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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 18, 2024

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Sick of the bots and echo chamber that X has become, I decided to visit Bluesky. Nothing serious- just a hope that the algorithm would be more curated toward centrism in a way that would prove refreshing compared to the assault on reality that X has become.

Agree with Hanania on the topic of not giving up on existing institutions, and that it is increasingly impossible to deny that X is deleterious to being anchored to earth, and wondering if perhaps Bluesky would be better?

Think again, motherfucker! For, immediately, on the front page (no account) you are assaulted with the culture war and the assumption that you've not just picked a side, but you've picked the woke side. Instead of re-anchoring and toning it down, the social media justice warriors are still out in force.

Within 10 posts, I counted 3 about trans issues, 2 about billionaires, one about gaetz, and another about hegseth. (Gabbard remains unimpeachable, it seems)

It took a bit of scrolling before actual breaks, like discussion of Disney soundtracks, or nasa space pictures, started to appear. If bluesky is to be the twitter alternative, then retreating entirely from internet social spaces is the likely path forward for those that don't wish to be swept up in the torrent.

In conclusion, for the moderates and centrists: Your signal is jammed, and only extremism will be boosted on either twitter or bluesky.

Now that Twitter is 50/50 left and right, and the left isn't allowed free hand to censor, it's an "echo chamber".

Seems like there's something being missed.

Source for Twitter being 50/50? I assume it’d lean one way or the other.

Pew seems to think it's just about even

CNN, citing Pew (I can't find that specific set of figures and can't dig in now*) it used to be heavily Democratic and now is more or less even

* Maybe it was a bad idea to shift to "X"

Twitter really isn’t 50/50 left/right if you’re a random new user who creates an account today. Of course there are both liberal/centrist and progressive (and hardcore leftist) spaces, but you have to find them whereas you get conservative messaging pretty much immediately and universally, often even if you don’t follow any politics or CW-related accounts.

So it’s the opposite of reddit circa 2016 then? Okay, so turn about is fair play

I just signed up (never really having used Twitter) to see for myself. Scrolling the default feed as a new user was mostly normie stuff, sports, pop culture and such, however with a heavy overrepresentation of ghetto black content. This was third and this was the fourth post on my feed. Two of the first ten posts were from conservative pro-Trump types and a third was from Elon himself, but it was not related to politics. Scrolling a bit further basically confirms that: 20% conservative, 20% ghetto, 60% normie pop culture/sports.