I’m experiencing the opposite effect. I was used to being on the liberal side of most online debates so I thought of myself as firmly on the left, but here I see so many people far to my own left and I think “Wow, these guys should be nowhere near power.” My political opinions haven’t actually changed much because of that (although some things IRL have made me seriously question some of them) but now I identify more as a centrist (or “classic liberal”) and I think it’s important to keep the Democrats from veering dangerously far to the left like the Republicans have already veered dangerously far to the right.

Also doesn’t this discussion break rule #1 here?

Progressive politics is about objectivity and empathy. It’s built on fundamental values like equality, freedom, and human rights. These things don’t change depending on who is in power.

Conservativism is entirely based upon personalities. It’s a justification for selfishness, ruthlessness, and narcissism in service of the Self. The Self is defined by the current leader of any given conservative party, and that identity is what sets the agenda.

Echo chambers are bad for both groups, but for different reasons. Progressive echo chambers find their fundamental ideology as self-evident and rational. It’s easy to fall into the idea that everyone thinks as you do, and while everyone may not be selfless, everyone should at least remain consistent in their ideology.

Conservative echo chambers promote a similar trap, except the message is that everyone is just out for themselves, so it’s OK to be as evil as you want to be. There is no good greater than the self, so ideology is entirely negotiable. If you must lie, cheat, murder, enslave, or be rude in order to win, then that action is righteous because it is in service of the self.

Progressives emerge from their echo chamber with naivety and are shocked to learn that everyone isn’t interested in rowing in the same direction. Conservatives emerge as acolytes, dedicated to destroying anyone who would stand opposed to their goals.

There is a lot of overlap between the two mistakes, but they are also fundamentally different in many inportant ways.

It’s pretty much the same thing yeah: you find something you’re somewhat interested in, and then The Algorithm will shove increasingly aggressive content at you and hey presto, you’ve fallen down the rage-bait circlejerk hole for whatever side you were already somewhat aligned with.

I’m old enough to remember when you could have friends with different political opinions and it never went past ‘oh, cool, well i don’t agree but whatever’. That’s 100% not a thing anymore, because everyone on both sides of any issue have been completely radicalized.

The right are Nazis, and the left are raping children, and that’s where the discussion starts now, and thus you have… the mess we have now.

I don’t know what the solution is, other than literal deprogramming, since that’s almost exactly how a cult works: the cult leader affirms what you already think, tells you that you’re special, and then makes sure no voices of dissent are heard.

You know, like social media’s algorithms do in the name of “engagement”.

I think about algorithms and how they can divide people. We don’t get the same search results. It’s all based on what that site thinks we’d like and sends us down a rabbit hole to keep us watching tapping and clicking.

Let’s say you’re learning how to grow a house plant. Look it up on youtube and in the recommendeds balcony flower box tutorials, so you watch that out of curiosity. Then how to plant a small garden and the best underrated garden tools. Suddenly every time you open youtube logged in it wants you to watch stuff about gravity fed irrigation systems for small scale homesteading crop production and you’re like “how did I get here?”

Now imagine the political topics. Rage bait and us vs them gets attention and attention makes money. Right gravitates to right and left gravitates to left getting more and more pissed at each other and not enough people asking “how did we get here?”

Post seems fit for the community as this is more “real life discussion” than “rage inducing news bait” and appears asked in good faith.

OP, disregard this comment: just commenting this per admin suggestion to sticky it to get ahead of any potential reports.