8 ms·

Something I've been wondering lately is how big of a blind spot I have from being habitually online. Like, I'll read the news, and I'll read political discussio

• sanderjd 2y ago
  Yep, spot on. And these same people are gonna be pissed about a bunch of the stuff Trump does, because they truly had no idea what he was saying he would do. This is how "thermostatic public opinion" works.
• cynicalpeace 2y ago
  You were respectably drifting away from your elitism in the first two paragraphs. Then the last paragraph shows you have a long way to go. > If you put someone in a voting booth who isn't interested by news, who do they vote for? I mean, Trump has a lot of surface-level qualities - he's a tall, confident white man who's a successful boss of business and an anti-establishment outsider - and maybe that's enough to capture this demographic. I live in a rural working class region. I have beers with these guys all the time. They're my best friends and I'm the odd coder guy that works from home. They do not care about the surface level qualities, besides the fact that he's hilarious. They might not read articles but they listen to podcasts a lot on their commutes at 4AM in the morning. They don't want war with Russia, they're pissed about the COVID stuff, and they aren't happy with the price of gas. They don't care that he's tall.
  • egonschiele 2y ago
    What do they care about, then? I have no connection with people like you're describing, so anything you can say would be interesting to hear. My understanding is based on the news is the economy, and gun control.
    • cynicalpeace 2y ago
      It seems you didn't read my comment? > They don't want war with Russia, they're pissed about the COVID stuff, and they aren't happy with the price of gas.
      • egonschiele 2y ago
        Sorry, to clarify: I did read that part, but I'm saying, can you expand on that?
        • cynicalpeace 2y ago
          Sure. They care about most of the stuff people have cared about for thousands of years. They want to grow their families, low prices, government to stay out of their business. They want to grow their side jobs, like contracting or excavating or HVAC. They distrust smarty-pants paper pushers. They work side-by-side with a sudden increase of illegal immigrants. None of this is simply surface level, at least not more so than any other human being. We're all just humans bro.
          • egonschiele 2y ago
            Cool, thanks for the response!
  • siffin 2y ago
    Not wanting gas to be expensive, without knowing literally anything about why gas might cost more, is about as surface level as you can get. What happened with covid? Trump was a complete clown, but they still support him? Sounds again, very, very surface level. You say they don't care about his height, or his gender maybe, or his race, but if he were a short female minority, that would 100% affect their opinion, even if they didn't understand it or wouldn't admit it. Very surface level no?
• theonething 2y ago
  [flagged]
  • aurareturn 2y ago
    >How nauseatingly condescending. How about issues like illegal immigrants coming in raping/killing women, taking over apartment complexes and living off struggling Americans' taxpayer dime? How about all time high inflation or massive layoffs? Just curious, I agree on the illegal immigrant issues. But for inflation, how do you think Trump will help given that inflation is expected to increase during his presidency due to expected tariffs? Also, why do you think mass layoffs is attributed to democrats and how do you think Trump would help? To me, mass layoffs was just a repercussion of covid spending, zero interest rates.
    • theonething 2y ago
      I'm making the point that voters care about more substantive issues than height or color. The fact is inflation was at a all time high during Biden's presidency as were mass layoffs. Whether they were directly a result of Biden's policies is definitely up for debate. But what is unequivocally true it happened under his watch. The buck stops with the sitting President. So I disagree with the GPs condescending view that Trump voters were swayed by the fact he is "tall, white and confident." Voters cared about issues like immigration and the economy and felt the country was going in the wrong direction on these issues.
      • aurareturn 2y ago
        The vast majority of the inflation issue can be attributed to supply chain bottlenecks during covid and money printing. I don't think Biden had anything to do with it. I get your point about people voting for Trump not because he is a white male and Harris is a diverse female. It's a naive view. People overwhelmingly voted Obama in and he's mostly black. I'm more interested in the facts of the core issue for why people vote for Trump.
  • istjohn 2y ago
    Your vomit of misinformation makes their point for them.
• beAbU 2y ago
  Not an American, not a Trump fan - he grosses me out a bit. But I've come to the realization that both sides have an ugly component that is winning out on online forums. It's the classic tale of the vocal minority controlling the narrative. So to answer your question, being habitually online, and using that as a basis for your opinions on the world will very much make you vulnerable to a serious blind spot. The amount of shit-flinging on Reddit, from both sides, is shocking to me as a non-American. That people can espouse so much hate towards their literal neighbours is unreal to me. This country is so divided that I'm not sure how things will be fixed soon. Online has become such a cesspool that it's not possible to sit around the same fire any more. I like to think that the majority of people are waaaay more moderate than what you might think from looking at social media. And I would encourage anyone to try and interact with more people in meatspace. Don't try and convince anyone of anything, but try to understand why they feel the way they feel, and have some goddamn empathy. I blame two things for our current situation: 1. Social Media. In hindsight it makes perfect sense, but polarizing content will generate more engagement, and since engagement is a primary KPI for many platforms, that is what the Algorithms will select for naturally. It's a positive feedback loop, that resulted in people defacing their neighbours front-yard political posters, and then smugly posting about it on social media. Because of course that's how you'll convince them to vote for the other party. 2. Two party system: I like eating meat, and I would like to continue doing so if I can. But I also care for the protection of animals and sustainable utilisation of resources. But because meat is part of the Carnivore party's platform, and everything else is part of the Herbivore party's platform. People might support more worker's rights, but now in order to get that they must also be anti abortion. It's a broken system and it breeds deep deep divisions.
  • jiggawatts 2y ago
    The divide is real and very noticeable in meat-space, not just online. This is also happening in the rest of the western world, and has been brewing not just since the Internet but since WWII. There was a study done on bipartisanship in the US senate, where senators were mapped into a 2D space and pulled together slightly if they voted together, and pushed apart if they voted against each other. 50 years ago the two parties were mixed together, then slowly but surely drifted apart. The animation over the years was like watching cell division. There's now only a couple of senators left in the centre, everyone else is far apart in two blobs. I have zero in common with people that make their hatred of transgender people a substantial part of their politics -- but have never talked to one and have never been influenced by one in any way. It's like talking to an alien species that singles out green eyes. Not blue, not brown, just green, but with a seething hatred that goes beyond anything I have ever felt. "You need to also hate the green-eyes or you're bad." is not something I can wrap my head around. Not now, not ever. The Internet has nothing to do with me feeling this way about green-eye-haters.
• christophilus 2y ago
  The blind spot won't go away until people feel safe having an honest conversation about their political views.
  • sanderjd 2y ago
    Who doesn't feel safe doing that? This does not seem like a real problem to me. Nearly everyone speaks freely about their views all the time.
    • kelipso 2y ago
      No...you get ostracized or cancelled in many social circles for indicating that you might support Trump or Republican policies. Even mild ostracization would make people hesitate to voice their opinions, never mind the level it is currently.
      • consteval 2y ago
        This is, largely, because a lot of republicans have a difficult time expressing their views without using tools like racism and misogyny. Just take a look at the Trump rallies. Even if you agree with 100% of Trump's policies, look at how he talks about women. Could you repeat what he says in the workplace? No, you'd get fired. Not for being republican, but for sexual harassment. If you were able to support anti-immigration policies without calling entire classes of people "garbage", then maybe people wouldn't get mad at you. But for a lot of republicans, they just can't do that. They don't know how to word their policy support without saying something incredibly offensive. Or, for example, it's one thing if you're pro-life. But a lot of republicans will use words like "slut" and "whore", and even President Trump wants to "punish women". Again, this just isn't acceptable speech in most social situations. Until your average republican and, hell, our president, figure out how to address these topics without being offensive, people will get offended.
        • cynicalpeace 2y ago
          This is basically all TDS. Does my Colombian immigrant wife somehow hate immigrants and women because she thinks Trump would be better than Kamala?
• tightbookkeeper 2y ago
  > he's a tall, confident white man Imagery, vibes, personality, all of these have powerful effects on people, educated or not. Few can express how these intangibles impact them, and if they can they are usually won’t say it out loud, This is why you NEED to run a primary, to debug your campaign. You don’t know how your candidate looks and feels to people in Tennessee, etc until you try it.
• wwalker2112 2y ago
  I live in rural Illinois. Surrounded by people west coast elites would consider "simple". They aren't voting for a candidate because he's tall and confident. They have 401ks. Own small businesses. Have Mortgages. Send their kids to public schools. Budget for their families. Hell, even farmers are trading commodities and are very familiar with the markets. There are so many legitimate factors that go into who they vote for.
  • sixothree 2y ago
    [flagged]
    • incog_nit0 2y ago
      Illegal immigration? Yes - they are upset by people whose first act on entering a country is to break the law. I say that as a legal immigrant to the US whose parents were legal immigrants to the UK. It took me over 18 months to get my green card approved and years for my parents to obtain a British ancestry visa so they could enter and work. As far as hate towards transgender people, it takes energy to hate. Most people (who don't have trans loved ones) simply don't care and are upset that they are compelled to care.
    • zuuhsh 2y ago
      Not hate, but they sure as hell don't want men in women-only spaces. It's predatory.
• kccoder 2y ago
  Apparently searches for "Did Joe Biden drop out?" spiked yesterday. That's a level of unawareness that is difficult to comprehend.
• silexia 2y ago
  All of the news sources you cited are extreme far left sites. All of Reddit is only far left extremism since they banned all conservative viewpoints and block any conservative comments. Try X.com for a full rounded perspective where all are welcome. Community Notes show misinformation, but do not ban someone from sharing their ideas. I read all of the major sites, subscribed to NYTimes, WaPo, etc, and X.com is by far the best source of information.