The Glade 4.0

Well, social media sites, more specifically, but I ran into a character limit.

The Pew Research Center published a report detailing politics and behavior on social media sites. Results mostly unsurprising for me. Here's a sneak peak -- the whole thing is pretty exhaustive and has lots of images I'd need to relink to quote in its entirety.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

This is not surprising.

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"It is true that democracy undermines freedom when voters believe they can live off of others' productivity, when they modify the commandment: 'Thou shalt not steal, except by majority vote.' The politics of plunder is no doubt destructive of both morality and the division of labor."

I'm actually somewhat surprised. I figured both extreme ends of the table would be as likely to do so, with those that aren't in the extreme left or right to be less likely. Some of the charts and graphs show this(with extreme lib and extreme con on them), but the one quoted(the most interesting of all of them, really) only has lib, moderate and con on it with no extremes.

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Los Angeles Kings 2014 Stanley Cup Champions

"I love this **** team right here."
-Jonathan Quick

The truly extreme people probably are about equally likely to do this, because they're extreme.

From what I have seen of liberal boards, however, people are far more likely to ban or ignore someone because they are far more likely to care if something is "offensive" and have a far more expansive view of what's offensive, such as a far more expansive view of what's "racist".

The conservative side no doubt has its own vices, but it is a common misconception of political discussion that every vice must be shared equally by both sides.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I suspect if there was more demographic data available than just political leanings, that clearer pictures would emerge of the trends.

As it stands, however, this is just junk.

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I'm a moderate. I don't give a ****.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

My thoughts exactly!

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"Said I never had much use for one, never said I didn't know how to use one!"~ Matthew Quigley

"nothing like a little meow in bed at night" ~ Bruskey

"I gotta float my stick same as you" Hondo Lane

"Fill your hand you son of a *****!"

I think Hellfire keeps me pretty well-balanced.

Note that these are all "social network" sites... Which, IMO, is a terrible place to hold political discussions. I'd be much more inclined to hiding posts from someone starting **** on Facebook than I would be to ignore someone on a message board. That's not what I want from those websites.

Yeah, that data is pretty worthless. One goes to social sites for entertainment or hanging out with friends, not to be challenged on one's viewpoints typically.

That's your perception of their use, and usefulness. Stop projecting.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

It's called observation...

It's what you've chosen to percieve.

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Tangu Matraa

This is not the case for many people.

Look at the article sharing buttons for political blogs and such. Where do you think they get shared?

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

I actually have no accounts on any social networking sites, so I can effectively say i've never blocked anyone for any reason.

Instead, I block everyone, just because.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Just from personal experience I have lost 3-4 Face book "Friends" (actually just people friended from high school) over politics.

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"Life isn't divided into genres. It's a horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, science-fiction cowboy detective novel. You know, with a bit of pornography if you're lucky."
— Alan Moore

That to me is the funniest thing about this article. If people didn't have 600-800 "Friends" they wouldn't be ignoring/blocking/unfriending people over this stuff. But alas FB is a popularity contest/soapbox.

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I don't use social media stuff enough to know how accurate that is, but in terms of forums and blog comments sections, I haven't noticed any Real differences in the echo chamber effect, with one exception - liberal blogs and forums that are explicitly focused on racial and/or gender issues will drop the banhammer at lightspeed if you don't toe the line. i've been booted from those places so many times for daring to suggest something maybe wasn't really sexist or racist. Hell, just this week, I was called an ignorant, racist, asshat, douchebag, colonizer, apologist for genocide and ordered to stop posting on a thread at a Feminist site because I had the temerity to say that (i) non-Native Americans should have a say in what NA tribal membership rules are for purposes of federal law, (ii) that the current (yes, current) policies of the US government toward NAs don't constitute genocide, and (iii) that pressuring one's kids to feel an obligation to carry on your culture instead of just carving out their own identity can be detrimental. Man, you should have seen the shitstorm!

This. I hide/unsubscribe from the feeds of people whose posts are mostly political, regardless of affiliation. I may be a bit more tolerant about posters whose links agree with my views, but not by much. I also don't post much on my own views, particularly since the majority of my family doesn't share them (though the majority of my friends do, they're far less likely than family to post about them). I'm speaking in generalities here, based mostly on Facebook, since that's my primary social media network. I also have a Twitter...and I will get a skosh more political on there, but that's because it's less meatspacey and it's really an outlet for pithy jabs that fly by (since Twitter has such a constant stream of information, each post carries far less weight). I did a bunch of retweeting and posted a few snarks myself over the NC gay marriage thing, for instance, but I wouldn't take that to Facebook, since most of my family is evangelical Christian and I really don't feel like any kind of discussion with them on such a topic would a) be a discussion at all, or b) be productive for either side. As Lenas said, social media just isn't where I go for discussion such as that. It's an outlet ill-suited for that purpose.

I think I have about 112 currently, Mostly family at this point.

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"Life isn't divided into genres. It's a horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, science-fiction cowboy detective novel. You know, with a bit of pornography if you're lucky."
— Alan Moore

Same here, I got to 400 and then went through the list and asked myself, "If I saw XXX coming towards me on the street would I invite them for a beer/coffee or would I cross the street and pray they didn't see me."

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Of course the easy, glib and totally unsupportable snappy responses that come to mind from these results:

"Perhaps liberals are simply less likely to tolerate fools?"
"Maybe the conservatives just didn't understand that someone was disagreeing with them?"



On a more serious note, does the study also suggest that liberals are more likely to unfriend someone in general?

Collectivists operate collectively - man who could have possibly predicted that?

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

I did a coworker purge after one incident or rat like behavior. I honestly did not friend too many people to begin with. I think most of the extra "friends" were, Hey I knew him in high school. I am now realizing that I spent almost 15years without seeing you, really you are not a friend.

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"Life isn't divided into genres. It's a horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, science-fiction cowboy detective novel. You know, with a bit of pornography if you're lucky."
— Alan Moore

Now that FB has groups that you can categorize folks into it makes it easier to still include those old aquaintances but keep them removed from your actual friends feed. It's a little bit of a bear to setup initially but from there it's not too bad.

I'm probably guilty of this in that most of the people I have on Facebook think like me cause they are family/church contacts. I have some people with different political leanings, but I've never de-listed them because of it. Most of the people I have on Facebook added me and not the other way around.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"