it feels simultaneously very dire and also very funny how this person's worldview is very directly informed by a single Twitch streamer. Is that how you kids absorb politics these days? This person made a huge post about how Marxists develop political awareness and didn't use the words Marx, Lenin, Mao, didn't mention specific policies. They just mention a Twitch streamer and discord channels
glass houses and everything, since I know we're a terminally online forum, but this whole thesis seems terminally online. Politics as posting styles
yeah it's just inscrutable to me and unlike any of my experiences but maybe I'm just getting old. I became a socialist because I had a minimum wage job at a grocery store and I was watching how evil the Iraq War was. It all seemed very direct to me. America's evil and committing warcrimes, my boss wants my paycheck as low as possible, might as well listen to what these commies are saying.
Internet commentators back then were on Myspace and blogs, there wasn't as much of a weird parasocial connection going on. Not even saying this was better, because it was dire back then too, but this seems so different and weird. It's like internet cliques or fandoms.
I know this comment is a few days old at this point and the conversation is dead, but is it really true that reddit users skew younger?
Like, I was a teen when I made a reddit account over a decade ago, but I feel like reddit isn't the cool thing for high schoolers to sign up for anymore. If feels more like legacy social media with very outdated design sensibilities even if you're using new reddit.
I think reddit's userbase is certainly more immature in the way that being a semi-anonymous user in an endless sea of throw-away accounts tends to foster. That kind of design creates an environment where people feel comfortable putting less care and thought into the views that they share because whatever bullshit they wrote will get buried when the thread dies, and most communities aren't small enough for individual users to develop a persistent reputation in a community based on their previous comments, so every interaction starts off as a fresh slate with little/no stakes. And people are less likely to mature if they never have any accountability to the things they say/believe.
I don't think the quality/maturity of posters on Hexbear vs reddit and the "reddit diaspora" on Lemmy can be explained by the age demographics of those groups. I think it has more to do with the quality of moderation here filtering out people with "reddit-brain," as well as simply having a more well defined community where you can somewhat expect other people to recognize your username and therefore care about the impression you leave on people as a result.
it feels simultaneously very dire and also very funny how this person's worldview is very directly informed by a single Twitch streamer.
That scares me, it really does. There's a lot of people, young people especially, getting their marching orders from some nepo baby asshole with a headset that tells them what to think and shapes their worldviews.
I don't think it's that scary, more just kind of bleak. I don't think these very online younger people are doing a lot of organizing or IRL work, are they? What do they even do except post?
I don't think these very online younger people are doing a lot of organizing or IRL work, are they? What do they even do except post?
Shaping the future perspectives of a large part of a generation of young people has lifelong consequences that can be truly hard to predict, but are present all the same.
Like the hippies of the past, these fuckers are going to one day be condescendingly telling us "I had a communist phase too" when for them "communist" means watching streams and caping for the streamer on a forum.
it feels simultaneously very dire and also very funny how this person's worldview is very directly informed by a single Twitch streamer. Is that how you kids absorb politics these days? This person made a huge post about how Marxists develop political awareness and didn't use the words Marx, Lenin, Mao, didn't mention specific policies. They just mention a Twitch streamer and discord channels
glass houses and everything, since I know we're a terminally online forum, but this whole thesis seems terminally online. Politics as posting styles
I can only speak for myself but I think this community skews a bit older than the new median lemmy age established by the reddit exodus/migration.
So many of the most out there takes I have seen could only have come from a literal high school student, and an incurious one at that.
yeah it's just inscrutable to me and unlike any of my experiences but maybe I'm just getting old. I became a socialist because I had a minimum wage job at a grocery store and I was watching how evil the Iraq War was. It all seemed very direct to me. America's evil and committing warcrimes, my boss wants my paycheck as low as possible, might as well listen to what these commies are saying.
Internet commentators back then were on Myspace and blogs, there wasn't as much of a weird parasocial connection going on. Not even saying this was better, because it was dire back then too, but this seems so different and weird. It's like internet cliques or fandoms.
I know this comment is a few days old at this point and the conversation is dead, but is it really true that reddit users skew younger?
Like, I was a teen when I made a reddit account over a decade ago, but I feel like reddit isn't the cool thing for high schoolers to sign up for anymore. If feels more like legacy social media with very outdated design sensibilities even if you're using new reddit.
I think reddit's userbase is certainly more immature in the way that being a semi-anonymous user in an endless sea of throw-away accounts tends to foster. That kind of design creates an environment where people feel comfortable putting less care and thought into the views that they share because whatever bullshit they wrote will get buried when the thread dies, and most communities aren't small enough for individual users to develop a persistent reputation in a community based on their previous comments, so every interaction starts off as a fresh slate with little/no stakes. And people are less likely to mature if they never have any accountability to the things they say/believe.
I don't think the quality/maturity of posters on Hexbear vs reddit and the "reddit diaspora" on Lemmy can be explained by the age demographics of those groups. I think it has more to do with the quality of moderation here filtering out people with "reddit-brain," as well as simply having a more well defined community where you can somewhat expect other people to recognize your username and therefore care about the impression you leave on people as a result.
That scares me, it really does. There's a lot of people, young people especially, getting their marching orders from some nepo baby asshole with a headset that tells them what to think and shapes their worldviews.
I don't think it's that scary, more just kind of bleak. I don't think these very online younger people are doing a lot of organizing or IRL work, are they? What do they even do except post?
Shaping the future perspectives of a large part of a generation of young people has lifelong consequences that can be truly hard to predict, but are present all the same.
Like the hippies of the past, these fuckers are going to one day be condescendingly telling us "I had a communist phase too" when for them "communist" means watching streams and caping for the streamer on a forum.
That's exactly what I dread might happen.
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Maybe 10 years ago it was youtube videos. 20 years ago the blogosphere was still a thing and it was still common to not own a cellphone.