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More like most of us don't have political brainrot. We don't post on social media. We touch grass, talk to our friends, coworkers, and communities and otherwise live out our lives not terminally online. Your algorithm isn't going to push our content because there isn't any. This is the only social media I use and it barely counts. Everyone I know from my far left friends to my right wing friends all found it horrifying. We all agreed its very bad, I have yet to know one person that was not terminally online already cheering for Kirk's murder.
Wasn't it Scott that said 90% of posts online are from insane people?
Probably for average people. But political leaders tend to know where the public is. If there were a large offline contingent of democratic voters who are shocked, angered, and horrified by political violence, you would have seen democratic leaders in Congress, in state and local politics, or who are political influencers taking a rather large step back, issuing actual condemnations of the acts (now plural btw) of violence against political opponents. So where is that? Where are people for whom politics and political science are their profession, whose job depends on getting it right with the public, or whose rating depend on not alienating the public who get the message of “normal people absolutely do not want political violence.?”
Are there not large continents of mainstream democrats calling for a conversation and a step back?
If you are expecting some sort of capitulation, i think you have a far worse model of human political behavior than is reality.
Also hot take, but i’d say that politicians have a pretty rocky relationship with what the average person wants. The squeaky wheel gets the grease. And activists are nothing if not squeaky with an incentive to play up how large of a congregation they purport to speak for.
No?
Or at least, most of the calls for a step back in mainstream democratic political media are for the political opponents to step back, while the calls for a conversation are opened on the framing that conversation being that the political opponents are uber-evil fascists with genocidal intent towards LGBTQ+ and where law enforcement is gestapo oppression. In so much that it is a call for a political settlement, it is a call to not challenge the current status quo, which is a result of the last couple of decades of culture war advances.
'The uber-evil outgroup needs to take a step back and stop its totalitarian abuse while preserving our culture war gains' is neither a call for a conversation, nor a call for a step back by the speaking faction in any sort of detente sense.
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I've heard that one before, but it makes no sense given the shape of the world we're in right now. Forget Kirk's murder, how do you explain the long stream of MeToo, BLM, lockdowns, TransWomenAreWomen (to the point of putting rapists in women's prisons). I'm sorry, but either the majority of the Blue Tribe wholeheartedly support it, don't care either way - which is political brainrot. The only way it's not is, like I said above, if you're just too terrified of going against your own side.
Are you posting from the 00's? The entire Boomer part of my family is online and on SocMeds, most of society is.
We have posters here recounting stories of their families, friends, and coworkers making fun of the murder.
Ok let's say it's my algorithm, link a mainstream left-wing forum, where the news broke, and everybody's aghast at what happened. Note: threads that happened days after the fact, when people had the chance to think about their messaging, don't count. Immediate reacts only.
I see no reason to take Scott seriously, especially when he says something like this.
https://old.reddit.com/r/stupidpol/comments/1ndmpmj/charlie_kirk_shot_at_utah_event/
https://old.reddit.com/r/stupidpol/comments/1ndpw16/charlie_kirk_has_died/?sort=top
Almost every top comment is some form of "oh shit this is gonna get worse" and "this is bad"
Maybe if you scroll hard enough you'll find people crowing about it, but all the top comments I saw were unhappy he was shot.
Stupidpol is not a mainstream left-wing forum, it's a forum of left-wing rejects that are routinely called fascist, who were preparing for offsite emigration themselves at one point. I used to post there myself.
It's the only other place on the internet (aside from here) I regularly interact with as the users don't immediately make me want to scream.
Best I got lol
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Stupidpol is neither mainstream nor left
It's Left but not in like standard Idpol way.
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Quite literally the old school definition of left but I admit at this point "left" means "shitlib" and not "Marxist" despite the old dictionary definition
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I think you're using the term "political brainrot" to mean "has dumb political ideas" while YoungAchamian is using it to mean "spends a lot of mental energy on politics".
Not quite. Rent control is a dumb political idea, or affirmative action. I'm talking about causes that are supportable only if you whip yourself up into a fevered frenzy, I don't see how this could be doable without "spending a lot of mental energy on politics". I suppose it's possible to sleep through "your state put a rapist in a woman's prison", but I find it a bit harder to believe one did it for BLM or the Kavanaugh hearings, let alone the COVID mania.
Easy, just say the same words the people around you are saying in approximately the same order they do.
Okay... while that does not meet his definition (or your interpretation of it), surely mindlessly chanting insane political slogans has to qualify as some form of "brain rot"?
Unsolicited yeah. Imitating the people around you on politics on demand as people ask for your opinion doesn't particularly require political brain rot, just political apathy.
I think political apathy is probably the right choice for most people, including many of the people who post here (realistically, including me as well. Let it not be said that I make good decisions).
Well then, it's scarcely any consolation that his social circle didn't erupt into cheers as at Kirk's death, is it? It would just mean the contagion didn't penetrate deep enough to affect them, rather than it being beyond the pale for them.
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It's pretty obnoxious to come onto a political forum and argue that your opponents are wrong and insane because they spend too much mental energy on politics.
I forgot where it states this forum was an explicitly political forum.
Or where screaming, insane people on twitter constitute the “mainstream”.
Putting lots of mental energy into politics is blatantly unhealthy behavior and a sign of an overly neurotic personality. Especially when you do it predominantly online.
Politics is the mind killer
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I think "touch grass" is sometimes a useful thing to say to people who are in a doomscrolling spiral. Obnoxious, but useful.
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