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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 1, 2024

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but the net upvotes tell the story

...that I'm not interested in at all...

First, I just can't get into the mindset of someone who cares about votes beyond them being a metric of engagement, but more importantly, and I've been gesturing at the idea for a while, but I'm done with this entire "democratic" framework of analyzing anything. Any forum will have it's share of high-, mid-, and low-frequency posters, and a whole bunch of lurkers, why should the former be judged by the latter? Why should anyone care what people who don't bother to say anything think?

where the liberals at?

Aren't they on Reddit? For all the complaints about the bias of this place, they seem to have monopolized that site to an even greater extent.

Or alternatively, why has the proportion of racists increased dramatically since moving off Reddit?

Same answer as above. As long as we were all on the same site progressives could swing by and drop a comment or a vote, now that you have to register and check up on the place separately, a lot don't bother. The other side doesn't have many other places to go, so they disproportionately end up here.

As long as we were all on the same site progressives could swing by and drop a comment or a vote, now that you have to register and check up on the place separately, a lot don't bother.

Yeah, I'm really not sure how I feel about this. Having to sign up (and then needing approval) certainly would add friction to participating, but at least something of that sort seems necessary. (And there are some occasions, like brigading being harder, where friction is good.) I don't know what the optimal amount is.