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Comment by beaconstudios | Hacker News Reader

the thing is, the rift between your average Republican and Democrat is wide enough that most will barely see each other, let alone interact on such a politically skewed site as HN. The urban/rural split is part of it but it seems in every other way Americans are divided into 2 nations - there was an interesting article that talked about it the other week.

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>most will barely see each other, let alone interact on such a politically skewed site as HN

Or whoever is less represented (local to a given site/subsite) will just shut up because they don't want to fight a 10:1 losing battle with people who can't be convinced to see their side of things (subreddits are a good example).

There's also probably a bunch of people from rural areas in your downtown office who think you're crazy. The foreigners probably think the same thing. Neither group will tell you about it though. It's just not worth saying anything in those settings.

  There's also probably a bunch of people from rural areas in your downtown office who think you're crazy. The foreigners probably think the same thing.

I have found this to be true. Two disparate groups reject the narratives that dominate North American media: Male foreigners from arab and poorer countries, and whites from rural North America. The whites don't voice their opinions, because they get viciously attacked; the Arabs and immigrants from poorer areas just laugh at us.

And as you drill down and enumerate more and more distinct narratives you have enough stuff that basically everyone disagrees with something but nobody says anything because the penalty for disagreeing is too high.

This is very true too, the "shy Tory effect" in action. I'm British and often find myself in the more conservative end of places I work (being a classical liberal of sorts) so I'm familiar with the implicit suppression you're talking about.

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