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I also think having an upvote/downvote system on what's supposed to be a neutral discussion forum is just completely idiotic. Everyone just uses it as an "I agree" button for upvotes and "I disagree" for downvotes. This functionally means any left-leaning or even just contra-MAGA opinion gets heavily downvoted. I've had plenty of people then use this as an excuse to claim the equivalent of "uhhh, can't you see you're getting a lot of downvotes!?! Have you ever stopped to consider that maybe this is because you're wrong and stupid!?!?!?!?" Pure heat, negligible light.
However, you can actually block yourself from seeing the score if you use Ublock Origin and add the following to your filter list:
I consider this 100% essential if you want to use this site and ever substantially disagree with MAGA talking points.
For the record, I do not upvote or downvote people on here, and I would support getting rid of the upvote/downvote system here entirely. It gives me a nice pleasant dopamine hit to see a comment of mine upvoted, and I enjoy that very much, but overall, I feel that upvote/downvote systems make political discussion forums worse, not better. For one thing, they feed into a sense that the people who are writing the comments are like athletes in the middle of an arena, fighting it out to the cheers of the audience. Not exactly something that inspires intelligent thought.
That said, I disagree with your notion that any left-leaning or even just contra-MAGA opinion gets heavily downvoted. I write contra-MAGA opinions on here all the time, and they get upvoted more often than they get downvoted. Sure, sometimes I write something that does not fit the average Motte writer's political opinions and I get downvoted a lot, and I can clearly infer that it is because the downvoters disagree with me. But given that I often write things that go against the local average and still get upvoted a lot, clearly it is more complicated than that.
This is a pretty good analogy.
Care to share an example or two of this? My experience has been stuff like this conversation, where I said I doubted that Biden was pocketing bribes.
I've had contra-MAGA posts that go slightly positive if they're very high effort, but the difference between me posting that and say, posting an antifeminist piece is that the contra-MAGA post will be like +50 | -45, while the antifeminist piece will be +50 | -2 or something.
Not sure if you would consider this anti-MAGA, but it's certainly anti-Trump: https://www.themotte.org/post/2240/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/345537?context=8#context
This one is me criticizing Trump's tariffs: https://www.themotte.org/post/1812/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/315024?context=8#context
Me being concerned about Trump's authoritarian impulses: https://www.themotte.org/post/1681/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/298689?context=8#context
Me criticizing Trump's desire to increase the military budget: https://www.themotte.org/post/1827/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/316103?context=8#context
Thanks for sharing these.
Your first example is one of the few places where MAGA and Trump actually strongly disagree (Epstein stuff) so it's not a great example. Your second and fourth examples are a bit better but still generally places where MAGA disagrees with Trump, although its much weaker and they just go with the flow.
Your third example is a genuinely good example and is mildly shocking for me to see. You're anti Trump in a place where MAGA agrees with Trump -- MAGA generally likes authoritarianism, or at least thinks classical liberalism is for "cucks" or "losers" of the David French variety. It stands at +50 | -19 and reads like the same tone of voice that I could have posted. I'm not sure if it's a rare anomaly or if you know of some pattern where it won't be net downvoted or at least a lot closer to neutral.
I thought you said MAGA is supposed to be a personality cult, blindly following everything Trump says.
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So, to be clear, the reason people get downvoted is because they express views that go against the majority opinion. The downvote button is a disagree button. You will continue to get downvoted as long as you're not in line with the consensus. Sorry.
That being said, I think the reason @Goodguy's third comment there didn't get downvoted is because he framed the issue as being more about Trump (an individual) and Trumpism (an abstract ideology), rather than MAGA (a concrete group of people, as you seem to be using the term). In the short comment I'm replying to, you said that MAGA "likes authoritarianism" and "goes with the flow". You can't hide your contempt for the majority of people who are reading your comment. That's obviously not going to endear them to you.
I'm glad we can agree this is what's happening. I wish this was universal knowledge here.
Is MAGA really that concrete of a group? I always understood it to be fairly amorphous -- I doubt many people would unironically identify with such a label on this forum, yet I know plenty of people here are effectively in it by the points they argue.
Buddy. Pal. Lemme level with you here. I gotta be brutally honest, because you did ask for an explanation of why you get downvoted so much.
You have, from what I've observed in your posts, a staggering inability to ever acknowledge when the person you're talking to has ever made a valid point.
Now obviously no one in an internet debate ever actually admits they were straight up wrong. But there's a difference between "yeah ok, that's true but your position is still bullshit because of XYZ" and "ah, no, erm, you see, you've simply misunderstood the situation as it were, it's actually not like that at all, I don't know what you're talking about..."
You seem to be particularly fond of the latter. And it's one of the fastest ways to really turn people off from listening to anything you have to say.
I told you that the way you phrased your post will read as insulting to many people here. I'm quite confident that this is a fact. There are many ways you could respond to this. You could say "well fuck 'em I don't care", you could say "it shouldn't be an insult if it's true", there are lots of things you could say in your defense that aren't just total capitulation and admission of guilt. But instead you chose "nope, that never happened, don't know what you're talking about". Which is essentially the most obnoxious type of response possible.
Again, the lion's share of your downvotes come from the simple fact that your views are anti-consensus, but your particular style of argument certainly doesn't help things.
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