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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   4361 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for November 27, 2022

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Is it my imagination, or has the political balance tipped to the right since The Motte switched sites? There's still left-wing people here, obviously, but it feels more right-wing than before. It could be my imagination. The main reason I come here is to be challenged by people I disagree with who also happen to be smarter than me.

Definite swing, but not that severe on balance.

-- Several existing right wing regulars have taken off the gloves. You see a lot more out and out extremism. Some have deepened into self parody, probably for personal reasons unrelated to the move.

-- Before you got blow ins from /r/ssc, now they're from rdrama.

-- If you spend a lot of time online, your right wing sense starts tingling when you get certain signals and slurs. Those are being broadcast by some users, and even if they're a minority that ultimately gets largely downvotes and banned, while they burn they take up an undue amount of your attention.

-- Mods seem to have been gentle for a bit with trolls, probably for fear of choking off the new site from new users, and there are some really right wing trolls right now. Maybe I'll go make a left wing troll account to make some balance.

Maybe I'll go make a left wing troll account to make some balance.

Oh please don't. I'm dismayed by the right-wing Poe's Law problems here now, but doing the same to the left wouldn't fix the problem, it would double it.

Oh have a sense of fun! I want @RabbiSchlomo telling us the answer to the JQ is that yes Jews run everything, and here's why that's a good thing...

That doesn't read like a left wing troll account to me, it reads like a right wing troll account rather blatantly strawmanning jews.

I think the balance has always been a bit to the right, but I haven’t seen nearly as much far left posts from the trans humanists or similar topics.

It does seem like the election and trans issues have been dominating conversations recently.

There were a number of polls on the old site, showing consistent left wing self identification among readers and posters. This has probably tipped over now and others might make different assessments than the users themselves.

Furthermore, this of course depends on what one means by "left". There has been an overwhelmingly strong "anti-sjw" bias since the beginning.

The Reddit trolls didn't come to the new site, so there's a huge reduction in drive by "how dare you!" comments. I'm not sure the balance of commenters has changed much, although it's safer to say certain things away from the eye of sauron Saruman of Many Colours.

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