109 ms·

> Can we just go ten years back where everything was more spontaneous and candid? No. That life is sadly dead and gone, the damage of politics / identity polit

> Can we just go ten years back where everything was more spontaneous and candid? No. That life is sadly dead and gone, the damage of politics / identity politics as most dominant identity, bias enforcing algorithms and creepy behavioural psychology manipulation as “user experience” has not just corrupted the internet permanently but likely how we see and deal with one another online also.

tachyonbeam 6y ago
I keep hoping that eventually there will be some kind of push back against identity politics, and that we will go back to more of a "live and let live" kind of attitude. Maybe people will get sick of outrage culture and the narrative will eventually shift. Social dynamics are complex, but what you need to change the attitude of the public is essentially a number of thought leaders praising a different attitude.
- vkou 6y ago
  > I keep hoping that eventually there will be some kind of push back against identity politics, and that we will go back to more of a "live and let live" kind of attitude. "Live and let live" only ever worked for acceptable identities. You did not have that luxury if you were, say, gay prior to the early oughts. I think you're looking at the past through rose-tinted glasses. It was less 'live and let live' and more 'sit down and shut up if you are different'. Now those people have a voice, and a lot of folks are finding it quite upsetting.
  - tachyonbeam 6y ago
    Depends. Not every part of the world has the same culture, and it didn't suddenly become OK to be gay everywhere on some specific date. In the 1960s, it was probably much more OK to be gay in say, San Francisco than in Detroit. In the 1960s, I believe SF did have much more of a live and let live attitude than much of the rest of the world, but IMO, SF is now a not really tolerant place anymore. There's very much a dominant narrative being imposed by the big silicon valley players, but culture does change over time. If you try to enforce certain political ideas and suppress others, you inevitably give rise to some kind of counter-culture, it seems.
    - lotsofpulp 6y ago
      >If you try to enforce certain political ideas and suppress others, you inevitably give rise to some kind of counter-culture, it seems. Is intolerance of intolerance intolerance?
      - xpe 6y ago
        I recommend thinking about this question in the context of public morality versus private morality. I recommend this book by Robert Kane: "Through the Moral Maze: Searching for Absolute Values in a Pluralistic World" GoodReads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1654373.Through_the_Moral_Maze https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1654373.Through_the_Mora... A book review by Bruce Ballard: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/490166 https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/490166
  - xpe 6y ago
    I feel the frustration of your post. I agree with what you are saying. Perhaps it can help to remember this: some of us here may not realize that even the term identity politics has a complex history. From Wikipedia: > The term was coined by the Combahee River Collective in 1977. The collective group of women saw identity politics as an analysis that introduced opportunity for Black women to be actively involved in politics, while simultaneously acting as a tool to authenticate Black women's personal experiences. It took on widespread usage in the early 1980s, and in the ensuing decades has been employed in myriad cases with radically different connotations dependent upon the term's context.
- yaster 6y ago
  I just made this decision today. I'm out. I'm done with all of it. If everyone wants to hate each other and spend each minute of their short lives pointing fingers, fighting, and stressing out, go ahead. I'm going to try to find whatever peace I can and find people I can respect and whose company I can enjoy. The rest of this is poison.
  - Karunamon 6y ago
    This is my take on it. I've blocked all political-related terms on my social media, and will actively mute/unfollow people who constantly bring the subject up. 99% of this junk amounts to fear/outrage porn that is non-actionable for me. There's no reason to devote even an iota of mental energy to it.
- cmdshiftf4 6y ago
  My only hope is that the rest of the Western world takes note from observing the dissolution and atomization of US society at the hands of identity politics and makes a firm choice to not let their own societies traverse the same path. I, sadly, do not see how America comes out of this together, embracing a "live and let live" type attitude, in a world where identity politics does not continue to dominate the narrative, when a large bulk of the mainstream has stoked, embraced and celebrated a loosely constructed contextually and historically ignorant hierarchy and narrative of the "oppressed" and of the "oppressors". Where one half of the populace believes the nation itself to be fundamentally good , worthwhile or indeed "the best", and the other believes it to be rotten to the core not just now but since its very beginning. Where one half believes that the 2020 election was genuinely stolen from them by socialists and communists, and the other genuinely believes they've just defeated something in line with Adolf Hitler, who himself stole the 2016 election thanks to Russians with a couple million of FB ad spend. I hope to be wrong.
- potta_coffee 6y ago
  Pushback is absolutely crushed. It's impossible to really be an active user of most of these platforms without representing the desired view.
  - xpe 6y ago
    Can you think of examples of online platforms that combat this tendency? One that comes to mind for me is Lobsters. I'm interested in other examples as well as mechanisms for striking a balance between civility and diversity of opinion.
    - potta_coffee 6y ago
      Lobsters is invite only and I don't know anyone to give me an invite, but it seems like discussions there are pretty good from what I've seen. The only other places I've seen that aren't this way are various chan style sites and oldschool internet forums, but those places have their own obvious problems.
- xeeeeeeeeeeenu 6y ago
  >I keep hoping that eventually there will be some kind of push back against identity politics There is some, but it's tiny. /r/stupidpol subreddit is an example of that.
  - xpe 6y ago
    What effects do you anticipate from this subreddit? I wonder if such a subreddit is mostly for amusement purposes; i.e. blowing off steam, laughing at the spectacle. Do you think it can help play a part in forming broader coalitions (which I think is a hallmark of non-identity politics)?
- scythe 6y ago
  >be some kind of push back against identity politics It's funny that this is expressed in a culture war kind of way: the identity politics crowd versus the "against identity politics" crowd. Sometimes social phenomena don't dissipate because of push-back, but because they simply fizzle out, like a fire that consumed all of the underbrush. I think that's a more apt analogy for how we can expect the current era of identity politics to end, if it does. You can't shoot guns in the name of peace, and you can't "push back" against too much shoving.
  - tachyonbeam 6y ago
    I agree that some things fizzle out. It seems to me people collectively get bored with some ideas and move to something else. There's also infighting within the radical left.
  - inglor_cz 6y ago
    "because they simply fizzle out, like a fire that consumed all of the underbrush" That depends on consequences. For example, if there are jobs that depend on continuation of social phenomena, their holders will fight tooth and nail not to let this happen. Universities now have special administrators dedicated to diversity, equity and inclusion. These are someone's livelihoods and also sources of power. Will the incumbents simply say "there is no more interest in identity politics, our task is done, we made ourselves redundant"? No. As long as they are paid to promote, say, inclusion, they will always push the idea that more must be done.
    - vkou 6y ago
      You need to think bigger. Consider that all jobs depend on the continuation of social phenomena. Think, for a moment, about the sentiment of 'They took our jobs'. (With 'They' being Jews, immigrants, Mexicans, China, or some other boogieman of the week.) As long as there are jobs, people with them will always push the idea that some 'Other' is coming to take away their livelihood. It's all identity politics - it's just that when its practiced by the political right, they don't call it that. It wouldn't be part of their identity to engage in them, after all. But, of course, if you call out and challenge this, you will be accused of engaging in identity politics.
- SulfurHexaFluri 6y ago
  The problem I see is that the US has some very serious and widespread flaws. The live and let live attitude doesn't push for resolution to these issues. If we say for example the police system is not working as it should and many people are dying or being locked away unnecessarily, how do you fix this when the leaders of your country are unwilling to do anything. The only options you have make you one of those 'identity politics people'.
  - concordDance 6y ago
    Just don't tie police reform to identity politics narratives.
  - xpe 6y ago
    > how do you fix this when the leaders of your country are unwilling to do anything We have to find and grow new leaders! :) My general comment is: please, pick one issue you care about, study it, find the leverage points, and make time to get involved. This might mean joining an organization, volunteering, making a tech project to share what you've learned -- even running for office. Based on your username, I would guess perhaps you are already involved to some degree around pollution or environmental issues [1]. Let me know if you want someone to bounce ideas off of. I also can offer this perspective: ongoing dissatisfaction, properly harnessed, can be a great motivator for change. [1] https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/npg/npgd0576.html https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/npg/npgd0576.html
- Noos 6y ago
  Why? It works spectacularly well. It's funny to watch all these people who use it suddenly get up and bashful about it now and then; the democrats won house, senate, and presidency very much focusing on identity politics. I think if anything, the scary thing is that it works better than caring about the poor at all. It wasn't democratic ideas about poverty that made them such a force...just accuse people of homophobia and you've already put them on the defensive if not won. "Alt-right" is such a wonderful tool-just hint someone is it, and a person's mind does all the rest even though they may have no idea what it even means. Just say it long enough and loud enough in the right tone of disapproval and you have magic. I'm not sure how much of this is /s. When I was against gay marriage, I sat down and tried to think a lot about how marriage related to procreation or was a special institution. How religion related to it, and whether or not it needed protection. I did feel eventually civil unions were the strongest compromise, because there were legal aspects to recognizing couples that were important but the special nature of heterosexual marriage and its relation to tradition and religion mattered to. You can disagree about gay marriage but realize that there are definitely things gay couples should have in a legal sense too; hospital visitation rights as one. A lot really was uncertainty about metaphysical and philosophical ideas I think. But all you had to do to shut all that down was to accuse me of homophobia and bigotry. It's insanely effective because a person has to now defend that whatever he is proposing isn't because of deep-seated irrational phobia or anger. It really worked. Now i pretty much just shrug and say "What are you going to do, you're conquered." Pay the Dane the Danegeld when he asks. Gay marriage as an actual act is not really a success. In my state last year all of 700 people got married in same sex couples out of a population of 4 million, and even with the low straight marriage rate here thats 700 out of 20,000 a year I believe, not even .05 percent. Ever since mid 2015 we have never seen even 1000 people a year use it. That's the huge irony of all those identity politics...they were a club to beat people with more than a vital need it seemed. It's easier and more effective to use identity politics. They aren't going away. I mean lord, "live and let live"-be honest, you think you're going to allow us to do that with climate change an issue? When you want us to learn to love the veggie burger and electric bike everywhere instead of using cars? I mean it doesn't work well on the receiving end but hey, like the simpsons treehouse of horror episode, sometimes the dolphins just want it more. Luckily it seems people get embarassed of conquering after a bit so it fades.
- xpe 6y ago
  What does identity politics mean to you? Do you see it as an opposite of "live and let live" attitude? (I don't quite follow)
  - tachyonbeam 6y ago
    The way I encounter it, identity politics is a divisive ideology, or a political tool, used to make judgements about groups of people based on external characteristics such as skin color, gender and sexual orientation, with little to no regard for the actual circumstances these people came from or currently live in. For example, cis-white-males are often demonized, binned as oppressors. If you take a step back and think about it, a lot of cis-white-males were born in US states with huge meth and fentanyl addiction problems. Raised in trailer parks, in poverty, with maybe one or both parents missing and no access to education. If you paint poverty and access to education as being purely a race problem, and white males as always being oppressors, you are leaving people behind. We can't afford to do that. We collectively pay the price, as a society, somewhere down the road. With regards to "live and let live", many prominent advocates of identity politics are very hostile people. They do not welcome discussion, they do not want your input. Either you have the same opinion as them, or you are an alt-right, a bad person. The correct opinion has been decided once and for all by social justice academics, and either you're onboard, or you're necessarily ignorant and wrong. Kind of like George W Bush said "you're either with us, or against us".
xpe 6y ago
Please keep in mind that even the term identity politics is fraught with misunderstanding. Even a quick skimming of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_politics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_politics shows how complex even the term can be. Here are only three examples of how identity politics might be used. It can be used to describe: 1. how minority groups fight oppression based on skin color 2. how a majority group, perceiving a threat, joins together (often based on baser instincts) 3. a tendency for political parties to connect primarily on surface-level attributes of people, rather than substantive root causes Which of these (if any) do you mean when you talk about identity politics? Caveat: I am no expert on the term.

tachyonbeam 6y ago

I keep hoping that eventually there will be some kind of push back against identity politics, and that we will go back to more of a "live and let live" kind of attitude. Maybe people will get sick of outrage culture and the narrative will eventually shift. Social dynamics are complex, but what you need to change the attitude of the public is essentially a number of thought leaders praising a different attitude.

vkou 6y ago
> I keep hoping that eventually there will be some kind of push back against identity politics, and that we will go back to more of a "live and let live" kind of attitude. "Live and let live" only ever worked for acceptable identities. You did not have that luxury if you were, say, gay prior to the early oughts. I think you're looking at the past through rose-tinted glasses. It was less 'live and let live' and more 'sit down and shut up if you are different'. Now those people have a voice, and a lot of folks are finding it quite upsetting.
- tachyonbeam 6y ago
  Depends. Not every part of the world has the same culture, and it didn't suddenly become OK to be gay everywhere on some specific date. In the 1960s, it was probably much more OK to be gay in say, San Francisco than in Detroit. In the 1960s, I believe SF did have much more of a live and let live attitude than much of the rest of the world, but IMO, SF is now a not really tolerant place anymore. There's very much a dominant narrative being imposed by the big silicon valley players, but culture does change over time. If you try to enforce certain political ideas and suppress others, you inevitably give rise to some kind of counter-culture, it seems.
  - lotsofpulp 6y ago
    >If you try to enforce certain political ideas and suppress others, you inevitably give rise to some kind of counter-culture, it seems. Is intolerance of intolerance intolerance?
    - xpe 6y ago
      I recommend thinking about this question in the context of public morality versus private morality. I recommend this book by Robert Kane: "Through the Moral Maze: Searching for Absolute Values in a Pluralistic World" GoodReads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1654373.Through_the_Moral_Maze https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1654373.Through_the_Mora... A book review by Bruce Ballard: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/490166 https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/490166
- xpe 6y ago
  I feel the frustration of your post. I agree with what you are saying. Perhaps it can help to remember this: some of us here may not realize that even the term identity politics has a complex history. From Wikipedia: > The term was coined by the Combahee River Collective in 1977. The collective group of women saw identity politics as an analysis that introduced opportunity for Black women to be actively involved in politics, while simultaneously acting as a tool to authenticate Black women's personal experiences. It took on widespread usage in the early 1980s, and in the ensuing decades has been employed in myriad cases with radically different connotations dependent upon the term's context.
yaster 6y ago
I just made this decision today. I'm out. I'm done with all of it. If everyone wants to hate each other and spend each minute of their short lives pointing fingers, fighting, and stressing out, go ahead. I'm going to try to find whatever peace I can and find people I can respect and whose company I can enjoy. The rest of this is poison.
- Karunamon 6y ago
  This is my take on it. I've blocked all political-related terms on my social media, and will actively mute/unfollow people who constantly bring the subject up. 99% of this junk amounts to fear/outrage porn that is non-actionable for me. There's no reason to devote even an iota of mental energy to it.
cmdshiftf4 6y ago
My only hope is that the rest of the Western world takes note from observing the dissolution and atomization of US society at the hands of identity politics and makes a firm choice to not let their own societies traverse the same path. I, sadly, do not see how America comes out of this together, embracing a "live and let live" type attitude, in a world where identity politics does not continue to dominate the narrative, when a large bulk of the mainstream has stoked, embraced and celebrated a loosely constructed contextually and historically ignorant hierarchy and narrative of the "oppressed" and of the "oppressors". Where one half of the populace believes the nation itself to be fundamentally good , worthwhile or indeed "the best", and the other believes it to be rotten to the core not just now but since its very beginning. Where one half believes that the 2020 election was genuinely stolen from them by socialists and communists, and the other genuinely believes they've just defeated something in line with Adolf Hitler, who himself stole the 2016 election thanks to Russians with a couple million of FB ad spend. I hope to be wrong.
potta_coffee 6y ago
Pushback is absolutely crushed. It's impossible to really be an active user of most of these platforms without representing the desired view.
- xpe 6y ago
  Can you think of examples of online platforms that combat this tendency? One that comes to mind for me is Lobsters. I'm interested in other examples as well as mechanisms for striking a balance between civility and diversity of opinion.
  - potta_coffee 6y ago
    Lobsters is invite only and I don't know anyone to give me an invite, but it seems like discussions there are pretty good from what I've seen. The only other places I've seen that aren't this way are various chan style sites and oldschool internet forums, but those places have their own obvious problems.
xeeeeeeeeeeenu 6y ago
>I keep hoping that eventually there will be some kind of push back against identity politics There is some, but it's tiny. /r/stupidpol subreddit is an example of that.
- xpe 6y ago
  What effects do you anticipate from this subreddit? I wonder if such a subreddit is mostly for amusement purposes; i.e. blowing off steam, laughing at the spectacle. Do you think it can help play a part in forming broader coalitions (which I think is a hallmark of non-identity politics)?
scythe 6y ago
>be some kind of push back against identity politics It's funny that this is expressed in a culture war kind of way: the identity politics crowd versus the "against identity politics" crowd. Sometimes social phenomena don't dissipate because of push-back, but because they simply fizzle out, like a fire that consumed all of the underbrush. I think that's a more apt analogy for how we can expect the current era of identity politics to end, if it does. You can't shoot guns in the name of peace, and you can't "push back" against too much shoving.
- tachyonbeam 6y ago
  I agree that some things fizzle out. It seems to me people collectively get bored with some ideas and move to something else. There's also infighting within the radical left.
- inglor_cz 6y ago
  "because they simply fizzle out, like a fire that consumed all of the underbrush" That depends on consequences. For example, if there are jobs that depend on continuation of social phenomena, their holders will fight tooth and nail not to let this happen. Universities now have special administrators dedicated to diversity, equity and inclusion. These are someone's livelihoods and also sources of power. Will the incumbents simply say "there is no more interest in identity politics, our task is done, we made ourselves redundant"? No. As long as they are paid to promote, say, inclusion, they will always push the idea that more must be done.
  - vkou 6y ago
    You need to think bigger. Consider that all jobs depend on the continuation of social phenomena. Think, for a moment, about the sentiment of 'They took our jobs'. (With 'They' being Jews, immigrants, Mexicans, China, or some other boogieman of the week.) As long as there are jobs, people with them will always push the idea that some 'Other' is coming to take away their livelihood. It's all identity politics - it's just that when its practiced by the political right, they don't call it that. It wouldn't be part of their identity to engage in them, after all. But, of course, if you call out and challenge this, you will be accused of engaging in identity politics.
SulfurHexaFluri 6y ago
The problem I see is that the US has some very serious and widespread flaws. The live and let live attitude doesn't push for resolution to these issues. If we say for example the police system is not working as it should and many people are dying or being locked away unnecessarily, how do you fix this when the leaders of your country are unwilling to do anything. The only options you have make you one of those 'identity politics people'.
- concordDance 6y ago
  Just don't tie police reform to identity politics narratives.
- xpe 6y ago
  > how do you fix this when the leaders of your country are unwilling to do anything We have to find and grow new leaders! :) My general comment is: please, pick one issue you care about, study it, find the leverage points, and make time to get involved. This might mean joining an organization, volunteering, making a tech project to share what you've learned -- even running for office. Based on your username, I would guess perhaps you are already involved to some degree around pollution or environmental issues [1]. Let me know if you want someone to bounce ideas off of. I also can offer this perspective: ongoing dissatisfaction, properly harnessed, can be a great motivator for change. [1] https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/npg/npgd0576.html https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/npg/npgd0576.html
Noos 6y ago
Why? It works spectacularly well. It's funny to watch all these people who use it suddenly get up and bashful about it now and then; the democrats won house, senate, and presidency very much focusing on identity politics. I think if anything, the scary thing is that it works better than caring about the poor at all. It wasn't democratic ideas about poverty that made them such a force...just accuse people of homophobia and you've already put them on the defensive if not won. "Alt-right" is such a wonderful tool-just hint someone is it, and a person's mind does all the rest even though they may have no idea what it even means. Just say it long enough and loud enough in the right tone of disapproval and you have magic. I'm not sure how much of this is /s. When I was against gay marriage, I sat down and tried to think a lot about how marriage related to procreation or was a special institution. How religion related to it, and whether or not it needed protection. I did feel eventually civil unions were the strongest compromise, because there were legal aspects to recognizing couples that were important but the special nature of heterosexual marriage and its relation to tradition and religion mattered to. You can disagree about gay marriage but realize that there are definitely things gay couples should have in a legal sense too; hospital visitation rights as one. A lot really was uncertainty about metaphysical and philosophical ideas I think. But all you had to do to shut all that down was to accuse me of homophobia and bigotry. It's insanely effective because a person has to now defend that whatever he is proposing isn't because of deep-seated irrational phobia or anger. It really worked. Now i pretty much just shrug and say "What are you going to do, you're conquered." Pay the Dane the Danegeld when he asks. Gay marriage as an actual act is not really a success. In my state last year all of 700 people got married in same sex couples out of a population of 4 million, and even with the low straight marriage rate here thats 700 out of 20,000 a year I believe, not even .05 percent. Ever since mid 2015 we have never seen even 1000 people a year use it. That's the huge irony of all those identity politics...they were a club to beat people with more than a vital need it seemed. It's easier and more effective to use identity politics. They aren't going away. I mean lord, "live and let live"-be honest, you think you're going to allow us to do that with climate change an issue? When you want us to learn to love the veggie burger and electric bike everywhere instead of using cars? I mean it doesn't work well on the receiving end but hey, like the simpsons treehouse of horror episode, sometimes the dolphins just want it more. Luckily it seems people get embarassed of conquering after a bit so it fades.
xpe 6y ago
What does identity politics mean to you? Do you see it as an opposite of "live and let live" attitude? (I don't quite follow)
- tachyonbeam 6y ago
  The way I encounter it, identity politics is a divisive ideology, or a political tool, used to make judgements about groups of people based on external characteristics such as skin color, gender and sexual orientation, with little to no regard for the actual circumstances these people came from or currently live in. For example, cis-white-males are often demonized, binned as oppressors. If you take a step back and think about it, a lot of cis-white-males were born in US states with huge meth and fentanyl addiction problems. Raised in trailer parks, in poverty, with maybe one or both parents missing and no access to education. If you paint poverty and access to education as being purely a race problem, and white males as always being oppressors, you are leaving people behind. We can't afford to do that. We collectively pay the price, as a society, somewhere down the road. With regards to "live and let live", many prominent advocates of identity politics are very hostile people. They do not welcome discussion, they do not want your input. Either you have the same opinion as them, or you are an alt-right, a bad person. The correct opinion has been decided once and for all by social justice academics, and either you're onboard, or you're necessarily ignorant and wrong. Kind of like George W Bush said "you're either with us, or against us".

xpe 6y ago

Please keep in mind that even the term identity politics is fraught with misunderstanding. Even a quick skimming of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_politics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_politics shows how complex even the term can be. Here are only three examples of how identity politics might be used. It can be used to describe: 1. how minority groups fight oppression based on skin color 2. how a majority group, perceiving a threat, joins together (often based on baser instincts) 3. a tendency for political parties to connect primarily on surface-level attributes of people, rather than substantive root causes Which of these (if any) do you mean when you talk about identity politics? Caveat: I am no expert on the term.