A Study of 4chan’s Politically Incorrect Forum and Its Effects on the Web [pdf]

You really need to prefix it with "social" or "economic".

It's two sides of the same extreme, both of which have driven people to the far right (Trumpism) and left (Antifa) respectively. Stewart is a perfect example of this childish false dichotomy created by the media to set people against one another. There's clearly a lot of money in tribalism.

As far as 'taking over our media', what I meant is the rise of far right talk radio and things like Alex Jones being taken legitimately. These things have made it impossible for a normal person to filter out the nonsense these days.

Edit: I suppose I could note, some of the Youtube personalities who (I have heard) supported the movement are currently staunchly anti-feminist. I'm not certain how central they were to the movement at the time, but they may be relevant to the comments others have made involving the impact of the group.

Yeah, thats a fair point.

>cartoon child porn

I think you're misunderstanding what i'm saying here. Gamergate was a massive controversy that played out over the course of many months, was covered on national news networks and ruined many careers. It was a galvanizing event that brought people together in defense of their hobby. Cartoon child porn is a symbol of the belief system that you've described, but I don't think its possible to say that defending it galvanized the 4chan user base like gamergate.

Really? "Great lulz will be head(sic)"?

I can't fathom what kind of person sees stuff like this and thinks to himself: "Yeah cool man! Exactly the type of community I want to be a part of!"

Like, are these all just bored kids? Adults who never developed empathy and have nothing else to do with their life?

Whether or not people who act like racists are actually racist doesn't matter at the end of the day, they have the same effect.

2. Voters didn't choose Trump just because "he acknowledged issues". This election was a referendum on race, and that's what got Trump in office. See for instance https://www.thenation.com/article/economic-anxiety-didnt-mak...

While outsourcing and illegal immigration are policy issues worth discussing, there were plenty of overtly racist issues that Donald Trump touched upon. There's nothing racist about "Lets shore up our border policy". Maybe even the wall isn't racist... at least, some aspects of the wall... as far as infrastructure spending, hampering the drug trade, etc. etc. We all can agree that MS-13 is crossing the border and trying to sell drugs in our country... right? That's just a fact. I don't think a lone wall helps, because MS-13 has catapults, drones, and submarines to bring the drugs over. But I'm perfectly willing to talk about the benefits of physical boarder security. A wall is just a part of the picture

However, there's something racist about calling a US Judge an unfair Mexican Hombre. Donald Trump is racist. Period. His supporters may or may not be, and his policy decisions aren't all racist. But without a doubt, Donald Trump himself is a racist who sees the world in black and white.

---------------

As far as "not touching on rural America", there's a point about honesty. Trump HONESTLY can't do jack diddly crap about the situation. He just talked a big talk and is going to fail to deliver. He's blamed say... the Trans-Pacific Partnership and has eradicated it.

The TPP: Designed to encourage say, US Cotton Exports to Vietnam (Vietnam actually buys US Cotton to make T-Shirts and other textiles. So they were rewarded under TPP) would have improved the marketability of Rural US workers. Period.

Donald Trump destroyed the TPP however, and now China's RCEP has received major support in the region. The USA could have been the leader in Asian trade, but Donald Trump gave it up to appease his right-wind supporters. And without any US trade influence in the Asian region, our (current) Asian partners will inevitably join China's RCEP and the USA will LOSE.

--------

Rural America would have benefited from TPP, and China would have lost. Case in point: China wasn't even ON the TPP. A huge portion of the TPP was about securing exports for the USA (especially enticing our Asian partners to buy US material instead of Chinese material)

So yes, why don't we talk about trade and outsourcing. I am perfectly willing to have that discussion with you without resorting to calling people racist. There are plenty of actual issues to discuss here that would benefit Rural America if people figured them out.

But Donald Trump's racist talks drowns out the truth. That's a fact. He isn't helping.

-----------

The worst part is how Donald Trump is selectively racist. He constantly beats the drum on "Radical Islam Terror", then visits Saudi Arabia FIRST. The home of Wahhabi Islam, the specific sect that raised Osama Bin Laden and the 9/11 attackers. Case in point: around 15 of the 9/11 attackers were Saudi Arabian.

Of course, Donald Trump gotta take care of his Saudi Arabian Hotels, so maybe that's not a surprise. Its clear Trump is in it for the money.

https://static.standard.co.uk/s3fs-public/styles/story_mediu...

Guess what words Donald Trump forgot about during his trip to Saudi Arabia? He never once uttered the words "Radical Islamic Terrorism".

That's the worst part of it all. I think the conservatives maybe have a point about "Radical Islamic Terror". There are certain sects of Muslims that seem to be more violent and aligned to Al Quadea, AQAP, and ISIS. They're all Wahhabism / Salifi Jihadists... a minor sect that only constitutes 0.5% of all Muslims.

But it doesn't help if the President is a opportunistic coward, who is unable to say those words when its most necessary.

What's more, the intersection between the jobs that illegal immigration fills and what locals can legally work is low and has been shown to be low over and over.

2. Trump awknowledged and embraced fears the American religious extremists have been trying to seed w.r.t Muslims, a process conservatives are complicit in since it's such an easy fear to appeal to. Beyond that... He panned a health care law the Republicans have been sabotaging to tank it so they can say it would surely tank. And... What else?

Again, look at the data. A majority of Trump supporters don't vote around nationalist economics. Separate data had people pro-ACA (where it wasn't sabotaged, for example in Pence's watch) but anti-"Obamacare." You tell me what that suggests.

This question is bait though, to say something like "I don't like that I'm told to hire women over men" has many interpretations.

One is that I'm a sexist pig trying to throw women out because they're women.

Another is that I'm trying to get the best candidate based on skill not gender.

And yet another is that I am propping up the status quo by not altering my behaviour to be more inclusive.

It all depends on how _you_ feel about me saying that. And that's not a good tone for further discussion.

And then there is that background noise with shitstorms trying to get people fired over things they said (remember the nasa T-shirt guy? or brendan eich?), products boycotted over guilt by association and so on. But they make you ask yourself "could this happen to me?". Say the wrong thing and get fired because someone is OFFENDED about a joke or affiliating with the wrong people?

I have also seen github projects that I use suffer just because someone didn't like some language. This concerns me because when people push their preferences on the entire platform instead of subcommunities it becomes a cultural monoculture instead of a more compartmentalized system.

[1] The only exception I recall is the discussion about which gender inputs we should support in software forms where some suggested we should support the whole facebook madness.

It was addressing the exact ideology and behavior that is coming into fruition now, and we should have listened. In the early 90s people watched as the fringe slowly leaked out into the mainstream, and now it's fully into the mainstream. Example: the only acceptable feminist in public discourse is now the radfem (google the term if you think I'm using an epithet)--if you deny patriarchy as an omnipresent and nearly omnipotent, incorporeal force, you don't have a seat at the table. Another example: privilege theory, the "invisible knapsack" is a concept invented in the 90's, and while it has an academic basis, and functions as a motte-and-bailey argument in almost every use.

The ratio of college campus hate hoaxes to actual hate has got to be sky high. Yes some are real, but they almost never pan out, and the university silently drops agitating about it.

I don't see how you can even say this stuff. This is like the opposite of people who believe in bigfoot and UFOs. We all have cellphones with cameras on them. And so Youtube is filled with insane campus protests, assaults, bizarre seminars and speeches, and yet people deny they exist or have any power.

It doesn't need to be concerted. An alternative explanation could be that liberals are more likely to pursue creative careers than conservatives, thus shaping the media (e.g. TV shows and movies) that contribute to the major consensus narrative.

Why that is so is not part of my hypothesis. The point is that the behavior of a system is emergent more often than it is concerted (which is also why most conspiracy theories are untrue).

Perhaps "push" is the wrong word, yet it's the closest I can think of. I think the issue is more that liberals are overwhelmingly Democrat (that's hardly a controversial claim, I hope) and liberals tend to have certain values that make them care about individuals first rather than about society first.

I agree that it's all fuzzy, kind of like evolution doesn't have an actual goal. In some sense, evolution is about producing more fit individuals, yet it's not like it's a directed effort (various congenital disabilities still occur). It is "sort of" directed by environmental pressures, sort of like the "push" I'm talking about is "sort of" directed by the "progressive lens" if you will.

To me, it's sort of like a problem of bad goal alignment: suppose that the "goal" is to get out of a maze. For some reason, we get a fuzzy signal after each step that allows us to sort of guess whether it was a good move or not. So far, the right way seems to have been: "West, West, North, East". Some people guess that the pattern is that we had to go West for a while but there was a definite shift towards the East, so we have to go Eastward all the way through from now on. Others, see it as more of a clockwise thing and are guessing that the next move is going to be East or South.

At the end of the day, one of them may be right, or neither may be. But even if the next steps are "go North, then Westward all the way", it wouldn't invalidate the steps made before.

In other words, I don't think that the right way is to say "what would the progressive do? Alright, then let's do exactly the opposite". Rather, I think the problem is that the "push" I'm talking about is due to recognizing a pattern that isn't quite the right one.

For example, public opinion in support of same-sex marriage in the US is currently at an all-time high of 64%, with 34% opposing. Being opposed to same-sex marriage is not an extreme position, as it is one that is shared by 1/3 of Americans. Only two years ago it was 42:40 in support. Therefore, the position statement "I believe that marriage should only be between a man and a woman" is not extreme.

The bottom line is that many views that are strongly associated with conservativism are likely to result in personal attacks if expressed in the aforementioned settings.

Just look at the flak Peter Thiel has gotten for supporting Trump. Why does donating to a major party's presidential campaign result in things like this [1]?

1: https://www.theverge.com/2016/10/17/13307112/peter-thiel-tru...

I find it interesting that my posting discussing /pol/ - not supporting it, mind you, merely discussing it - elicits a response like this from a brand new account.

My position is that exactly this sort of response to anything that isn't "progressive" is what has caused the rise of /pol/.

Likewise, I know a few people in real life that actually hold those extreme and (frankly) bigoted beliefs. As far as I know they haven't really changed their online behavior, and they're not part of that in-group.