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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 27, 2023

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I was surprised to see in /r/dankchristianmemes, a heavily upvoted thread about wanting traditional hymns, but not wanting "conservative/far-right ideals" in the church. All the comments are about how great it is that mainline Protestant denominations are affirming of all kinds of alternative lifestyles.

https://old.reddit.com/r/dankchristianmemes/comments/11i1mit/is_it_too_much_to_ask_for_both/

Honestly this really made me think. On Reddit, the gun people are leftist, the Christians are leftist, etc. etc. I spend so much time on Reddit that it makes me think leftism has literally taken over everything. Then I went to church this morning and realized there's an entire big population of people who don't use Reddit, have never heard of Reddit, and who still exist across the whole spectrum of political belief.

I need to get off of Reddit.

I need to get off of Reddit.

Yes

At least here it's the modern worship churches that are right wing and traditional denominations that song hymns and hang rainbow flags and seem pretty left wing, are those still too far right for reddit?

Reddit looks more leftist than it is because leftist groups are very good at two things: mod takeovers and brigading from their discord hangouts. Stalking post histories made me realize that in most cases the "radically leftist highly upvoted post in a normally non-political sub" is completely artificial.

But my god it's an amazing tactic for imposing the appearance of consensus. Back in the days of the open internet the left was at a disadvantage, but they've adapted wonderfully to this new environment that rewards procedural manipulation and party organization.

Back in the days of the open internet the left was at a disadvantage, but they've adapted wonderfully to this new environment that rewards procedural manipulation and party organization.

I have to wonder, if this is true, why was this? Was it harder to entry-ize a regular old forum somehow?

There were too many of them. Take over some forum and you have control of one of a thousand comparable discussion forums. Take over the relevant subreddit (and leverage that into more control over other subreddits) and you can control a much larger portion of the internet.

The thing about that meme was its use of “extreme right-wing beliefs”. After browsing the thread, I found myself wondering what they might consider “moderate right-wing beliefs”.

Before KE Arms announced the development of the KP-15 lower, the subreddit was very low traffic. Its tone mirrored that of the youtube channel, which had none of the weird racial and sexual politics stuff. For the 2-3 years of development and production of the KP-15 lower, the channel was pretty much all about eager anticipation and then people showing off their builds. Once the forum drama hit, there was a large influx of "supporters", and I think the brand and community will never recover the tone that I enjoyed.

Karl was already subtly working an agenda with his historic pieces, that were often about convincing leftists that guns benefited black people. His view of history was often a bit dubious/one-sided as well.

whether there's a reason that particular SUBREDDIT would be more left-leaning than gun owners writ large.

There's your answer: it's Reddit