While I understand there must be politics in every day life and it is inescapable but the issue and discussion seems to go round and round. I am not finding anything insightful from any political discussion online. Is it just me? I feel like most things come down to people wanting to have enough resources to live happily. If they just had enough money, most of their problems would be solved.
Is it selection bias that commenters on the internet tend to be more depressed/lonely?
Has the demography gone down in age which results in lot of shitty behaviour like witch hunts and trending non-issue outrage? Young generation seems to like these and they especially love twitch from what I have seen. Maybe an impact of that?
What do you think is the biggest reason for the current condition?
1) The internet is directly and indirectly incentivizing this kind of attention seeking behavior. It's rewarding to be noticed, upvoted, and retweeted. Pleasant, well reasoned, and evenhanded discussion rarely gets as much attention as sassy clapbacks.
2) Younger generations have been raised to believe that activism is a virtue and that injecting politics into everything is the way to affect progress (intersectionality).
3) Young people tend to be more vocal and more prolific. This is probably because they have more energy and free time than older folks. Additionally, young people tend to be more abrasive/obnoxious, as they don't have as much life experience to tone themselves down and learn how to behave.
My Dad is an aerospace engineer and we were discussing the work that Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin is doing with their rockets. When my sister buts in and goes on a 20 minute rant about how it is unethical for billionaires to exist. It really pissed me off as I don't get to talk to my Dad much[1], especially about things he is excited about. That's not the only time she has done it, it happens all the time.
Or maybe I'm just an apathetic Gen Xer.
[1] I live 500 miles away and my Dad doesn't like to talk on the phone.
My grandmother, born in a house without electricity, is on Twitter. My aunts and uncles, who would previously have watched argumentative current affairs panel shows on TV (which were never pleasant or even-handed, even decades ago), can now join in the brawl in the comments sections online.
The young people argument is a bit too loose for my liking too. Are you talking about teenagers or people in their thirties? I'd also directly challenge you on the assertion that young people have more free time and are more obnoxious than older people. I'm not sure that stands up to scrutiny.
I'm generally talking about teenagers to people in their 20's. I made this observation based on my own experience, where my friends who are in their mid 20's to early 30's have started participating way less often in group chats and social activities because they are raising children now. They also have less free time because they're rising up the corporate ladder and have taken on more responsibilities. I have also noticed my own energy levels decline as I age, so that's where I am coming from. I think if you combine all those factors together you get people with much less time and energy than college aged or fresh out of college aged people.
As for the obnoxious part, you can absolutely take that with a grain of salt. I was making that assertion with adolescents and people in their early 20's in-mind. Basically, the prime age for being rebellious, raunchy, and irreverent towards authority. I don't have any scientific evidence to give you, but anecdotally that attitude seems to mellow out with time.
The internet skews heavily young, international, and urban. In other words, pretty overwhelmingly Democratic. Obviously they were pretty unhappy with the way things were going the last 4 years. It's not really different from how things were under Bush. And now that Biden is president and the Dems control congress things will be less negative online.
The US had tons of diversity. But it got expression in local culture, and you didn't think as deeply about your identity at a national level. The national stuff felt more distant. It was exceedingly rare families to travel outside one or two state radius.
NOW, perhaps due to the Internet, maybe other factors, everything far away feels 'closer'. It's like we're suddenly crammed together at the same party, sharing more space with people that we would have culturally been more distant from in the past, creating tons of issues. Most issues have become nationalized. The lack of local media compared to social media, the lack of attachment to a community (people move more), and other factors probably are at play here.
So everyone projects values in the past they would have put into local communities onto the shared, national space. Of course if I project my educated, metropolitan PoV and you project your rural working class PoV, things will clash and we will have fundamental disagreements about everything, including facts and core values.
> Two towns where people got really upset about undocumented immigrants, even though in both places, that did not seem to be the most important thing happening at all. One of the towns, a small town in Alaska, has no undocumented immigrants at all, but the possibility of them arriving put the whole town at each other’s throats.
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/621/fear-and-loathing-in-ho...
Constant, non-stop, emotionally driven news and media available 24/7.
The news used to be a thing people did at 6pm or maybe in the morning with a newspaper. It didn't invade every day life and wasn't generally most people's focus.
These days' you've got news on the top results of google searches, news on facebook, news on twitter, forums devoted to posting about discussing news as fast as it comes up.
The thing about news is, a large part of it has always been politics, it just used to be kind of dry and boring to most people.
Now politicians are exaggerated and almost caricaturistic in their actions and words, the news plays up every tiny thing in an emotional way, so politics became big bucks as far as news goes, so it became a larger part of the news.
These things combined means a larger part of people's conversational topics becomes politics.
It's a problem I've recognized, and we're currently working on a new kind of social network that aims to promote better discussion on the internet. One of our methods is removing the concept of "virality" and having the discussions happen in small groups instead of on public forums. After all, your group chats with friends still have good discussions, that's what we're trying to replicate on a wider scale. We don't yet have a website to show unfortunately :(
No it is not just you.
You asked: What do you think is the biggest reason for the current condition?
I believe the single-greatest contributor to the current condition is the way in which wholesale dehumanization of "the other" has been utterly normalized.
My opinion is that this type of Political Puritanism (seriously afflicting both sides of the political spectrum) is product of a "win-at-any-cost" mentality.
At the dinner table: We shouldn't talk about politics, just brings heated arguments and makes us miserable. As long as nobody brings it up we can get a moment of calm and happiness.
At the community management table: We should encourage people to talk about politics by constantly showing them posts about politics, brings so much engagement!
- People are really becoming too reserved and within their own circles. Internet has made it much easier contrary to what we may have thought when internet started. Now you don't need to worry about socializing or getting to know your neighbor. You can literally get/do anything online these days which also means you create your own echo chambers. For example, why participate in a debate with a fellow neighbor/friend when I can go on reddit (anonymized) and write whatever I want for the most part. I was talking to someone few days ago and they mentioned "We used to almost know everyone in my neighborhood 15 years ago and now in the same neighborhood, I only know a handful"
I wouldn't say most commenters online are depressed. I think it is more because of how our society has become.
Has it always been like this, or is it getting worse? Yes. Yes, people have always been like this, and it's getting worse.
Why is it getting worse? I think it's because the gain is too high (think of an audio system developing feedback). Before, when you ran into some opinionated loudmouth who wouldn't listen to anything, you walked away, or you just ignored the guy ranting in the bar and talked to your own group. You ran into them in small numbers and in limited interactions. Now, they have a really big microphone, and they can be heard all over the world.
So they encounter others like themselves much more often now - others that they agree with, and others that they don't. The fraction of what we hear that is conversation between such people has gone way up. That's bad enough, but it makes some people who weren't that way think that that's the way to be heard, and they start acting that way. Even worse, some people are genuinely converted, and start acting that way out of the conviction of their new zealotry.
That may not be the only factor at play. It may not even be a correct analysis. But that's what I think is going on.
A lot of people want to make money, and if you cater to someone’s opinion then you might want to give them money (a prerequisite to getting money is telling people what they like to hear). So we have a lot of super specific communities popping up, because people see it as an easy way to make money. This is fine so far. But then a fairly large group of people (by IRL standards) gather and see that everyone is like them. The idea that everyone is like them doesn’t hold true in the rest of their lives, so people start to appreciate this new home they’ve found. And then some other people from the outside come along and the “protect my tribe” instinct kicks in. Because of the anonymity people get rude over silly stuff, because they don’t like to entertain the idea that someone disagrees with them in “their” piece of the internet.
This is inevitable in nearly any internet based community. Strong moderation helps, and so does raising the cost of entry a few bucks, but neither is a perfect solution. See Stack Overflow for moderation or Metafilter for a place that costs a few dollars to join. It keeps the trolls away but something about them feels different, and I don’t know if I’d point to either option as being a best solution.
I agree though that Hacker News has become very snarky. For example, if you were to write that you find Scala difficult, ten guys would reply by explaining how that makes you a crappy developer. Pointless sharing stuff when all you get back are nitpicks and potshots.
edit: and yes I am aware of the irony in this comment.
I remember reading research that notes the music, poesy, and literature to carry cynic and political narratives preceding and during society changes (could find the link).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbolism_in_the_French_Revolu... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_of_the_Friends_of_Trut...
It used to not be unusual to have good relationships among people with different political opinions, today, not so sure.
So how do we get people the money they need to be happy? Is making young people go 50k+ in debt to enter the workforce, while creating conditions that cause rent and housing prices to skyrocket the way to do it?
If there is an abundance of people foolish enough to incur such debt then I see no way to prevent capitalism from doing so.
Despite our social advances the situation today remains the same as that which Charles Dickens' characterizes in "A Christmas Carol" where the main obstructions to progress are "Ignorance" and "Want"(poverty). In particular, Ignorance is difficult to extinguish w/o doing something abhorrent (at least for most of us). Although far from a Christian, more and more I find appropriate the phrase:
"The poor you will always have with you..."
- Matthew 26:11
Most of what you read on the Internet is written by a small percentage of people (https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/9rvroo/most...). This was previously discussed on HN as (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18881827) and (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25600274). The clicks and likes they receive also provide positive feedback, can be addictive, and contribute to spending more time online. It's also well established that social networks can contribute to unhappiness.
> Has the demography gone down in age which results in lot of shitty behaviour like witch hunts and trending non-issue outrage? Young generation seems to like these and they especially love twitch from what I have seen. Maybe an impact of that?
Witch hunts and moral panics are part of the human condition. The main difference is the internet makes it much easier to start a witch hunt or moral panic and lowers the transaction costs of participating. Modern moral panics are started by a tweet or post - it used to require authoring a book (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satanic_ritual_abuse) or months/years of press coverage. It's also much more likely for controversial content to be shared (https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage...). Your friend or relative on Facebook who shares click bait wouldn't have bothered to do so before the internet.
Another factor is that the woke don't believe in debate (https://newdiscourses.com/2020/07/woke-wont-debate-you-heres...). They feel that the deck is rigged against them, debating reinforces the current oppressive system, that all disagreement is illegitimate, and that anyone with power who isn't dismantling the current system is evil.
> What do you think is the biggest reason for the current condition?
I think the biggest reason is that the internet has made it much easier for people to publicize their views. People have always been this awful; you just weren't exposed to their views.
Go ahead and perform a TinEye or reverse Google search on that image of the so-called "confidental memo", check out it's origins. Lots of posts on 4Chan, /r/The_Donald, reposts on sites like "JewWorldOrder".
Zero attribution to which organization this is supposedly from. This poster, Solid_Applaud, uploaded this photo to ibb and created his HN account at the same time.
Funnily enough the commenter is guilty of the same thing I am accused of: creating a new account recently.
1. Say that if something is not reported in mainstream news, it didn't happen, or the claim isn't reliable. "Reading Activistpost.com? Get out >>"
2. Say that if a viewpoint disagrees with the government, it's unpatriotic "Yeah right, Russia-lover. Go >>"
3. Say that only 'experts' who are on your side are qualified to give opinions or facts. "Quoting Dr. Paul Craig Roberts? Opinion Discarded."
4. "Citation needed." It's a little known fact that when a [REDACTED] is hatched from its egg, "citation needed" are the first words out of its beak. "Citation needed" means either a) "I'm too lazy to check this" or b) "Your claim is supported by Encyclopedia Britannica, but I want to imply you're a lying sack of sht." [REDACTED] squawk "citation needed!" even when a citation is given.
5. Become incredulous and indignant, and claim a topic is off limits. "How dare OP say these things? This is going too far! Of course a [REDACTED] invented the pork casserole!"
6. Call your opponent's claim a rumor, conspiracy theory, or urban myth. "Too tinfoil for me! Loony detected! You are obviously crazy! And on drugs!"
7. Only bad people think like your opponent. "OP is a typical stormfag. No wonder he's a laughing stock. He probably lives in a ditch." ([REDACTED] post like this all the time, even though it is similar to holding a 20-foot tall neon sign that reads "I'M NOT ONE OF YOU AND I HATE EVERYTHING YOU STAND FOR." They can't help but stand out: they're too arrogant.)
8. Claim your opponent was replaced by some mysterious computer hacker, and all posts after a certain point are obviously fake and not by OP. (It's laughable, but the shills really do this.)
9. Claim an opposing OP is a shill, and post links to your own (newly-created) thread inside OP's - trying to lure away anons. (A favorite tactic of American Spring shills.) 10. Claim your opponent is saying something he isn't. Totally misrepresent him. "So you're saying George Bush flew into the Twin Towers? Idiot." "So you're saying [REDACTED] is a [REDACTED]? And I suppose you want to kill him and lure us all to your own website, is that it?" (Both of these are genuine shill comments. [REDACTED] can be relied on to argue like hysterical teenage girls.)
11. Claim your opponent is exactly what you are: a shill. "NSA detected. Take your lies elsewhere!"
12. Tell anons not to bother reading your opponent's posts, threads, or infographics. "Already read it. Total junk. OP is wasting everyone's time." (Again: [REDACTED] arrogance gives them away.)
13. Call your opponent insulting names. "Nutjob", "idiot", "pathetic". "Everyone here is laughing at you." Timid or stupid people will think twice about supporting your opponent.
14. Ignore every good answer that your opponent gives. If you have to, lie and say it's a bad answer. Make up a fake reason. "Of course you would say that, you're a mudslime-lover!"
15. When your opponent raises facts and evidence, lie. Say he made them up. Most people won't check, even if it only takes 20 seconds to do a web search. "Total bullsht! You made that up! It's photoshopped! The link doesn't work! It's not true! It proves the opposite!" Etc.
16. Always claim your opponent is biased. Make up a reason. "You're obviously a Yurropoor/Amerifat/hom/nggr/etc." (My favorite: I'm regularly called an obvious les*an.)
17. Claim you are an expert, have personal knowledge, or personal experience. "I went to school with a victim at Sandy Hook and it was all real, I assure you. In fact she's my mom."
18. Claim that an important issue simply doesn't matter. Your opponent is talking about dull, unimportant things. "This isn't news. Nothing to see here. Who cares. So moot has been arrested for killing prostitutes and eating their livers, and he yelled at the police and TV camera crew 'I'm sacrificing these goy whores to Satan!' That doesn't prove anything. OP is boring me."
19. Claim that an important issue is 'old' and 'dated' - even if it isn't. Say that your opponent is wasting time on issues that have 'expired'. (As if the truth can ever expire.) "Old news, yawn."
20. When you get caught out in a lie, use fake identities to make posts backing up your claim. Most people place a high value on personal opinions, even those of complete strangers.
21. Claim no-one can ever know the truth: it's too complex Cloud the issue with minute details, even if it's clear cut. "We can't ever know for sure, so why are you asking? It's not worth checking your links, so don't check his links anyone. Seriously, especially not the first link. Because we just can't know. So don't check the links."
22. Claim an issue can never be solved. Claim things are the only way they possibly could be. "There's nothing we can do. Why bother, anon?" ([REDACTED] use this weak tactic when an issue has just been solved beyond any doubt, and the evidence is damning.)
23. Pretend your position is unarguably right. The "Everybody knows..." ploy. "Everybody knows only losers support Ron Paul". "Everybody knows you can trust the government." Etc.
24. 'Doing an Alex Jones'. Agree with the facts, but claim that they point to a conclusion that is the complete opposite of your opponent's (and reality). "So you see folks: it's Nazis!" 25. 'Doing a David Icke'. Take the thread down a crazy route. Illuminati, reptilians, aliens, etc. Sensible posters have their image tarnished by all the idiotic comments around them.
26. Encourage laziness and irresponsibility about important issues. "So who cares? Everyone knows already, it's not a big deal..." (Often used by [REDACTED] trying to excuse away incontrovertible evidence that [REDACTED] is a gay [REDACTED] who collaborates with the FBI and freely states that he hates [REDACTED]. Because, you know, that's Just how a genuine [REDACTED] would feel upon discovering that [REDACTED] is a gay [REDACTED] who collaborates with the FBI and freely states that he hates [REDACTED].)
27. When your opponent argues in favor of online privacy, call him or her a "coward". Try to make reckless stupidity seem brave. "Only cowards care what the government thinks! Only cowards hide their identity online! Only cowards would leave [REDACTED] when they realize it's run by [REDACTED] trying to manipulate them! Only cowards don't pss on the third rail!" Etc.
28. Trying to push a spectacularly bad idea (like American Spring) but anons aren't buying it? Try "We have nothing to lose". This 'desperation' gambit works best when the risks are astronomical, and the idea you're trying to sell is batshit insane. (Well, that's what [REDACTED] thinks. It's their favorite ploy for astronomically risky, batshit insane ideas.)
29. Say the facts mean something different. Most people don't understand logic, science, math or statistics very well. They have a patchy knowledge of history. "OP is innumerate. Those statistics clearly show that the economy has grown massively under Obama." "[REDACTED] is a valuable ally: it has never lost a war!" (Translation: "[REDACTED] barely won its wars - and that was only thanks to billions of dollars of cutting edge weapons the USA flew in for free, just before the Arabs overwhelmed them." Translation courtesy of Henry Kissinger. He really said this.)
It's not just "the media" and "the culture" and "the discourse..." it is material fact.
So, yes, you read the room right. The reason none of these discussions are productive is because the material strife is consistently and purposefully sublimated into cultural/personal strife, so that it any change which would arise -- which happens when people actually understand material reality -- is prevented.
The rage is cultural because if it were not cultural, things would materially change.
People are doing worse than in the past. They have less secure jobs, less wealth, less opportunity, more debt, and worse health than they used to have. They are less upwardly mobile, their incomes increase less, and their incomes are lower than they used to be. More people are imprisoned, houseless, etc. than they used to be. People are dying more often of preventable causes and they are overdosing and killing themselves more often. You can look up the statistics and charts on each of these claims; aside from minor quibbling and in some sub-sets (computer programmers being an example of such!) these things are true across the board.
These are things with political solutions that are entirely ignored. As opposed to "womxn are disrespected" type things that are discussed in their place. I wanted to emphasize "material" so that I could emphasize that these things are not culture things.
