Another Angry WomanI often use my dad, a man who buys the Times every day, as a barometer of how well the culture war lines are landing with the average reader, and I am thrilled to report that despite years of hysterical fascist articles, he still literally hasn't noticed any of it because he just skims past anything which seems aggro about nothing.
It's not just that he's turned off by it but vaguely aware that there is Discourse. He is entirely oblivious to the culture war hot button topics like GRA reform, no platform, etc. He has never heard of the word "woke". And this is a man who buys the Times every single day. He's just flicking to the bits that interest him (the word puzzle, the business pages and "what have those twats in Westminster done now")
Just about the only weird talking point he seems to have picked up from his newspaper-reading habits is that he spent a few months in 2020 convinced that Rishi Sunak was a socialist. Otherwise, my dad is a pretty normal guy.
There are repeated polls, over years, which show that public opinion on culture war topics hasn't really shifted despite a prolonged assault from legacy media, especially the Times. The majority of people are still broadly supportive of trans people. The general, reasonable person on the street literally doesn't even know what "snowflake" means. The prevailing social attitude remains "live and let live, I guess, it takes all sorts to make a world."
I wonder what a post-outrage clicks media economy will look like. Where they just howl hate into a void because at the end of the day 90% of it is some bigot farting on about something that literally nobody else cares about. Will they stop, without getting the attention they crave? I suspect they probably will, because it really does feel like attention-seeking behaviour.
word saladin@stavvers have to wonder if the real figures of influence - in spite of themselves being hopeless toadies - aren't necessarily our billionaire media overlords, but the bari weiss and jason calacanis style figures around them, who relay only that the culture war is going great and nevermind all the polling and real people on it.
@EdelweissBlood Oh yeah, I think a lot of it is genuinely attention seekers who want to feel relevant for a bit
Lucy@stavvers the issue IMHO is that the intolerant minority is noisy and monopolizes the "engagement algorithm", it's composed by people that wastes massive amounts of time on socials, that get easily manipulated by conspiracy theory narratives and they push it further.
Fortunately all their tactics wouldn't fly here, not even in "freeze peach" instances, because of the biggest peddlers being "too recent" on the 'net to grasp the differences between the Fedi and the birdsite.
Fortunately all their tactics wouldn't fly here, not even in "freeze peach" instances, because of the biggest peddlers being "too recent" on the 'net to grasp the differences between the Fedi and the birdsite.
quayAs long as there are two or more of them, it will never end. The smallest morsel of attention from other people who are also outrage junkies will sustain them.
Kevin Davidson@stavvers The Parler/Gab/TruthSocial (and soon maybe joined by Twitter?) echo chambers all seem to be self sustaining for now. I shudder to think what they talk about there. They seem to quickly kick out anyone that tries to suggest there might be an alternative to being a hate-filled, conspiracy fuelled bigot.
Leianora@stavvers and there is no money in going on with it.
Saul Ravencraft@stavvers People spewed in forums before there were more public ways to do it. They'll continue in whatever circular communications remain. Hopefully, though, well see a decline in things going "viral." That compunction to experience and give feedback on things that you don't really care about in order to belong makes things pretty weird.