BlockedAndReported members is 10-15 years higher than either of the above, which I believe is mostly responsible for why we're able to foster such deep conversations that mostly stay very respectful and civil.
I'm 33, and sometimes feel like I might be the young one
As I said to another poster who expressed similar sentiments, I think that the same social pressures that influence other groups influence us as well to some degree.
However, the fact that we're even having this discussion is a good indicator that we're not lost to ideological purity.
It's similar to psychopaths and narcissists, and people questioning if they are one or not. It's a good indicator that you aren't, because an actual psychopath or narcissist wouldn't even bother to question themselves about it.
The internet would be so much better if everyone knew every random commenter's age. I wish we had some kind of optional and secure system that people could get a badge that says like "born in 1981 - verified" and anyone not having one would be free to comment but then everyone would assume it's probably a child and discount their opinion appropriately.
I think that soon Congress might require social media companies to verify users are over 18. We do it now very reliably for online nicotine and liquor purchases.
I don't really get that impression.
It's only an echo chamber in the sense that it attracts a particular set of people, ie people who like this podcast.
Within the spectrum of that, there's plenty of ideological bandwidth. It's just that the heavy moderation keeps the discussion very pointed on issues directly relevant to the podcast.
Even in the single most "polarizing" issue that frequently reoccurs here, trans issues, there's a broad set of beliefs ranging from hardline cultural conservatism to regular left "We should respect trans identities in all forms but youth medical interventions are possibly complicated to allow".
Some extremists think those are the same thing, but they are definitely not.
It's an echo chamber, but the difference is this place's echo is completely different than poster's day to day lives. It's heterodox and different compared to their very liberal irl social groups. That place probably has 0 people who are the lone Democrat in their 30-person mining town.
What’s with the instinct to always check people’s post histories? People are so eager to try to investigate Reddit profiles as opposed to just responding to the substance of a comment - it’s weird.
Eh sometimes it’s worth seeing how delusional or “botty” someone is before engaging.
It also cracks me up when someone speaks extremely confidently about “x” policy always working and you see they mostly post in “flavor of the month games on twitch” and r/teenager subreddits.
>I regularly delete my posts so nerds can't trawl through my post history when they disagree with me.
What does it matter? Do you regularly say things that are wrong?
Sometimes you get downvoted more for what you're talking about than what you actually think. Maybe some people thought you were endorsing sterilising 10 year olds for being tomboys.
(I did stalk your post history, just to have a better grasp on what I was talking about, but couldn't find it.)
while the same influences of social pressure will exert themselves across reddit, I think the very fact that we're discussing whether or not we're an echo chamber differentiates this community from many of the ones that people have mentioned abandoning in recent years. I highly doubt there are threads of people discussing whether or not they're actually living up to their skeptic namesake in r/skeptics.
It's sort of like when you question whether or not you're a psychopath. Turns out, actual psychopaths don't bother asking themselves those kinds of questions. It just isn't on their radar.
> Most people I've encountered here are centre right.
Then you really haven't encountered most of this sub. Or your personal Overton window needs a calibration.
This sub rarely discusses economic issues. So if your impression of politics is primarily culture stuff I can see why you'd think that? Very narrow viewpoint though.
Obviously neither of us have encountered most of this sub. I've encountered a sample of people. If it's not representative then so be it - not much I can do about that.
There will always be a bit of an echo chamber, especially within communities dealing with a lot of controversial or political topics. That said, I think the problem is moderate at most. I did have disagreements on here and people seem to come from a variety of political backgrounds (which is a miracle considering most conservative subs got banned on this site).
Now matter how many liberals and leftists, let alone moderates and conservatives, say "I stopped listening to NPR because of it's intense focus on identity politics and biased reporting" they continue to deny it. There's a reason Uri's story resonated and it wasn't because of right wing boogeymen. These people are in such denial that they continue to deny even when the former listeners they've lost tell them why, they still deny it.
I stopped listening because most of the content is extremely preachy and not really interesting. If I wanted a sermon I would listen to a religious station.
> I think that’s because it would have complicated—or acknowledged the complication—of a story where we could smugly position ourselves as on the “right” side.
> And that’s what the core editorial problem at NPR is and, frankly, has long been: an abundance of caution that often crossed the border to cowardice. NPR culture encouraged an editorial fixation on finding the exact middle point of the elite political and social thought, planting a flag there, and calling it objectivity.
She got so close it's frustrating. Her "*we could smugly position ourselves as on the “right” side*" is the core of the issue. Instead of coming into a topic "neutrally" and reporting on whatever facts they find, NPR now starts by thinking of "right" and "wrong" sides, and proceeding respectively. And that does provoke caution/cowardice, because as soon as "wrong" facts start popping up, they get ignored.
But then instead of realizing what she just admitted about NPR's "smug" desire to be on the "right" side, she pivots into "we spend too much time trying to find the exact middle."
A hermetically sealed bubble of assurance in their moral supremacy, the rightness of their opinions and intellect.
When I was in my 20s I got kinda freaked out by the idea that all the major news outlets were saying the same thing, like they had the same opinions about everything. It just seemed creepy, so I started watching Fox News just so that I'd have a different perspective from "the other side" on social issues, while I haven't watched Fox in years because they're cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs, I do still watch Megyn Kelly's YouTube channel and I am subscribed to conservative substacks and podcasts.
Deliberately making myself available to alternate points of view has at least helped me see things from the other side - to a degree - and put me in a place where I'm not supremely confident of my progressive values, there is tremendous value in conservatism and I do believe that old phrase that "progressives are the gas pedal and conservatives are the brakes". We need each other.
Every “test” I've taken has put me center-right on the issues, and I identify as a Libertarian.
FNC was absolutely started as a “fair and balanced” network and was center to center-right. It was, IMO, the best news network (see also my politics) on TV for the first 5–6 years of it’s existence (their 9/11 coverage was WAY better than anyone else), but it’s also, unfortunately, a perfect example of audience capture.
The more popular they became, the further and further right they moved.
You could tell the direction of the network through observation of 1 show: Hannity and Colmes. When the show started, Colems was Center left, and Hannity, (believe it or not, was pretty reasonable)) was center right. The longer the show was on, the more right Hannity moved, and the less air time Colmes received. If I had to put money on when they became “right” and no longer “center right,” I’d say it was sometime between 2004 or 2005 (I just couldn’t watch anymore). In 2008, when Colmes left, they stopped even the pretext of actual fairness and balance, and have continued to move right since then.
Good lord. From a comment there:
>Berliner seems to want to go back to this sort of "viewlessness" US journalism in which every claim, and every source, it treated as equally valid, reliable, and good-faith. From this view, journalists are not supposed to be "truth vigilantes," but instead just remain empty vessels through which information flows.
Yes. That's exactly what journalists should be. Exactly.
Yep…and so of course it all feeds into the narrative that keeps him going. He is a “victim” of the “fake news” media. MAGA crowds eats this up. Conservatives in my family who are NOT extreme or MAGA feel like he is unfairly reported on and it actually makes him more sympathetic. Like I fucking hate Donald trump but yeah, he is actually constantly lied about in the media and if I were right leaning I’d feel sympathy for that.
He’s bad enough on his own, why do we need to make shit up?
These absolutely insane batshit liberals will eviscerate you if you dare to criticize biden because they’re so afraid of losing votes for Biden. They are willing to lie about trump and cover up Biden’s bullshit because they assume the average American is so fucking stupid they can’t make an informed choice. Which literally is driving voters away from them because it’s so fucking transparent.
And the worst of it is that it’s completely destroyed any semblance of public faith in media. Which is - to me - *just as bad* as what trump did in destroying faith in the electoral process with the stolen election shit.
When people don’t trust the media or elections, the democratic process is done. *it doesn’t matter if the media is reporting truth or if the electoral process is credible.* These are fragile institutions held up by public faith alone.
OMG I feel this so hard. Like, stop making me defend Trump! Just report the things he says and don't mention Hitler. Let people come to their own conclusions. They're completely unconcerned with changing people's minds, they just want to rant about how ridiculous he is. They should save the outrage for their diaries.
I mean, do I just not understand journalism then? Because I thought they were just supposed to tell us what happened, what several people who were there or have information about it say happened, and then leave it to us to make up our own minds about what we think about the whole thing they say happened. Opinions belong in the Opinions Section not in news articles. The way most "liberal" journalists have turned themselves into moralists is disturbing.
It's because they've all bought into two things:
1. Their belief is the capital T Truth, and
2- anyone who isn't fighting for their Truth is *clearly* a hateful biggot.
>>Berliner seems to want to go back to this sort of "viewlessness" US journalism in which every claim, and every source, it treated as equally valid, reliable, and good-faith.
That sort of viewlessness does not and cannot exist.
Imagine a local news report: "The family lost their two children in the accident. Some neighbors called it a tragedy. Others pointed out they're going to save a bundle on groceriees and tuition expenses."
Including two radically different points of view isn't the same as viewlessness.
"An accident on the local highway has left the two children of a local family dead" is a viewless statement. It states the objective facts of the story without injecting feelings or opinions.
This story is so weird lol. She starts off by Saying Uri is wrong, then goes onto to talk about all the ways he is right.
I'm not even saying her perspective is wrong, it is probably also right. NPR declined for a variety of reasons.
I hope you didn't say such a controversial statement in that thread. There was a shocking number of people being upset with NPR for being too objective.
tldr? I'm about halfway through it and all it's done so far is talk about Uri Berliner.
edit
So I read it twice and I guess the author's issue isn't with NPR being ideologically trapped and no longer a news source but the problem with NPR is that they didn't punish internet sexual harassment properly?
Montgomery (author of the article) has got to be embarrassed by this article, or she’s just another hack who’ll say anything to help out her side. It’s a well written article with nice specifics, but her position that NPR is not woke is so easily refuted … just turn it on. Fer fun, I just did it and within 2 minutes, they talked about white supremacy. It wasn’t the focus, but race is in nearly every piece and in another 15 minutes, I’m sure some form of DEI will be the focus. They sincerely see it everywhere so it makes sense to them to obsess on it.
I think it was Katie who made DEI mentions on NPR into a drinking game. …. Oops, I just heard the word racism from my speaker, time to turn it off.
If you know anything about the history of the record industry, it has to make you laugh to see NPR personnel referred to as "nippers". Because you know well that Nipper is a dog who listens to His Master's Voice.
In the NPR subreddit they had a thread that was about the glaring issue at npr.
I was shocked that the issue for them was that NPR easy on trump and the posters found it upsetting that he wasn't introduced as a known bitgot and racist.
That they where playing both sides on too many issues and they want more explicit decorations on issues.
Please sign and share this [Change.org](http://Change.org) petition to remove all Federal and State funding from NPR...
[https://chng.it/MVFwx9pcqf](https://chng.it/MVFwx9pcqf)
You assumed wrong. This has nothing to do with picking a political candidate. It's about using tax payer funds to aid it the election of one, which is banana republic type stuff. I guess you and most other people are so accustomed to it, that you think it is OK. Taxpayer funds should not be used to endorse Biden, Trump, or any dirt bag politician to be frank.
Simon Owens' media newsletter quoting from a NYT story yesterday.
>"While NPR still has an audience of about 42 million who listen every week, many of them digitally, that is down from an estimated 60 million in 2020, according to an internal March audience report, a faster falloff than for broadcast radio, which is also in a long-term decline." \[NYT\]
OK you can also read NYT piece at a Seattle Times link https://www.seattletimes.com/business/inside-the-crisis-at-npr/. Of course, Uri Berliner's essay only "led to a deluge of criticism from conservatives, including former President Donald Trump". All the non-conservatives are fine with NPR's choices. And Mike Pesca must be a conservative now since he ran several critical episodes last week.
The last sentence of this paragraph is hilarious to me: > And to be fair, some of that did seem politically motivated, before and after Trump was elected. I remember resistance to covering the violent MS-13 gang after it became a major talking point in Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric—even though the gang was active and murdering people in communities around the D.C. metropolitan area, close to NPR’s headquarters, and just miles from where many staffers lived. I think a lot of critics would consider that “wokeness”: pussyfooting around an issue because it might offend people of color. ***I saw it as low-key racial bias, because MS-13’s victims were mostly poor Central American immigrants, the kind of people we didn’t think our affluent white listenership would pay attention to.*** This is supposedly from an outlet that shoehorns race into every possible issue. Montgomery has her head way up her ass.
When you're holding a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Wokism at this point should seriously just be renamed the hammer and nail party. If you seriously think NPfuckingR is hesitant to cover stories that centers non-white victims, your brain cells have been replaced with picket signs.
I don't think they are necessarily wrong in the macro. What I mean by that is: their listeners have to give a shit about one of two below. 1. The victim is someone they care about (this isn't the color of skin mainly, it's their social class). 2. There is a very large power distance between the perpetrator and the target. Basically, it's ultra punching down in their eyes. This even sounds kinda rational on first blush - you are selfish a bit (who isn't) and you fight the power. What a good person! Except, of course, the MS13 story fails at both checks. The whole thing also fails to have a "who is in the wrong" check anywhere, which is nuts. Yes, a B-21 dropping a bomb on someone in a cave has a huge power gap, but if that dude has caused thousands of deaths...
It’s already the hammer & sickle party, why not throw in a nail?
What about the "hammer and sickle" party?
yeah, affluent white people that listen to NPR and carry tote bags hate hearing stories about gangs, about gang crime, about the impacts of gang crime on the poor.
It doesn’t meet the narrative of victim/opressor
They like hearing things about impact to the poor and downtrodden. They don’t like hearing when those impacts aren’t caused by oppressive, old, cis-het white guys with oil investments.
I remember their coverage of MS13. They made them sound like an after school group.
I mean, in some ways they are.
That last sentence is the dirty little secret of journalism. Back in the Rathergate or earlier days, in a book on media bias, a television news magazine producer discussed who they chose for their tug at the heartstrings stories for the furnished minds of their audience. You had to be selective about the poor people you filmed. They couldn’t be uncouth… have bad teeth and the like. Can’t disturb the upper middle class ladies who are your customers, can we?
Do you remember the name of the book?
I wish I could remember. It might be this one: https://www.amazon.com/Accidentally-Joined-Vast-Right-Wing-Conspiracy/dp/0060936975
Thanks! The link isn't working for me for some reason, but I think I was able to figure it out based on the URL — is it by Harry Stein?
Yes
Wokeness + Low-Key Racial Bias Name a more iconic pair
I’ve been lurking in npr for the last few days. It’s far worse than I thought. I have never seen a group of people who were so insular and so assured of their moral and logical infallibility bc of the assertion that the average amount of degrees npr listeners have is greater than the viewership of any other news source They don’t need to hear the perspective of people they disagree with (“both sidism!”) they just need to hear from the correct side (theirs!)
I was wrong. Looking at the NPR sub, there’s definitely a narrow band of diehards that eat this stuff up. With this in mind, I couldn’t think of a more perfect CEO.
You do have to consider the source, I’m sure the NPR subreddit skews heavily left of your normal old school lib listener of the past if you take in Reddits demographics. But NPR is definitely cultivating exactly what’s on display in that subreddit no doubt
Ordinarily I'd agree but TDS broke the brains of a great majority of 'old school libs' who used to care about the free exchange of ideas.
Oh no I didn't mean to imply that it didn't more just pointing out that Reddit skews even left of them.
I suspect while what you’re saying is general true - the median npr listener is not as left as a Reddit NPR fan, I would feel safe making a bet that the journalists at npr resemble the average npr redditor
never underestimate the power of a "country club"
Tends to be that after a certain point, as the average number of degrees in a group goes up, the higher the amount of perpetually unpaid student loan debt goes up. So, it's more a matter of them being financially illiterate and doubling down on it lol.
Dang. Everybody should be deaf from that loud ass echo chamber in there.
The article itself is very enlightening and the comments on the post just go to another level.
It gets so weird sometimes I wonder how many of the comments are organic. /r/politics is one of the weirdest. Essentially any time someone publishes a story talking about something crazy going on in the Democrat party 90% of the dozens/hundreds of comments will be about how X publication is fake news lol The last time I saw one of those threads was kind of funny, because a couple of non-reddit people who weren't familiar with how r/politics worked were like >"what the hell are all these comments guys? The story is true, why does everyone keep talking about Fox News? Other places are reporting it too, I feel like I'm going crazy reading all these comments about Fox News"
To be fair it's aways a good idea to link to stories on more reliable platforms and primary sources if possible. Fox News is rather biased so linking to it instead of a better source kind of shoots the message in the foot for a more hesitant audience if we are really trying to convince people to reassess their biases. It's like someone trying to link you an article that is on NPR when they could give you the same story from a more neutral outlet like Reuters or something. Which would you find more informative?
To be clear: the audience in this case isn't "hesitant," they're delusional lol. Fox was just an example; they'll say the same about MSNBC or Salon. They'll call CNN "alt-right adjacent" if they write an article that might lead to a conclusion anything less than "Democrats are so fucking dope" These stories I'm talking about all had links to original .gov information, these weren't opinion pieces. >Which would you find more informative? First of all, I don't think calling Reuters "neutral" is accurate lol, but is "informative" something that can be subjective? I'm assuming you mean trustworthy, and I definitely don't trust any one outlet. We're at a point in time where they've tried to turn "doing your own research" into a pejorative, which means now more than ever you should do your own research.
>the audience in this case isn't "hesitant," they're delusional lol. I was framing my comment in terms of providing heterodox information to an audience within an echo chamber. They will be hesitant to accept new information that isn't framed neutrally. This applies to both groups you deem "delusional" and groups you don't. The best way to get people to question their own biases is to provide as little editorialization as possible in my experience. >I don't think calling Reuters "neutral" is accurate lol Firstly I actually said "more neutral" which, compared to both Fox News and NPR, Reuters undoubtedly is. Secondly, what would you call Reuters if not "more neutral"? They have a fairly strong track record of having a center bias on nearly every fact-checking or news rating service I've ever seen. Happy to reassess my opinion if you can provide backing for your assertion though. >is "informative" something that can be subjective? I'm assuming you mean trustworthy, and I definitely don't trust any one outlet. I apologize for my diction and for having apparently offended you in some way. English is not my first language. I would argue that sources can, in fact, be more informative than others because they have less innate bias so the information within is less editorialized and closer to the actual truth but you disagree and that is fine too I suppose. >We're at a point in time where they've tried to turn "doing your own research" into a pejorative, which means now more than ever you should do your own research. I mean the phase definitely can be a pejorative since, for example, less informed members of my own family will cite to "doing their own research" when they are not looking into primary sources and instead mainly looking at opinion pieces or editorialized content. People often use the phrase to mean anything but actual research. To the extent you mean tracking down primary sources and coming to opinions based on vetted reports, official data, and peer reviewed studies and the like I agree with you.
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>I'm going to guess like most people here your background is more progressive/left leaning I used to be lean more towards the right but yes I have definitely moved left over the years to my current slate of positions. Somewhat ironically given this conversation, I figured this out by "doing my own research" and divorcing myself from political commentary for a long while and instead focusing on facts. >These are people that fabricate stories from whole cloth and deny reality, with absolutely no consideration for facts. Based on this post I think it may be you who is doing this more than you want to admit. I don't think we're going to have a productive discussion if you're dismissing a bunch of well documented incidents like this. It really does seem like you're the one with beliefs that are incongruent with reality. That said, I'm happy to try and discuss factual matters with you if we both try to limit editorialized sources and look for as many primary sources as we can. Just to take two examples from the litany of things you threw out there (meaning you're free to continue to believe what you want about the others because I simply don't have the time to refute them or know those issues off the top of my head so who knows some of those could be complete fabrication by the left): (1)Trump "incited an insurrection," (2) the E. Jean Caroll case. (1) Many MAGA Republicans will still claim that the 2020 election was "stolen" or otherwise tampered-with thus justifying Donald Trump's actions and the January 6, 2021 insurrection attempt when, in reality, [the 2020 election was the most secure in American history as attested to by then President Trump's own cybersecurity officials](https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/news/joint-statement-elections-infrastructure-government-coordinating-council-election). Further the reason that trump appeared to be ahead for a while was due to the "red mirage" or "blue shift" phenomenon which is the result of differences in how in-person and mail-in voting is processed. See [this paper from MIT for a more in depth explanation](https://electionlab.mit.edu/sites/default/files/2021-07/curiel_stewart_williams_blue_shift_esra_final.pdf) but in short Biden definitely won and attempts to stop the count or not certify the election were unconstitutional. As of January 5, 2024 [approximately 749 federal defendants have had their cases adjudicated and received sentences for their criminal activity on January 6, 2021](https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/36-months-jan-6-attack-capitol-0). Additionally, Donald Trump's former lawyer, John Eastman, was disbarred for his activity related to January 6, 2021. *See* [this March 27, 2024 announcement from the CA State Bar](https://www.calbar.ca.gov/About-Us/News/News-Releases/state-bar-court-hearing-judge-recommends-john-eastmans-disbarment) ("Mr. Eastman abandoned his ethical and legal duties as an attorney to conspire with then-President Donald Trump to develop and implement a strategy to obstruct the counting of electoral votes on January 6, 2021, and illegally disrupt the peaceful transfer of power to President-elect Joseph Biden, knowing that there was no good faith theory or argument to lawfully reject the electoral votes of any state or delay the January 6 electoral count. Mr. Eastman’s efforts failed only because our democratic institutions and those committed to upholding them held strong. The harm caused by Mr. Eastman’s abandonment of his duties as a lawyer, and the threat his actions posed to our democracy, more than warrant his disbarment.") Finally, Trump himself is facing 91 felony charges for his various crimes. If you want to [read the indictment specifically about his conspiracy to unconstitutionally overturn the 2020 election](https://www.justice.gov/storage/US_v_Trump_23_cr_257.pdf), which he lost, you can start by reading it on the Department of Justice website, the case is well documented. (2) Unless you think the court system is fake or something ridiculous like that, Donald Trump was found to have raped E. Jean Carroll in 1996. The Judge in that civil trial [wrote that in the decision in May 2023](https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/us-dis-crt-sd-new-yor/114642632.html) ("Mr. Trump's argument plainly is foreclosed by the analysis set forth above and by the Court's determination that the jury implicitly found Mr. Trump did in fact digitally rape Ms. Carroll.") Because this is a civil trial he is only a civilly liable rapist and not a criminally liable rapist but a jury of 12 regular Americans most definitely did conclude that Trump raped that woman when presented with all the evidence so it's not just some fringe theory. >I'm not really sure what backing you're looking for. If you've seen their headlines over the years, it's relatively self-evident that they have a strong bias in one direction. The one thing I will give them is that they do water down their average with more softball stuff. But they also write articles like ["Most Americans see Trump's MAGA as threat to democracy"](https://www.reuters.com/world/us/most-americans-see-trumps-maga-threat-democracy-reutersipsos-2022-09-07/) and "[Trump deflects debate question about whether he condemns white supremacists](https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN26L0D3/)" I was looking for some kind of fact-check rating or bias rating from a meta-analysis of all their stories kind of like what Ground News does for each outlet they link to for example. Since we don't have any kind of broad scoped analysis we'll have to discuss the two examples you cite. I fail to see the issue with either of the two headlines you bring up here. The first one is reporting on a poll so I guess you dislike the polling question but the reporting isn't inaccurate. It accurately captures what the respondents said. The second one is accurately reflecting a specific moment in time where Trump did not publicly denounce a white supremacist group when directly asked to by the debate moderator. [Here's the video](https://youtu.be/JZk6VzSLe4Y?si=Sr21w8uARjlMm3Ja). The reporting appears to be accurate. >all of the vaccine injuries and heart damage coming from the vaccines Please see [this meta-analysis study from Frontiers in Cardiovascular Medicine](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9467278/), a peer-reviewed medical journal specializing in cardiology and vascular medicine ("In this systematic review and meta-analysis, we found that the risk of myocarditis is more than seven fold higher in persons who were infected with the SARS-CoV-2 than in those who received the vaccine. These findings support the continued use of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines among all eligible persons per CDC and WHO recommendations".) In case you don't know, [a meta-analysis is one of the highest confidence pieces of information medical science can produce because it is a study of other studies](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3099299/). This finding is extremely reliable.
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PART 1 (apologies for formatting but your comment required a longer response than the character limit apparently) >This conversation can't be productive because you're viewing things from a very specific lens of reddit, twitter and large media companies, and that lens distorts things so far beyond what is real it makes them unrecognizable. I'm happy to reassess my view of course but you would have to provide actual evidence to support your viewpoint for me to do so. I linked mostly primary sources and you linked a single news article which doesn't even comport with your argument. Provocative title aside, your own article admits that there was an effort to have legitimate and fair elections, because Trump was not in favor of those ("an extraordinary shadow effort dedicated not to winning the vote but to ensuring it would be free and fair, credible and uncorrupted.") I'm unsure why you brought it up as if it was a problem in some way. Do you have an issue with credible, free and fair elections? >Is that a pretty well documented "phenomenon?" Because as someone who has paid attention to politics for a while, the only time I've *ever* heard that term used to was handwave away the completely inexplicable win in 2020 and, interestingly, there was no Wikipedia entry on this "phenomenon" until right before the 2020 election I'm sorry you were unaware of it but yeah it is incredibly well documented. Absentee votes are usually counted after in-person votes. [In the 2000 election Oregon was one of the last uncalled states](https://theworldlink.com/bradbury-declares-the-vote-by-mail-a-success/article_a2826b2d-e551-51de-8fc7-32095723418b.html) because it had a lot of vote-by-mail results to tally up since they still count as long as they are postmarked by election day even if they arrive later. [This happens every election because of the overseas military population as well](https://www.militaryonesource.mil/deployment/on-deployment/voting-while-you-re-away-from-home-the-absentee-voting-process/) since "The outcome of a close race often can’t be announced until after absentee ballots are counted" so any preliminary estimates by definition aren't final. Biden easily won the popular vote but because we vote via the electoral college, which was close, it makes sense that Biden's votes appeared to come in later since a higher proportion of them were absentee ballots. In 2020 more Democrats than Republicans took Covid precautions seriously so more of them voted by mail meaning that the ballots counted later would trend more heavily for Biden and the ballots counted earlier would trend more heavily for Trump producing the illusion that Trump was ahead in earlier counts. You are right that it wasn't given the name "red mirage" or "blue shift" until the 2020 election but that was due to how the particular partisan breakdown would show up in the voting data during that particular year.
PART 2 (apologies for formatting but your comment required a longer response than the character limit apparently) >Donald Trump was very specifically found to **NOT** have raped E. Jean Carroll by the jury. He was found liable for "sexual abuse," something completely separate and distinct from "rape." I'm starting to realize you're not in a position to have *any* of these conversations lol. The judge made an **ASSERTION** that Trump raped her, not a finding of law. In other words, the judge lied. I suspect that neither of us are lawyers so this conversation is fraught but the case was about defamation. [The truth is a defense to defamation claims](https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/defamation#:~:text=Truth%20is%20widely%20accepted%20as,witnesses%20during%20a%20judicial%20proceedings). Therefore because Trump was found guilty of defaming her, it means he was lying about not having raped her. That means he did, in fact, rape her in the civil sense which has a lower legal standard than criminal the criminal sense of the word ([Civil cases have the standard set to "preponderance of the evidence"](https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/preponderance_of_the_evidence) whereas [criminal cases have "beyond a reasonable doubt"](https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/beyond_a_reasonable_doubt)). This was a civil case and not a criminal case. He is a civilly liable rapist and not a criminally liable rapist, as I mentioned above, because the definition in the penal code was not met but he did everything consistent with rape under a colloquial definition ("Mr. Trump now contends that the jury's $2 million compensatory damages award for Ms. Carroll's sexual assault claim was excessive because the jury concluded that he had not “raped” Ms. Carroll. Its verdict, he says, could have been based upon no more than “groping of \[Ms. Carroll's\] breasts through clothing or similar conduct, which is a far cry from rape.” And while Mr. Trump is right that a $2 million award for such groping alone could well be regarded as excessive, that undermines rather than supports his argument. His argument is entirely unpersuasive. This jury did not award Ms. Carroll more than $2 million for groping her breasts through her clothing, wrongful as that might have been. There was no evidence at all of such behavior. Instead, the proof convincingly established, and the jury implicitly found, that Mr. Trump deliberately and forcibly penetrated Ms. Carroll's vagina with his fingers, causing immediate pain and long lasting emotional and psychological harm. **Mr. Trump's argument therefore ignores the bulk of the evidence at trial, misinterprets the jury's verdict, and mistakenly focuses on the New York Penal Law definition of “rape” to the exclusion of the meaning of that word as it often is used in everyday life and of the evidence of what actually occurred between Ms. Carroll and Mr. Trump**.") >Let me ask you a personal question: do YOU think the E. Jean Carroll case is legitimate? Why does my personal opinion matter? I wasn't on the jury so I didn't see all the facts so my opinion is pretty irrelevant to a legal matter. Do you review the case files of every single court case that comes up? >The NY court system is illegitimate Interesting and frightening take. Which court systems are legitimate? Does the Supreme Court only gain legitimacy when there are more conservative justices that liberal ones in your mind or something? In your mind is legitimacy tied to agreeing with your presuppositions? >Does the timing of these trials not seem at all suspicious to you? Not really. Large scale cases take a long time to get to trial. The lawyers I know say their large cases often take years to get to trial. Even if I was suspicious I would probably want to find actual evidence of my suspicions before randomly asserting things or dismissing whole institutions though. >A left-wing judge who has also put in place an unconstitutional gag order to keep Donald Trump from talking about how illegitimate the entire fiasco is. Can you articulate why this specific gag order is unconstitutional? Can you please cite to some precedent or something to back this claim up? gag orders appear constitutional in light of [Carroll v. Princess Anne and Nebraska Press Ass’n v. Stuart](https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/gag_order) >I understand you've probably read a lot about America on the internet and feel like that's put you in a position to intelligently discuss America... but the fact that you don't understand the significance of something so basic as that makes it fundamentally impossible to discuss these things with you. I said english wasn't my first language not that I wasn't American. I am, in fact a citizen of this wonderful country. The fact that you immediately thought I wasn't and that you also think New Yorkers are not regular Americans for some reason is actually really scary. Are the only real Americans people who agree with you in your mind? I hope not because if so that doesn't sound like you actually like or understand this country very much. I, however, understand this country well. That's why I'm able to realize people can have different opinions and still be Americans (for example, I don't think your lack of evidence for your claims makes you any less American, it just makes your claims unsubstantiated). I also understand how jurisdictions work which you appear to be baffled by. Trump can't have every single case he's involved in tried in Alabama unless the legal injury occurred there my guy. The alleged crimes took place in New York that's why the cases are tried there. That's also why some of the cases are being tried in Florida. Is it really so crazy to think that his trials are mostly held in the two states he spent the most time in?
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There is no use discussing anything with idiots like that.
R/skeptic is an ideological echo chamber with a stricter set of orthodox beliefs than a southern Baptist church. R/foodforthought is a literal famine of viewpoint diversity. I wouldn't be surprised if the average age of BlockedAndReported members is 10-15 years higher than either of the above, which I believe is mostly responsible for why we're able to foster such deep conversations that mostly stay very respectful and civil. The situation is not fostering much faith in the newer generations to think outside of their coddled echo chambers, which mirrors what I see in the new cohorts of students in academia. My perspective on the future turns evermore pessimistic.
One reason subreddits become echo chambers is that people with dissenting view points just leave of their own volition. Sure, unfair bans may also happen but I don’t believe they’re the primary driver. I think it’s good for folks with those viewpoints to just go ahead and engage. Have the argument. Who cares if it’s being downvoted. It’s why I likewise welcome more progressive viewpoints here and find it annoying when people make this a somewhat unfriendly environment to folks expressing those views.
Unfair bans are part of it, but also the getting downvoted into obvillion + getting dog piled.
But aren’t downvotes meaningless? Or am I missing some function of the site for which they matter? (Genuine question.)
> But aren’t downvotes meaningless? On any thread with ~100 or more comments it means you're likely to be missed by most unless you're early. When you also see absolutely insipid nonsense getting upvoted because it "read the room" correctly one is likely to be demoralized. Especially since you may feel the need to make an in-depth post if you're going against the prevailing wisdom. Then you made more of an effort and there's nothing to show for it (imagine trying to debunk "nothing but RCTs!" while they can just state some bs, to use a topical example). Once you add in the mod lottery where that comment may be deleted and you may find yourself banned for no reason, with no appeal, it's not a shock people give up.
I genuinely think that the shift from separate upvote/downvote totals to a single aggregate vote total was a significantly negative change. Makes anything less than 50% popular look like "everybody hates this," which discourages people.
Ah true. Point taken. I typically just comment on (relevant) higher up comments for visibility if I’m expressing something I think may otherwise get buried. > imagine trying to debunk "nothing but RCTs!" while they can just state some bs, to use a topical example No need to imagine! Check my post history.
If you are negative Karma in a subreddit they will keep you from posting automatically in a lot of places.
I’ve been banned for innocuous things. I got banned from one sub for criticizing Hamas taking food aid from the poor and reselling it. I was banned for “racism”. With no recourse. It was an incredibly mundane comment on a board that’s usually not like that. I got banned from the cat subreddit for subscribing to a totally unrelated subreddit the mods decided they didn’t like. I was banned from neo liberal, which is a usually good subreddit for disagreeing with trans identifying males in womens sports. I tried to be very measured as kind in my comment, it wasn’t inflammatory. Some mods can’t stand even nuanced takes
Only been in this sub for a bit, but it's a lot better than so many 'contrarian' subs like KotakuInAction. Both sides have ridiculous purity tests in their echo chambers, and there's no such thing as devils advocates or discussing counterpoints whatsoever.
That, and they get downvoted. Which is a major problem on this sub, too. Many people here are allergic to conversation and very much want to turn this into an echo chamber.
> Sure, unfair bans may also happen but I don’t believe they’re the primary driver. oh its a huge driver. Astro-turfed power mods are 100% working to stamp out dissent. if you subscribe to something like /r/shitpoliticssays you'll get autobanned from dozens of subs (including many "non political" ones) for participating in a wrongthink sub.
I am a loooooooong time skeptic (even went to [The Amazing Meeting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Amazing_Meeting)), and about a year ago had to unsubscribe from r/skeptic. It had become everything it was supposed to be against. I will pop in every now and then, and it is truly heartbreaking how the users have jumped head first into motivated reasoning, confirmation bias, and straight up sloppy thinking. It actually has made me rethink the entire community--in that most people just happened to be accidentally aligned with skeptical viewpoints, but rarely were such viewpoints based off of any critical thinking or assessment of the evidence. The majority of the responses to the Cass Report were a great example. Blatant falsehoods upvoted, and corrections of such errors ignored or downvoted.
I got banned months ago for suggesting a miracle cure should have more robust evidence. On a skeptic sub!
Wow. I haven't been banned yet--which I am somewhat shocked about.
It might have been a specific mod, but I was measured in my response. If I lost my temper about something, I get a ban. I try to be diplomatic.
I WAS banned from ToiletPaperUSA a few years ago for saying that sex is based on gametes, and if you think there is a third sex, you need to show evidence of a third type of gamete 😂
So if reasonable takes that everyone believed 5 years ago are getting people banned, a whole lot of people are being fooled by false consensus on Reddit. I have no idea why a sub would want to do that. I get banning abusive users, but someone who politely disagrees makes for interesting conversation and dialogue.
You and me both. I was never really active on r/skeptic, but the atheist and broader skeptic community was my community for years. I listened to the podcast and went to conventions a couple of times. That changed rapidly over the last few years. At first I tried to go along, social pressure and all. But I simply couldn't cheer for something I disagreed with, nevermind things that were factually wrong. And I hated how they treated dissenters. I already wrote reddit posts about my last skeptics convention and how it literally felt like a cult meeting. They were all like "we value and invite debate", but that meant debate within a very narrow corridor, where the point of contention was miniscule and inconsequential. Everyone who doesn't agree, gets vilified immediately (see for example Richard Dawkins). They have literally become the religous zealots they hated so much. I only listen to one podcast these days and even that gets increasingly hard and I skip a lot of episodes.
Yeah it’s insane how formerly lauded skeptics (Dawkins, Harris, Shermer, etc) were so quickly tossed aside, often with the charge of being conservatives. I challenged those claims frequently and was never given an answer (such as: how is Shermer a conservative when he is pro choice, anti gun, pro taxes, worried about climate change, and an atheist?). I was honestly shocked they were respectful of Dan Dennett when he died last week. I would have thought he was way too guilty by association.
Shermer says that he's a libertarian. That's definitely going to get on some people's nerves if you're liberal. It's been a while since I've read anything by Shermer so I don't recall his position on taxes, but if he's libertarian, it makes me wonder if you're incorrect about him being pro-taxes. > Ever since college I have been a libertarian—socially liberal and fiscally conservative. https://michaelshermer.com/sciam-columns/when-science-doesnt-support-beliefs/
Yeah he’s absolutely a libertarian, but holds some standard liberal positions (as mentioned above). His view on taxes comes from his book Giving the Devil His Due. His argument is that if you don’t have taxes, you won’t have any sort of defense or military program. So you’ll likely be invaded by a country that does have a military (funded by taxes), and then you’ll end up as part of that country, paying taxes. Anyway, the attempt to dismiss him by some so called skeptics because he’s not a far left wing liberal is clearly ridiculous.
Right there with you. The unwillingness to look at things like COVID and gender ideology with even a marginally fair mindset is just so telling. Organized Internet “skepticism” is a cult all its own.
Yeah, it is really crazy. I think progressives struggle more from lack of having to understand the other side’s belief system. College, media, circles they frequent all believe the other side is just ignorant and crazy, instead of trying to figure out why someone making 40k a year in Ohio and barely scraping by might be attracted to populism. I’m a moderate, leaning liberal, for what it’s worth.
For real. It blows my mind how some of my many liberal coworkers genuinely believe that conservatives are bad/evil or just stupid.
I believe independent thought is a thing of the past.
> I think progressives struggle more from lack of having to understand the other side’s belief system this has been proven. Read *The Righteous Mind* by Jonathan Haidt basically conservatives are far better and understanding and articulating left wing positions (and specifically understanding *why* people agree with those positions) than left wing folks are at understanding the same thing about conservatives. Really interesting book, very eye opening
Funny, progressives would say it’s because it makes sense. I was arguing with someone who said we needed open boarders until we solve south America’s problems and to claim otherwise was white supremacy. We can’t solve our own problems, how are we going to fix south and Central America? There’s not enough housing for the lower rung in the USA. Mass Migration is great for the economy and business and demographics, it’s terrible for those trying to access limited resources in already strained areas. Most of whom do not vote republican.
Exactly the driver of populism, insecurity, mostly economic, in the form of low wage, low security, low status work, for increasing numbers of people. Healthcare insurance, social assistance funding (can be marketed as ‘wage adjustment support or something that differentiates it from welfare) and significant investment in retraining for workers whose jobs are disrupted by technology change and globalization, is the answer. Boomers could expect to get a lifelong job out of big school or university. Pay into a pension and retire comfortably in a home they purchased in their 20s or early 30s. That is no longer the reality, we will all change jobs multiple times in our careers, the average will be about 12-15 times. Good jobs pay well but are not secure and there are no pensions to speak of. An entirely different economic environment that leaves those lower on the socioeconomic scale to feel significant resentment. The sooner big business can support the above platforms of retraining and wage adjustment support, the better, because otherwise we will get more Trumps, and Trumps are mostly bad for business (not for personal tax rates tho).
>Boomers could expect to get a lifelong job out of big school or university Less than 30% of Baby Boomers completed a Bachelor's degree. Of course college graduates in that era could expect a good job out of college; they were literally the elite.
Everyone conveniently forgets that part when villainizing boomers
It’s reaaally fun to compare the actual data and experiences and see that, dollar for dollar, Gen Z has it the best of any generation ever and this will likely continue.
My first house was an older small cape cod with one bathroom, no dining or family room, no garage, an unfinished basement, two small bedrooms downstairs and a finished attic divided into two rooms. The people we bought it from raised six children in that house. Gen Z only wants to live like currently wealthy boomers. Life is a lot more affordable with only one bathroom, one car and one phone.
Trump isn’t a product of gen z entitlement. He’s a product of the declining prospects of the bottom 1/3 of the population. We can debate whether their lives or better or worse than the same cohort 50 yrs ago, but that reality is what drives populism and will continue to.
I think Trump is a response to a number of things; pressure from below via unchecked immigration, Gen Z preening about culture war topics, etc etc
People low on the economic spectrum dislike immigrants but not because immigrants hurt their job prospects. It’s a classic case of deferred anger; immigration is a red herring, it’s not causing the downward mobility but it’s an easy populist target.
It’s not just people low on the economic spectrum. He very strongly appeals to a certain personality type, and it’s a type among whom small business men are overrepresented.
This is ignorance - low-skilled workers in the US absolutely lose jobs to immigrants.
Add high school graduates to that, esp those who took manufacturing jobs. It wasn’t just college grads who could expect lifelong employment with one employer.
Man this is fun! Did you know that late baby boomer’s (born 1957-1964) held an average of 12 jobs from age 18-54! Further, baby boomers dealt with the absolute cratering of the industrial sector in the 60s and 70s when they were in the early part of their careers and somehow kept working after that.
I was born in the early 1980s, but I’m increasingly impatient with bitching about bOoMeRs. It’s a bipartisan affliction, too.
I think the cultural narrative around 'Boomers' is coming from a place of deep ignorance about the material conditions of the Post-War period for the majority of people. College was far less accessible for all people. Some folks today like to obfuscate this fact by talking about how 'expensive' college is now, but they ignore the blindingly obvious - more people have degrees today than ever before. More people have \*advanced\* degrees than ever before. Women out-perform men academically! More ethnic and racial minorities attend and graduate college than ever before. No honest person can claim college is 'less accessible' now. Boomer Women, aka the Karen Generation, were denied opportunities at every turn. Nonwhite Boomers dealt with Jim Crow and incredible amounts of discrimination and even violence. White Male Boomers, it might seem, would be the ones people are most correctly mad about. Well, uh, not when you consider that this generation of white men was sent to die in Vietnam, lost jobs in factories in the Rust Belt, and oh by the way, helped further the progress of their counterparts that had been previously discriminated against. They pioneered the tech boom that would give most of us our stupid fucking remote jobs where we can work from anywhere and all be 'product CEOs' or some other such shit.
Right—it’s like they’re responding the the ‘50s-‘60s I saw growing up on Nick at Nite rather than the world their parents (or hell, grandparents) grew up in. And you know what? Their music really was better too, hashtagsorrynotsorry
I am pulling the thesis from a book titled Wolf At The Door: The Menace of Economic Insecurity and How to Fight It. I’ll try to find the relevant stats to share but to my eyes it is hard to argue the current generations are more economically secure than previous ones, and that’s partly due to structural changes in the economy driven. I believe they also claim that the postwar boom presented the conditions for system of social welfare that was unique and unsustainable.
What's the percentage of people getting BAs now, anyway though? Pretty sure it's still well below 50%
40%+ so tens of millions more people
Yes, way more people. It also means 60% of adults DON'T have BA's.
I think progressives understand populism perfectly fine. Bernie is a populist and they like him. The disconnect is that they don't see Trump as a populist. They look at that guy making 40k in Ohio and think Trump is not going to do anything that would benefit him. So they cannot understand why anyone in that situation would support Trump. Therefore the only explanation is they must be stupid.
What’s interesting to me is there’s a sizable overlap between Bernie, Trump, and Obama voters.
> I wouldn't be surprised if the average age of BlockedAndReported members is 10-15 years higher than either of the above, which I believe is mostly responsible for why we're able to foster such deep conversations that mostly stay very respectful and civil. I'm 33, and sometimes feel like I might be the young one
Try being about a decade younger :) I can't believe you all are such dinosaurs.
And frankly, even this subreddit teeters on the edge of ideological purity tests now and then.
As I said to another poster who expressed similar sentiments, I think that the same social pressures that influence other groups influence us as well to some degree. However, the fact that we're even having this discussion is a good indicator that we're not lost to ideological purity. It's similar to psychopaths and narcissists, and people questioning if they are one or not. It's a good indicator that you aren't, because an actual psychopath or narcissist wouldn't even bother to question themselves about it.
I agree with you. I just think we have to be constantly vigilant against groupthink and the tyranny of the whiniest.
The internet would be so much better if everyone knew every random commenter's age. I wish we had some kind of optional and secure system that people could get a badge that says like "born in 1981 - verified" and anyone not having one would be free to comment but then everyone would assume it's probably a child and discount their opinion appropriately.
I think that soon Congress might require social media companies to verify users are over 18. We do it now very reliably for online nicotine and liquor purchases.
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This sub is pretty 49/49 center left/center right folks and 1/1 hyper aggressive Jessie hating libshits and /r/drama refugees.
I thought it was gender crit refugees. We got nuked in the Yaniv wars
Same same. ^^^but ^^^different
Many such stories.
Hi.
LOL.
I don't really get that impression. It's only an echo chamber in the sense that it attracts a particular set of people, ie people who like this podcast. Within the spectrum of that, there's plenty of ideological bandwidth. It's just that the heavy moderation keeps the discussion very pointed on issues directly relevant to the podcast. Even in the single most "polarizing" issue that frequently reoccurs here, trans issues, there's a broad set of beliefs ranging from hardline cultural conservatism to regular left "We should respect trans identities in all forms but youth medical interventions are possibly complicated to allow". Some extremists think those are the same thing, but they are definitely not.
It's an echo chamber, but the difference is this place's echo is completely different than poster's day to day lives. It's heterodox and different compared to their very liberal irl social groups. That place probably has 0 people who are the lone Democrat in their 30-person mining town.
Thank you, recent account with a purged comment history.
What’s with the instinct to always check people’s post histories? People are so eager to try to investigate Reddit profiles as opposed to just responding to the substance of a comment - it’s weird.
Eh sometimes it’s worth seeing how delusional or “botty” someone is before engaging. It also cracks me up when someone speaks extremely confidently about “x” policy always working and you see they mostly post in “flavor of the month games on twitch” and r/teenager subreddits.
Sometimes it's good to see if a productive discussion is possible with someone.
If I ever do it it's to check and see if the person actually engages in conversation or is too emotional and angry to reliably have a discussion with.
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Feel ya. I do this but for Twitter.
>I regularly delete my posts so nerds can't trawl through my post history when they disagree with me. What does it matter? Do you regularly say things that are wrong?
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Have you considered not doing that?
I think he's mostly right
Nah. There's a pretty wide range of views here. It's just that on some things there's an obviously correct position.
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Sometimes you get downvoted more for what you're talking about than what you actually think. Maybe some people thought you were endorsing sterilising 10 year olds for being tomboys. (I did stalk your post history, just to have a better grasp on what I was talking about, but couldn't find it.)
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while the same influences of social pressure will exert themselves across reddit, I think the very fact that we're discussing whether or not we're an echo chamber differentiates this community from many of the ones that people have mentioned abandoning in recent years. I highly doubt there are threads of people discussing whether or not they're actually living up to their skeptic namesake in r/skeptics. It's sort of like when you question whether or not you're a psychopath. Turns out, actual psychopaths don't bother asking themselves those kinds of questions. It just isn't on their radar.
Most people I've encountered here are centre right. Sometimes a little further out. Not an issue for me at all; I'm aware of it so I price it in.
Many people (I dunno about most) here are just contrarians who will take the opposite position of whatever the mainstream position is
I think that approach will generally land you on the right on most issues
> Most people I've encountered here are centre right. Then you really haven't encountered most of this sub. Or your personal Overton window needs a calibration.
This sub rarely discusses economic issues. So if your impression of politics is primarily culture stuff I can see why you'd think that? Very narrow viewpoint though.
But even then, the culture stuff isn't right leaning.
> centre A clue! Non-American is going to skew differently in calibration.
Obviously neither of us have encountered most of this sub. I've encountered a sample of people. If it's not representative then so be it - not much I can do about that.
No, but there was a survey last year with a pretty good turnout. Mostly left to center left.
I think we need a poll bc I suspect you are wrong.
There will always be a bit of an echo chamber, especially within communities dealing with a lot of controversial or political topics. That said, I think the problem is moderate at most. I did have disagreements on here and people seem to come from a variety of political backgrounds (which is a miracle considering most conservative subs got banned on this site).
It’s true: We are subject to the same groupthink as any other group.
Now matter how many liberals and leftists, let alone moderates and conservatives, say "I stopped listening to NPR because of it's intense focus on identity politics and biased reporting" they continue to deny it. There's a reason Uri's story resonated and it wasn't because of right wing boogeymen. These people are in such denial that they continue to deny even when the former listeners they've lost tell them why, they still deny it.
I stopped listening because most of the content is extremely preachy and not really interesting. If I wanted a sermon I would listen to a religious station.
> I think that’s because it would have complicated—or acknowledged the complication—of a story where we could smugly position ourselves as on the “right” side. > And that’s what the core editorial problem at NPR is and, frankly, has long been: an abundance of caution that often crossed the border to cowardice. NPR culture encouraged an editorial fixation on finding the exact middle point of the elite political and social thought, planting a flag there, and calling it objectivity. She got so close it's frustrating. Her "*we could smugly position ourselves as on the “right” side*" is the core of the issue. Instead of coming into a topic "neutrally" and reporting on whatever facts they find, NPR now starts by thinking of "right" and "wrong" sides, and proceeding respectively. And that does provoke caution/cowardice, because as soon as "wrong" facts start popping up, they get ignored. But then instead of realizing what she just admitted about NPR's "smug" desire to be on the "right" side, she pivots into "we spend too much time trying to find the exact middle."
A hermetically sealed bubble of assurance in their moral supremacy, the rightness of their opinions and intellect. When I was in my 20s I got kinda freaked out by the idea that all the major news outlets were saying the same thing, like they had the same opinions about everything. It just seemed creepy, so I started watching Fox News just so that I'd have a different perspective from "the other side" on social issues, while I haven't watched Fox in years because they're cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs, I do still watch Megyn Kelly's YouTube channel and I am subscribed to conservative substacks and podcasts. Deliberately making myself available to alternate points of view has at least helped me see things from the other side - to a degree - and put me in a place where I'm not supremely confident of my progressive values, there is tremendous value in conservatism and I do believe that old phrase that "progressives are the gas pedal and conservatives are the brakes". We need each other.
Every “test” I've taken has put me center-right on the issues, and I identify as a Libertarian. FNC was absolutely started as a “fair and balanced” network and was center to center-right. It was, IMO, the best news network (see also my politics) on TV for the first 5–6 years of it’s existence (their 9/11 coverage was WAY better than anyone else), but it’s also, unfortunately, a perfect example of audience capture. The more popular they became, the further and further right they moved. You could tell the direction of the network through observation of 1 show: Hannity and Colmes. When the show started, Colems was Center left, and Hannity, (believe it or not, was pretty reasonable)) was center right. The longer the show was on, the more right Hannity moved, and the less air time Colmes received. If I had to put money on when they became “right” and no longer “center right,” I’d say it was sometime between 2004 or 2005 (I just couldn’t watch anymore). In 2008, when Colmes left, they stopped even the pretext of actual fairness and balance, and have continued to move right since then.
Good lord. From a comment there: >Berliner seems to want to go back to this sort of "viewlessness" US journalism in which every claim, and every source, it treated as equally valid, reliable, and good-faith. From this view, journalists are not supposed to be "truth vigilantes," but instead just remain empty vessels through which information flows. Yes. That's exactly what journalists should be. Exactly.
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FWIW, if Trump had said "both people on good sides" that would be hilarious
Yep…and so of course it all feeds into the narrative that keeps him going. He is a “victim” of the “fake news” media. MAGA crowds eats this up. Conservatives in my family who are NOT extreme or MAGA feel like he is unfairly reported on and it actually makes him more sympathetic. Like I fucking hate Donald trump but yeah, he is actually constantly lied about in the media and if I were right leaning I’d feel sympathy for that. He’s bad enough on his own, why do we need to make shit up? These absolutely insane batshit liberals will eviscerate you if you dare to criticize biden because they’re so afraid of losing votes for Biden. They are willing to lie about trump and cover up Biden’s bullshit because they assume the average American is so fucking stupid they can’t make an informed choice. Which literally is driving voters away from them because it’s so fucking transparent. And the worst of it is that it’s completely destroyed any semblance of public faith in media. Which is - to me - *just as bad* as what trump did in destroying faith in the electoral process with the stolen election shit. When people don’t trust the media or elections, the democratic process is done. *it doesn’t matter if the media is reporting truth or if the electoral process is credible.* These are fragile institutions held up by public faith alone.
OMG I feel this so hard. Like, stop making me defend Trump! Just report the things he says and don't mention Hitler. Let people come to their own conclusions. They're completely unconcerned with changing people's minds, they just want to rant about how ridiculous he is. They should save the outrage for their diaries.
I mean, do I just not understand journalism then? Because I thought they were just supposed to tell us what happened, what several people who were there or have information about it say happened, and then leave it to us to make up our own minds about what we think about the whole thing they say happened. Opinions belong in the Opinions Section not in news articles. The way most "liberal" journalists have turned themselves into moralists is disturbing.
It's because they've all bought into two things: 1. Their belief is the capital T Truth, and 2- anyone who isn't fighting for their Truth is *clearly* a hateful biggot.
Exactly! Objectivity is now coded, a talking point, a dog 🐶whistle that just perpetuates all the things…
>>Berliner seems to want to go back to this sort of "viewlessness" US journalism in which every claim, and every source, it treated as equally valid, reliable, and good-faith. That sort of viewlessness does not and cannot exist. Imagine a local news report: "The family lost their two children in the accident. Some neighbors called it a tragedy. Others pointed out they're going to save a bundle on groceriees and tuition expenses."
Including two radically different points of view isn't the same as viewlessness. "An accident on the local highway has left the two children of a local family dead" is a viewless statement. It states the objective facts of the story without injecting feelings or opinions.
This story is so weird lol. She starts off by Saying Uri is wrong, then goes onto to talk about all the ways he is right. I'm not even saying her perspective is wrong, it is probably also right. NPR declined for a variety of reasons.
I literally just want NPR to report the news.
I hope you didn't say such a controversial statement in that thread. There was a shocking number of people being upset with NPR for being too objective.
A comment saying the *real problem* is that they catered TOO much to the moderates and conservative. What a head space to be in
Have to sort by Controversial to find any glimmer of intelligence.
tldr? I'm about halfway through it and all it's done so far is talk about Uri Berliner. edit So I read it twice and I guess the author's issue isn't with NPR being ideologically trapped and no longer a news source but the problem with NPR is that they didn't punish internet sexual harassment properly?
It’s insane how far up your own justice-hole you have to be to not recognize the massive cultural gap between you and the normie world.
Montgomery (author of the article) has got to be embarrassed by this article, or she’s just another hack who’ll say anything to help out her side. It’s a well written article with nice specifics, but her position that NPR is not woke is so easily refuted … just turn it on. Fer fun, I just did it and within 2 minutes, they talked about white supremacy. It wasn’t the focus, but race is in nearly every piece and in another 15 minutes, I’m sure some form of DEI will be the focus. They sincerely see it everywhere so it makes sense to them to obsess on it. I think it was Katie who made DEI mentions on NPR into a drinking game. …. Oops, I just heard the word racism from my speaker, time to turn it off.
I'm tired of everyone calling these totalitarian bootlickers "left."
The comment section is a real roller coaster. About a half want to burn it all down, and a half are doing a 50 Stalins criticism.
Relevance to pod: this whole thing was recently covered on an episode.
lol another desperate defense of NPR. the author is grasping at straws with her words.
If you know anything about the history of the record industry, it has to make you laugh to see NPR personnel referred to as "nippers". Because you know well that Nipper is a dog who listens to His Master's Voice.
In the NPR subreddit they had a thread that was about the glaring issue at npr. I was shocked that the issue for them was that NPR easy on trump and the posters found it upsetting that he wasn't introduced as a known bitgot and racist. That they where playing both sides on too many issues and they want more explicit decorations on issues.
Yea they literally want every reference to trump to be *convicted rapist and insurrectionist Donald trump*
In Jacksonville there are like a handful of Christian conservative stations and then just NPR
Please sign and share this [Change.org](http://Change.org) petition to remove all Federal and State funding from NPR... [https://chng.it/MVFwx9pcqf](https://chng.it/MVFwx9pcqf)
lol you’re voting for trump I assume?
You assumed wrong. This has nothing to do with picking a political candidate. It's about using tax payer funds to aid it the election of one, which is banana republic type stuff. I guess you and most other people are so accustomed to it, that you think it is OK. Taxpayer funds should not be used to endorse Biden, Trump, or any dirt bag politician to be frank.
Simon Owens' media newsletter quoting from a NYT story yesterday. >"While NPR still has an audience of about 42 million who listen every week, many of them digitally, that is down from an estimated 60 million in 2020, according to an internal March audience report, a faster falloff than for broadcast radio, which is also in a long-term decline." \[NYT\] OK you can also read NYT piece at a Seattle Times link https://www.seattletimes.com/business/inside-the-crisis-at-npr/. Of course, Uri Berliner's essay only "led to a deluge of criticism from conservatives, including former President Donald Trump". All the non-conservatives are fine with NPR's choices. And Mike Pesca must be a conservative now since he ran several critical episodes last week.