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Comment by catsarebetter | Hacker News Reader

Never checked it out. Don't regret it

I did and I was left satisfied.

I wanted to see their viewpoint on at the time "the hot topic" and confirm my suspicions that I truly don't consider their viewpoint rational or valid. It's like they start from a conclusion and work backwards to excuse it.

> It's like they start from a conclusion and work backwards to excuse it.

Almost everything political is like this. What allows you to see the flaw clearly here is your bias is against theirs. It's harder to see this process when you align with the conclusion.

Come on, that subreddit was insane. We should attempt to understand and empathise with people we disagree with, but that doesn’t mean we abandon all intellectual standards. And frankly validating a space like that as a legitimate viewpoint for conservatism is an insult to conservatism and a kind of bigotry of low expectations.

I know it was insane. But I also think /r/politics is insane.

> It's like they start from a conclusion and work backwards to excuse it.

Without getting into any of the politics, isn't this exactly what you said you did in the preceding sentence?

> I wanted to see their viewpoint on at the time "the hot topic" and confirm my suspicions that I truly don't consider their viewpoint rational or valid.

But generally these ideas are immediately discountable by reality. T_D was generally conspiracy theories or even if there is an attempt at some genuine political or economic discussion, its never fact based (or cherry picked/lie through ommision/or presenting a paper thats 50+ years old as if its true in light of new evidence). How can you even give those sorts of opinion credence? If those posts were made in good faith, then those people are ignorant, but that's just giving too much credit.

That was my experience as well. It's a fascinating parallel universe, but it's not for me. It's kind of the same reason I watch a lot of Fox News.

I love reading foxnews.com and some of my deeply conservative relatives' Facebook feeds, because they give a perspective I'd never see otherwise (even if I generally disagree). I'm on there daily, and I'd say I get just as much news from those sources as from others, like washingtonpost.com. I also sometimes go to some old school conservative blogs like nationalreview.com/corner/, as well as sites like Drudge and Breitbart to see what they think.

But /r/the_donald was just toxic. Even when I was in the mood to see more of that kind of content, I couldn't stand more than about 5 minutes of browsing that subreddit before closing the tab in frustration and disgust.

I really value information and learning how different people think and what's important to them, but it's really hard to do that on forums so I prefer just talking to ppl. Preferably in a non-campaign year to get a less emotional account. Plus it helps me have a more balanced perspective b/c I can put face(s) to different sides and that prevents me from saying things that I can't take back

Honest question: how do you manage to work your way through that stuff without feeling incredibly shitty afterwards? Because whenever I have tried to make sense of them it was genuinely unpleasant for me to "reason along" with people that unreasonable (I'd almost call it painful, but perhaps that's a bit too strong).

I would highly recommend "The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion" by Jonathan Haidt. He's a left leaning psychologist, and it's basically a PHD level dive into how morality works at a psychological level, with quite a few dips into cultural anthropology. Once I understood how my own moral systems worked and how very different moral systems function, it helped me avoid these pitfalls of negative emotion blocking my empathy and understanding of other people.

.... so like almost every other political platform theses days?

> like

No, just because something exists doesn't mean it exists to the same degree.

I visited there irregularly just to see what was happening. It was on another level like OAN and some shows on Fox News.

I visited, shared my viewpoint and was promptly banned. Good for you to stay away (for your mental health) but seeing first-hand the sort of hate and bigotry posted daily was both shocking and informative.

Reddit should give a trophy to everyone banned from /r/the_donald

I visited a couple of times but couldn't share my opinion an anything because it would have been in violation of the sub's rules. Basically any anti-Trump comments were a violation of the rules.

There's a bit of irony in an anti-free speech community eventually being shut down by the hosting platform.

The problem with T_D was that it mainly functioned as an echo chamber. And I don't mean that as a liberal person just disagreeing with their politics - they'd literally ban and delete _anything_ even slightly critical of Trump.

When you cross that point, it just becomes another channel for propaganda. No different than what you'd see in actual dictatorships.

But that kind of culture / behavior is not unique to T_D, every time someone posted anything remotely critical of Bernie on /politics, they'd get downvoted at the speed of light. Same with pro-Biden threads before Sanders threw in the towel.

But T_D is probably the worst offender. It just functions as pro-Trump worship, and "owning the libs" memes. Everything else will get you banned.

Checked it out, and promptly got banned. There was some discussion going on about how the liberal press criticized Trump for wanting to criminalize flag burning but didn't criticize Hillary Clinton for the same thing even though she had actually cosponsored legislation to do that when she was in Congress.

I had never actually heard of that, so looked up the bill to see what it proposed. I posted the summary from congress.gov in case anyone else was curious too:

> Flag Protection Act of 2005 - Amends the federal criminal code to revise provisions regarding desecration of the flag to prohibit: (1) destroying or damaging a U.S. flag with the primary purpose and intent to incite or produce imminent violence or a breach of the peace; (2) intentionally threatening or intimidating any person, or group of persons, by burning a U.S. flag; or (3) stealing or knowingly converting the use of a U.S. flag belonging to the United States, or belonging to another person on U.S. lands, and intentionally destroying or damaging that flag

Banned for posting anti-Trump material.

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