Yeah I know people on Twitter and Facebook and everything are ignorant too but what specifically about Redditors makes them obnoxiously liberal? The average Facebook user is like 65 and they grew up huffing lead and being told they were gonna get nuked by commies so obviously they're gonna be psychotic and the cringiest Twitter users are usually some type of bougie 40 year old.
I feel like the downvotes and smug superior attitude have something to do with it, but I'm trying to figure out how it's all connected
they have the most obnoxious lib tendency of "I read NYT, FT and New Republic, I like to take every view before I form an opinion."
that's where the smugness comes from. They overlook the ideological battle. Anyone who says something that's out of touch with their ideology is just ignorant because they havent been marinated in liberal ideology.
There's also viewing those sources as representing the full spectrum of opinions on a subject, too.
they probs dont even read from one outlet on a regular basis. you dont have to read shit to be a liberal, consuming entertainment and ads is enough to get the whole thing down.
the obnoxiousness is in that attitude. someone tells them something they disagree with, they respond with "read more." the more honest response would be "consume more."
votes and reacts allow a narrow consensus to form without any discussion actually taking place. anyone who disagrees with the mainstream opinions of a given subreddit can just be downvoted and hidden from view. that's not to say that other kinds of message board systems are more intellectually "real" or "meritocratic" (they still favor the most dedicated posters after all), but at least a position's presence in a thread encouraged people to consider and respond to it, because there wasn't a little negative number next to it that indicated it could be ignored.
a dictatorship of the postertariat