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Did the Right lose the terminally online by emphasizing consuming rather than communing?
Leftists (especially LGBT-focused) congregate in highly socialized communities where every small action toward The Cause is socially reinforced. You find this on Twitter and Discord. While there’s a fair amount of complaining typical of online spaces, leftist spaces are unique in saturating their mutuals in compliments and praise. There’s an oversaturation of positive feedback, and negative feedback is seen with suspicion. Anything from an uncreative tweet, a poorly conceived thought, an unlikely empowering experience, whatever is usually met with
pats on the backsnaps (sensory issues!) and goodboyspersons. While this oversaturation leads to an over-sensitivity, not to mention some bad behaviors and creations, it also means that the online community forms strong bonds and is only associated with positive emotions.In contrast, Right-oriented spaces are less keen on compliments and engage in more stressful catastrophization. They consume too much news and complain too much about the news. Culturally right online spaces are more socially stressful and have less bonding. They are critical of the liberal-coded heaping of compliments and empathy, and consequently miss out on a lot of the power and energy that’s present in Leftist spaces. There’s also an optimism deferential, with Leftist spaces generally more optimistic despite performative lamentation, and Right spaces more pessimistic, at least since ~2018.
This is a poor example, but imagine watching Contrapoints versus Jordan Peterson. This is a poor example by necessity — the Right does not have any counterpart to Contrapoints. You can watch Contrapoints and come away without any argument or evidence — but then you would be missing the point; the point is that you’re having an endearing and charming parasocial relationship with the person, and the outfit changes and odd social contextual changes simply work to increase the emotional affect, like a dozen playdates in video format.
There’s a phenomenon online where hobby spaces get “taken over” by more progressive mod teams in a variety of domains but especially terminally online spaces (video game modding, illustrations, speedrunning, etc). We see this on Reddit too. One possible reason for this is the uniquely reinforcing culture of online Leftist spaces. Someone becoming a mod on an otherwise unknown speedrunning discord community is something that would be praised in these communities and an earnest mark of reputation. And maybe they are right to do so — in any case the effect is that these small positional advancements can be a source of continual reward for the Leftist enjoying their quasi-lovebombing, while at the same time advancing the cause day after day.
See, counterpoint to ContraPoints, let's look at the man who did more than anything to make JP hit it big: Joe Rogan is the biggest positivity merchant active today. He introduces his guests universally as either "my friend X" or "the great and powerful Y." He rarely challenges his guests on personal grounds, occasionally on political or technical ones but never "Mike Tyson, I love you champ, but did you really rape that girl? Do you think that's forgivable?" He's about self-improvement, about talking to great people about how you can be great too, Joe thinks we can all be heroic athlete-warrior-comedian-mystics who take DMT in the sauna to commune with the aliens after dining on elk meat or whatever. When I listen to Joe Rogan, I feel like an insider, and the negativity all feels directed at someone else. The criticism that he levels against the lazy, the fat, the improvident, the snowflakes, the fearful feels like it doesn't include me; even if I suspect that I could do with a little more Goggins and a little less Taco Bell in my life. I've never felt personally offended or attacked by anything Joe Rogan has said into my right airpod while I worked out or did the dishes. I guess it doesn't meet the technical definition of "hugboxing" because it can have negativity directed vaguely outward, but if you feel like the ingroup for Rogan and his guest it does nothing but butter you up.
Where when I listened to Slate's DoubleX Gabfest or whatever they call it now, I constantly felt my ego under attack. I'm a 30 year old straight white man who looks like a 90s romantic comedy antagonist. I'm male, pale, and probably getting stale too. I'm clearly Slate's putative outgroup, the boogeyman that every bad thing that happens to the proud Queer/WOC hosts of the podcast can be pinned on. I'm responsible by identity for the economy, every bad sex partner the host has ever had, every bad meal the host has ever eaten, and human suffering more generally. If it made her cry, she'll find a way to pin it on "CIShetero white republican men." And when I KNOW I'm a CIShetero white republican man, it's a pretty negative experience to be the "THEY" in a conspiracy theory.
Compare, as you did below, to Q. You talk about Q as being negative, but I think Q is successful because it boosts the egos of its followers. When I think about conspiracies I think about my friends who are very into them, and one commonality among the Q/Infowars/MyPillow types in my life is that they've had hard lives, largely through things they more or less perceive as out of their control. Bad things have happened to them: a son addicted to drugs, a daughter seduced by a much older neighbor, working hard and having talent but never getting ahead because of divorce and confusing tax laws. As Scott argued cogently in Epistemic Minor Leagues, Q gives you a sense of importance and control for people that lack it day to day. Q might be negative to adrenochrome-addled pedo elites, but simply by listening to it you're among the righteous. The great day of the rope is always understood by the follower to be a day of ascendance for the follower, and destruction to the follower's enemies. Which is just a more extreme and explicit version of the same ingroup-positive/outgroup-negative flow of a Slate podcast or of Joe Rogan. Slate might not openly dream of herding cishetero white men into camps, but it doesn't hugbox them either.
This is just a particular manner of talking though, it doesn't really mean anything.
This just describes podcasts generally though, the hosts and the guests are always buds and just chatting and don't really fight or even disagree much.
Also, I can't tell if this is a joke or not? "I am ingroup for right leaning podcast. I am outgroup for left leaning podcast. Therefore, left leaning podcast is mean and toxic, and right leaning podcast is cuddly and beautiful and universal love". Like, you explicitly point out that "The criticism that he levels against the lazy, the fat, the improvident, the snowflakes, the fearful feels like it doesn't include me;" - because it ... doesn't include you - and similarly, a straight white leftist male listening to the slate pod understands that they aren't "CIShetero white republican men", and that they are the friend and they're criticizing someone else?
(also: criticisim and dislike is good, because there are flaws that need correcting & very flawed things that need to be gotten rid of)
I assume due to the date that you found this via the AAQC roundup, read the parent comment I'm replying to. He posits that Leftists are nice hugboxers and Rightists are hard meanies and that impacts their popularity. I'm pointing out that depends where you stand, I don't really see that.
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Joe Rogan is wonderful about being generally optimistic and positive - absolutely. He's also not a rightist, nor does he lean particularly left. He seems like the kind of person with much better things to do than argue for any political side, and really, doesn't fit well within any political tribe currently relevant on the scene.
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