Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
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Notes -
Where can I find a (much more) left-wing community similar to The Motte? /r/slatestarcodex is close but obviously intentionally tries to avoid Culture War topics (spurring the creation of this place in the first place).
By left-wing, I solely mean on social issues ("progressive liberalism"), like immigration, race, sex, gender, gender identity, democracy, rule of law (which I guess is now a pro-left position in 2026 or something). On economics stuff a range of views would be fine. I'm a pro-free market pro-capitalist person, myself rather than a socialist. There's /leftypol/ but those are essentially all communists who are pro-authoritarianism and all of that and who are often even right-wing on social issues.
There are tons of Twitter clusters full of very smart center-left people who agree with me on everything but it's not quite what I'm looking for.
/r/theschism gets a little closer, I guess. It started as a split from the Reddit Motte over how to moderate accelerationists and edgelords. Since that involved a lot of right-wingers calling for violence against protestors/progressives/the DNC, it ended up collecting some of the harried leftists and more compassionate conservatives. I think it has much less material, but what’s there is of high quality.
You’re probably going to get several responses about how (insert outgroup here) is unwilling or unable to have polite dialogues, which I think is patently untrue. I’d say that all such spaces are subject to evaporative cooling, and that by the time you or I hear about one, it’s probably already drifted one way or another.
I can't even begin to remember all the leftists who walked away from this board (and its predecessors) while straightforwardly saying that they were doing so because they couldn't tolerate the icky opinions. Not the tone, not the poor quality of discourse, but the opinions. Some ended up on sneerclub where they complained again about the opinions and were warmed and comforted by others who assured them that some ideas are just not okay.
As I think that a lot of the ideas in question happen to be correct, I found this endlessly discouraging for several years, especially in cases where I'd genuinely liked the poster in question up until their minds snapped shut. Now I've just accepted that some people don't want to think about certain things, and that where actual uninhibited high-quality debate happens, leftists cannot persist.
I mean, I'm probably a leftist and I leave and come back later to see what's going on all time in a checking on the animals in the zoo kind of way.
I don't leave because of icky opinions, I generally leave when I see a top level post that looks interesting and all the responses are people circlejerking about how rational and debate pilled they are for having this contrarian opinion that everyone else posting has, followed by imagining how the leftists could never have such a conversation, followed by the JQ/IQ Taijitsu, perfect in it's eternal repetition.
If I can see a post and then use my massive brain to imagine the response, the response to the response, the response to the response to the response, and then the post I will make that will get me modded for being insufficiently deferential, what is the point of being here?
Like you said, all boards eventually degenerate into a bunch of people agreeing with eachother; only pre-musk twitter avoided that fate, and now that is mainly chuds rage-baiting and porn bots now.
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