Why is the far-right so dominant on the internet?

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Why is the far-right so dominant on the internet?

Jeffrey of YOSPOS: Dec 22, 2005; GET LOSE, YOU CAN'T COMPARE WITH MY POWERS

I think you're a bit delusional if you honestly believe that OP. Do you think any mainstream discussion platform online that wasn't explicitly created for the purpose of discussing right wing politics had a population that preferred Trump over Hillary? (4chan is the only one I can think of and that's pushing the limits of mainstream, and the worst of it is in their dedicated right wing politics forum.) Can you tell me what sort of places you're talking about? What lead to this belief?

If your real question is "why are people on the right allowed to congregate on the internet at all?" then well, I'm not all that interested in the topic, but that's not what it sounds like.

# ¿ Dec 19, 2016 06:40

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# ¿ May 14, 2024 22:30

Jeffrey of YOSPOS: Dec 22, 2005; GET LOSE, YOU CAN'T COMPARE WITH MY POWERS

Bicyclops posted:

I used to admin on the largest Facebook feminist group and for awhile, I was getting death threats once a week, because people registered accounts with names like "Uncle Sam" and "Smooth McGroove." Some of them openly said they registered under pseudonyms so that they could talk about how women didn't belong in the military without being disciplined. At the time, you actually couldn't ban people from large groups more quickly than they could register a new account, because there was a glitch with large member lists that caused a delay in them showing up as having "joined," so it took literally days before you could ban anyone. I have mixed feelings about the way Facebook cracks down on forcing people to use their real names, but once it started the trolls basically vanished, although I suddenly got a lot of angry messages accusing me of censoring free speech by people who wanted to post the feminism was a conspiracy started by the Rockefellers.

In a universe where the far right were actually dominant on the internet, this story would be about how it took facebook a few days to ban feminists from your group. You are not describing a dominant group.

# ¿ Dec 19, 2016 20:13

Jeffrey of YOSPOS: Dec 22, 2005; GET LOSE, YOU CAN'T COMPARE WITH MY POWERS

Owlofcreamcheese posted:

A voice can be dominant without being the most numerically represented voice. In fact that is pretty much "white dudes: the summary"

One group makes the rules and decides who is allowed to post. Another registers, antagonizes the group for a few days before being banned. No one could reasonably cite the presence of trolls on stormfront as evidence that leftists dominate online, it's the same here.

# ¿ Dec 19, 2016 20:40

Jeffrey of YOSPOS: Dec 22, 2005; GET LOSE, YOU CAN'T COMPARE WITH MY POWERS

wizard on a water slide posted:

The association of politeness with left or liberal politics in this thread is extremely weird. I don't think anybody would confuse me calling someone a moronic Nazi for either right-wing or civil speech.

Likewise, it's possible for a racist Stormfront poster to interact civilly with black posters on a hobby forum or a news article where they agree (i.e. "local man arrested for jerking off at preschool"), or for someone on the economic far-right to condemn overt racist posts.

This discussion is hosed.

Yeah it's pretty bizarre to me, I'm scratching my head. The left doesn't seek out media they dislike and comment? Gonna go ahead and say that criticism of media from the left is extremely prevalent online, for better or worse. I don't wanna just comment on SA because you could easily call it non-representative, but it's clearly present here. What was #CancelColbert?

# ¿ Dec 19, 2016 22:17

Jeffrey of YOSPOS: Dec 22, 2005; GET LOSE, YOU CAN'T COMPARE WITH MY POWERS

Dr. Fishopolis posted:

You're repeating a debunked talking point from zerohedge / newsbusters / the_donald. In fact, if you search "politifact bias trump sanders black", the first page and most of the second is a laundry list of alt-right garbage sites. I don't believe you when you say you don't have sources for this idea, I just think you don't want to link them in this forum because it would out you as a right wing troll.

Holy schnikies you cracked the case on this one!!! Who are you to talk about good faith and then play six degrees of right wing troll?

Calling an article true or false is different from calling it unverifiable and one is wise to hesitate before trusting any individual organization as the final arbiter of truth.

# ¿ Dec 20, 2016 20:17

Jeffrey of YOSPOS: Dec 22, 2005; GET LOSE, YOU CAN'T COMPARE WITH MY POWERS

"That sort of argument is used by right wing sources in this google search, you aren't one of them, are you?" is pretty much the definition of bad faith to me. An argument that might have also once been made by someone :siren:

right wing :siren:

is not.

# ¿ Dec 20, 2016 20:43

Jeffrey of YOSPOS: Dec 22, 2005; GET LOSE, YOU CAN'T COMPARE WITH MY POWERS

A Wizard of Goatse posted:

you can't say that to him, the dude yelling about how anonymous internet nazis are probably basement-dwelling virgins on a paywalled internet debate club forum is probably just drowning in pussy, he seems really cool and together in his life.

The alt-right is either a dominant internet movement taking america by storm or a group of 26 warhammer players who got called "four-eyes" in high school - they're whatever we need them to be.

# ¿ Dec 28, 2016 17:49

Jeffrey of YOSPOS: Dec 22, 2005; GET LOSE, YOU CAN'T COMPARE WITH MY POWERS

KomradeX posted:

Bullshit

One of them is half the country and the other is like, 25k people on a few forums. Pretty different. They're also dominant on the internet and a menace or something, I dunno I can't keep up.

# ¿ Dec 30, 2016 18:49

Jeffrey of YOSPOS: Dec 22, 2005; GET LOSE, YOU CAN'T COMPARE WITH MY POWERS

Neo_Crimson posted:

I don't understand this particular definition. How is, say, a programmer that makes $125,000 year not just as bad as an a trust fund kid who makes the same? What's important is that they both make a disproportionate amount of money than needed.

I posit that your question could be more clearly stated as "what is the difference between wealthy and high-earning?" If you actually want to have that conversation here, we can, but there's a big difference between being wealthy and having an income a standard deviation or two above the mean. Part of class consciousness is recognizing that the output of a worker's career, even one at 3x the median income, is not a wealthy worker.

The sword of Damocles story is thrown around here a lot, one of those two people still lives under it. The fact that his google glass can tell him the sword manufacturer doesn't erase the fact that he must work or die.

# ¿ Dec 31, 2016 02:08

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# ¿ May 14, 2024 22:30

Jeffrey of YOSPOS: Dec 22, 2005; GET LOSE, YOU CAN'T COMPARE WITH MY POWERS

Tesseraction posted:

Who are you and what did you do with Jeffrey?

I'm on a train, we all break down and seriouspost sometimes. The OP trolled me into participating by stating its absurd premise right there in the title!!!

# ¿ Dec 31, 2016 02:23

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Why is the far-right so dominant on the internet?