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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   36582 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 24, 2022

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You... do know this is primarily a reactionary forum and is consequentially going to have a right-wing skew (thus be a bit more concerned about traditional purity, per Haidt's Moral Foundations) to it no matter the actual leaning of the participants, right?

I don't know who you are or how long you've been around, but it's pretty frustrating to hear you say that. Mere months ago we were being told (by - wonder of wonders! - Naraburns) that actually, the forum is politically balanced, and liberals were too thin-skinned and used to dominating online spaces:

I have audited moderation, AAQCs, and (using your data!) the demographics of the sub itself. I have never found any evidence of an anti-left bias. I have found copious evidence of the absence of a left-wing bias, which many left-wingers appear to interpret as an anti-left bias. Part of the problem, I assume, is that it is much easier to write polemics than it is to write constructively; even when writing constructively, we tend to respond to criticism, which is itself a sort of polemic. And part of the problem is that, as one of the few rational platforms that permit right-wing viewpoints at all, we do seem to have something like an "overrepresentation" of the right here, though it is perhaps inescapably difficult to say for certain...After all, I'd conducted multiple audits in response to users whining about anti-left biases, and simply never found any evidence.

But I happened to have a moment to check your work, and all I can say is--what? Unless the vote tallies have shifted quite a lot since you did this work, I find your tally for November 15 to be nigh incomprehensible, to the point where I am inclined to simply disregard the others without further audit.

But based on the criteria you provided, I once again find no particular anti-left bias in this space--though I do worry that claiming there is a bias, in a comment that (due to the high effort nature of gathering the data) few users are likely to challenge on the particulars, is one way to encourage anti-left bias, and discourage leftists from posting here. At minimum, you seem to think that many comments I coded as "other" are in fact comments that would discourage leftists from posting here. That seems like you indirectly claiming that leftists are simply too thin-skinned to abide even the slightest disagreement. I do not think that is true, but if or when it is true, then I think it is the foundation of the sub, rather than the users or their posts, to which such people actually object.

You're the second person I've seen this week saying something to this effect. But we've gone from a mod calling us 'users whining about anti-left biases' to 'of course this place leans right you fucking idiots' so fast I'm getting whiplash.

For the record, I think Naraburns is a good mod.

I think it's fair to say there's no anti-left mod bias, but it's certainly a very right-coded space in terms of the culture war.

I think part of what makes it seem more leftist in polls than it actually is is the fact that there are quite a few older former leftists who believe in things like socialised healthcare, a cradle-to-grave welfare state, etc, etc, but have cultural views formed in the 90s or 00s and consequently oppose modern identitarianism very, very strongly.

That's roughly where I identify, but the thing about the Motte is that it's a cultural war space, not a policy discussion space. I suspect on policy issues the membership skews a fair bit more left. We definitely have some very strong libertarians who are all for as few taxes and as few government services as possible, but I think there's a reasonably large population of 'I like my healthcare free, just like my speech' Mottizens who would argue for single-payer healthcare, higher welfare payments, etc, etc. Of course, the reality I might be fired from my job for refusing to call someone 'ze' (thankfully not in our office as of yet, but we've had a helpful instructional email from corporate HQ over in the US about neopronouns from a middle-aged white HR lady) is also something I'm very much against, so if we only ever talk about the latter I find myself in the same place as reactionaries in opposing it.

If this was a forum about how to deal with monopolies or on the virtues of re-zoning low-density areas in the inner city I think I'd find myself very strongly on the other side of the debate much more often. It's just that we don't really talk about those things here.

but it's certainly a very right-coded space in terms of the culture war.

Well, the original poster is the one who inherently gets to set the framing of the argument. So, if the post is reacting to some event, it's more likely this framing is closer to the [assumed median of opinions considered right-wing]. And it's easy to see why- people just don't post "well, they're trying to take your kids away for XYZ" yet frame the argument as something they agree with when they actually don't, revealed by how they subsequently reply.

And it's certainly not impossible to argue against framing, but it's more work (and you get boo-lighted anyway); so even if we assume that "people who put in the work to justify their arguments" is equally distributed between [people more likely to post opinions considered left-wing] and [people more likely to post opinions considered right-wing] it's going to be [opinions considered left-wing] on the back foot of the debate most of the time.

Perhaps "high-decouplers exist on both sides of the aisle; the ones on the left are just more likely to lurk" is what the poll tends to be getting at more? (Remember, the general rule for Internet communities is that 90% lurk, 9% comment, 1% post; something that held true for the old subreddit, too.) People who understand that certain [left] framings probably describe real things, but are used in exactly the opposite ways they claim they are (for example, "intersectionality describes something real, but women were never, in aggregate, the oppressed gender") is not actually something that defines one as right-wing (unless it's being described by the left-wing).

I think part of what makes it seem more leftist in polls than it actually is is the fact that there are quite a few older former leftists who believe in things like socialised healthcare, a cradle-to-grave welfare state, etc, etc, but have cultural views formed in the 90s or 00s and consequently oppose modern identitarianism very, very strongly.

So they're not right-wing, but they are conservatives. Which is... well, kind of what the median conservative looks like ("liberals driving the speed limit" and all that), but it also betrays the fact that neither of these words are actually clear descriptors of what they're typically used to describe and almost by definition come with value judgment baggage. Avoiding that is generally why people hang out here, though, since if you're going to post what is functionally "leftists, reeeeee" you at least have to put in the effort; this isn't /r/CultureWarRoundup.

You're the second person I've seen this week saying something to this effect. But we've gone from a mod calling us 'users whining about anti-left biases' to 'of course this place leans right you fucking idiots' so fast I'm getting whiplash.

Yeah, but that doesn't really matter because those people are wrong. The idea that this is a reactionary right wing forum is laughable, not something you should be troubled by. I've been around for years and years at this point, and people complaining "the forum is so right wing" is as old as the forum itself. It's always been wrong, and it continues to be wrong. The opposite complaint, that the forum is biased to the left, is just as old and just as wrong.

people complaining "the forum is so right wing" is as old as the forum itself

absolutely true, but being offsite from reddit often has the effect of concentrating the unburnt, and in this case the former witches would mostly be right wingers. Beyond that, i wonder if the people who claim this as a right wing space are just kinda defensive or possessive of spaces that don't shut down exploration or promotion of their memes. They would probably find more resistance if radlibs had to come here to talk about how bombing pipelines is totally cool but they can still generally get away with that on reddit (though this might not always stay true, AFAICT the report function is turning out to be a weapon with some universal applicability, and Reddit seems to be less and less happy with even "righteous" violent rhetoric).

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