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I'm starting to feel like echo chambers aren't so bad.
- Thread starter GrizzleBoy
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And yet when pressed to explain exactly what this nuance is, you refused to, repeatedly, because of the apparent "unfairness" involved in discussing it. When honestly explaining what your nuance was would have been the way to not get banned.
You essentially created a self fulfilling prophecy in order to justify your views. Allude to defending something, refuse to actually defend it on the grounds of being treated unfairly, get banned, point to your banning as proof of being treated unfairly.
It's a shame you apparently learned nothing about why you were banned. The moment people confront you, you just slither away crying foul.
Actually what you did was claim there was nuance in the discussion, then when someone asked you to elaborate you pleaded the 5th... Like i said you are talking about your politics.
Daryl Davis is so not the guy you want to use here.
Davis has failed far more than he has succeed, as shown more animus for Black Lives Matter activists than white supremacists and is so far gone that he remains friends with white supremacists he fails to convert, he went to bat for a man whom he supposedly tried to save from white supremacy who then while still friends with Darryl Davis went and got himself arrested in Charlottesville, Daryl Davis then wrote a letter supporting his friend.
That who you wanna be?
I'd say a lot worse to Daryl Davis and his support of violent white supremacists while criticizing black activist movements. He's a fucking tool
If you're talking about the current situation... umm the dude brought it up himself first... and is now engaging in the same bloody behaviour.
Everyone agreeing with each other doesn't mean discussion is more rational or nuanced. I'm not sure how you arrived at that. An echo chamber is where everyone parrots each other over and over and dissenting views are silenced. There is nothing good about them.
For blatantly wrong stances like those two it probably shouldn't be considered an echo chamber to call them wrong then. It'd be like calling the world an echo chamber because everyone's anti-murder. At that point the idea of an echo chamber should probably be limited to things that can be debated.
We tear each other apart regularly here, so I hardly consider this place to be any sort of full-blown echo chamber. The only reason it seems like one to you is because you keep pulling this shit of saying something and then bailing and everyone gets pissed at you for obvious reasons.
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Yeah, in the ten+ years I've spent on neogaf, the only time 'b-b-b-ut my right to express opinion' always came up was when a poster later demonstrated they were clearly racist as fuck. I won't pretend to have never erred on that end either (though hopefully nothing too bad), but even when playing devil's advocate for 'the other side' I have never felt like there wasn't room to discuss things (not that I really do that, but still). I do feel that mods on resetera are clearly new to the concept that stepping over your intrinsic desire to not step over your personal biases is something you have to learn (which is really hard btw), making it appear like they're jumping the gun, instead of asking for clarification, user revealing their racism, and only then banning the fucker for life.
It's hard to wait those full extra five minutes of your life, I know, but it's the idea of giving them a chance that counts. They'll still bitch about it somewhere else though. Because nothing says "that site is an echo chamber!" than bitching about it on another echo chamber.
So no, echo chambers aren't actually bad, they are more or less inherent to human behavior as is, but they do lead to blind spots. The 2016 US election being an obvious one, but I don't believe it would have mattered since the primary factor in there is Facebook, which has since barely made any changes worth a damn. Instead people themselves have stopped relying on it for information. So a different example: the kind of attitudes and vile behavior that come with 'those other places', which was honestly rather shocking to discover after a decade of seeming anonymity for me.
However, the fact that a white man does not have to endure that kind of extremist bullying (and worse), does tell you something fundamental about what white privilege is.
And you know, "opinions" aren't even a part of that bullying, it's just for:
- not having the right skin color
- not having the right sex
- not having the 'correct gender'
- not having an abnormally normal life
- not having a full healthy body (and / or mind)
and so on, but basically never for this mythical 'wrong opinion' that I also possess yet it never comes up.
From now on, I am just going to bitch about how I am too white and too male to get bitched about by shitty people on the internet, while trying so damn hard to create an echo chamber. (forgive the b-word, please)
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Okay, I am done with that now.
But, TL;DR: it IS important to realize that nobody ever complained about these things while being an honest progressive, or basically someone you'd actually want to talk to, and that not being a heteronormative white male on the internet is a gazillion times shittier.
It's hard to wait those full extra five minutes of your life, I know, but it's the idea of giving them a chance that counts. They'll still bitch about it somewhere else though. Because nothing says "that site is an echo chamber!" than bitching about it on another echo chamber.
So no, echo chambers aren't actually bad, they are more or less inherent to human behavior as is, but they do lead to blind spots. The 2016 US election being an obvious one, but I don't believe it would have mattered since the primary factor in there is Facebook, which has since barely made any changes worth a damn. Instead people themselves have stopped relying on it for information. So a different example: the kind of attitudes and vile behavior that come with 'those other places', which was honestly rather shocking to discover after a decade of seeming anonymity for me.
However, the fact that a white man does not have to endure that kind of extremist bullying (and worse), does tell you something fundamental about what white privilege is.
And you know, "opinions" aren't even a part of that bullying, it's just for:
- not having the right skin color
- not having the right sex
- not having the 'correct gender'
- not having an abnormally normal life
- not having a full healthy body (and / or mind)
and so on, but basically never for this mythical 'wrong opinion' that I also possess yet it never comes up.
From now on, I am just going to bitch about how I am too white and too male to get bitched about by shitty people on the internet, while trying so damn hard to create an echo chamber. (forgive the b-word, please)
...
Okay, I am done with that now.
But, TL;DR: it IS important to realize that nobody ever complained about these things while being an honest progressive, or basically someone you'd actually want to talk to, and that not being a heteronormative white male on the internet is a gazillion times shittier.
Like I said, I don't go after the extremists (I've tried but they're like Alex Jones people -- they're so distrustful of all information it can be tough to even agree on what anfact is), and I'm not trying to be friends with them, but my point here is that some of these people are teachable and that learning to speak about these things in a way that rings true to the most number of people is really important.
One of the things that has made the Republican party so effective in the past 3 decades is the amount of effort they put into crafting talking points, focus testing them, and hammering them home. The left has gotten so self righteous that they feel like they no longer have to convince anyone of anything, and that arrogance cost us the last election.
Maybe it's my years in marketing, but persuasion is real, and it needs to be a priority.
I don't think you'd get the same quality of ideas and solutions to things if you existed solely within an echo chamber. I think what makes an echo chamber so attractive to a lot of people is that they want one thing without compromise, and you can't always have it that way. You can certainly put a lot of like-minded people into a discussion and come out with something that sounds good to those people, but the problem is that you're not getting an accurate view of the potential pitfalls or objections to those ideas. If there's a lot at stake, then you should steer clear of echo chambers, because you're only putting yourself at a disadvantage if you rely on them. Discussions to solutions isn't about feeling comfortable; you have to understand all sides, and you can't do that if everyone around you is on the same side.
My dude, nobody thinks you're the bogeyman, but everyone recognizes this lemming-like obsession you seem to have with being a martyr. When you get back from your ban, don't do this again.
So you're cool to admit you made a mistake citing Daryl Davis then yes?
Btw what makes the GOP effective is that a lot of white people in the US are racist, and if they're not racist they're sexist and if they're not sexist they're homophobic and if they're not homophobic they're transphobic and many are all of those.
The echo chamber meme is insanely stupid it takes 5 seconds to actually recognize that every place is going to be a echo chamber of some kind.
Even places that have no rules and are ok with pedos, racist, rapist and general human scum to say whatever that in itself is going to automatically be an echo chamber of its own as voices not ok with that stuff get drowned out.
Any person with any semblance of critical thinking should recognize what type of echo chamber they want to be a part of, that diversity of opinion in itself is not a qualitative factor and that there is a lot of nuance in building spaces that don't allow human scum to barf out trash while at the same time allow diverse opinions that are valuable through other measures to be shared.
Even places that have no rules and are ok with pedos, racist, rapist and general human scum to say whatever that in itself is going to automatically be an echo chamber of its own as voices not ok with that stuff get drowned out.
Any person with any semblance of critical thinking should recognize what type of echo chamber they want to be a part of, that diversity of opinion in itself is not a qualitative factor and that there is a lot of nuance in building spaces that don't allow human scum to barf out trash while at the same time allow diverse opinions that are valuable through other measures to be shared.
They have one move. We've all seen it. They just call it something different every time. It's nauseating.
The Russians and willingness of Trump to work with them cost us the election.
You've told me some things about him that I don't like and didn't know, but I don't think that disproves the idea that engaging people can change their minds and that he was reasonably good at that.
We call these things "ignorant," for a reason though. A lot of times these beliefs are rooted in misinformation and assumptions that they've never had challenged.
Like, if you take someone who is defending Trump for calling Mexicans rapists and criminals -- there's hard factual information you can show that person that actually illegal immigrants commit major crimes at a lower rate than the population at large. You have to start from there. If you can challenge these sort of misinformational pillars that prop up their racism without triggering their defense mechanisms or personally attacking them, you can knock down the whole house of cards.
It's a mistake to look at this stuff strictly as a moral failing. Yes, hate is amoral, but it's also taught, which means it can be untaught. And if these conversations were happening in a louder, more public way, it would be harder for these people to fall for this sort of disinformation in the first place.
And absolutely nothing else, right?
Yep, and what it really comes down to is that much of White America is convinced that racism and bigotry aren't a problem, don't really exist, and are just a tool for minorities to play the victim. The shit is ingrained, I am White, know a shit ton of White people, and very few don't see things this way at some level. As such, they will vote for the GOP because they target minorities (the fakers with no real problems!), and since most are comfortable enough not to have politics affect their own lives, it's something they can actually vote for. And no I don't see much of a difference between people that ignore and contribute to racism than those that are active in it. End effect is the same.
You call them ignorant... I don't they aren't ignorant, they're bigoted.
This is an important distinction. We know better. People that choose that path do so willingly.
Accurate. Most conservatives do NOT want to talk about race, period. They think that if they don't say anything about it, then they can't be racist, and as long as no one confronts them, then they don't have to talk about it. So they just want people to shut up about it, and for their NFL players to stand and salute and throw the damn ball. Ignoring the problem and fixing the problem are the same thing.
The problem is, most white liberals think the same thing. They don't want to have loud public conversations about race where they explain all the reasons it's wrong, they just want vocal racists to disappear, and people to go back to quietly discriminating in a way that is easy for a white suburbanite to ignore.
And, now that people can retreat into these echo chambers, both can get what they want! All the racists and "race-baiters" can be banned from the respective liberal/conservative infospheres and then racism is fixed! As long as you're white.
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Yes, this is literally the exact statement I made.
Ignorance is a failure of learning, not a failure of morality (though the former can lead to the latter). Thus it can be cured through teaching.
he's pointing out that I educated you about Daryl Davis and it changed nothing for you.
There's never been a time where exposure to minorities as been more relevant and easy to access and yet bigotry is still trucking along, still winning elections, still inflicting societal and systemic oppression.
At some point it stops becoming a product of not knowing better.
It changed my opinion of the guy, but it didn't really have anything to do with my argument in the first place, so why would it change that?
Because it kinda exposed the idea that a wholesale good talking to is all that bigots need to change.
Then what is it? Is it just tribalism? Even that I'd argue is probably made worse by ideological segregation.
I'm not sure thats true, its a recent phenomenon that seems aligned with the rise of social media that people want to treat discourse like twitter and block anything they don't want to hear pre-emptively, and its not a liberal concept as much as it is a leftist one.
Its why the traditional press have always used a forum format and had things like letters pages and editorials, and reputable press often allow point : counterpoint type articles by people they do not necessarily agree with.
But where does it come from? Are they born with it? Is it in their DNA?
Fair point that I'm using "liberal" as a self-identifier, not an ideology.
It comes from all sorts of places, maybe if you get em young things can work out, but we ain't talking about anti-bigotry education in schools, we're talking mostly adults here, they live in society, they know better but still hate.
I am sick of this infantilization oi bigots as if they just don't know better.
The problem with echo chambers isn't the lack of discussion.. I mean that IS a prominent problem. But no, the real problem comes down to moderation. We saw it on GAF, we see it here. When moderators are so passionate about an issue, and a notable dissent sets them into a ban frenzy. Here they try to defend the practice under the guise Of "drive by".. i.e. that the banned made no attempt to discuss. But that is disingenuous IMHO. Every opinion on a topic doesn't need to be a 3000 word dissertation on the poster's views on said opinion.. If a mod TRULY feels like the poster is trying to just cause strife with a "drive by" is would seem more honest on the part of the moderator to actually engage in conversation. The lack of the moderator caring what the person is trying to say, something that clearly dissents with the mod's own beliefs, thus leads to the same stuff we have on so many forums. Mod's banning over disagreement instead of actual vitriol being spouted on the boards.
I see a number of posts in this thread saying "echo chamber is just an insult used to defend spouting bad opinions or disinformation", things along those lines.. No, echo chamber is used to describe a place where the conversation, from the users all the way up to the moderators, is highly moderated, both figuratively (through user behavior) and literally.
Obviously they do have their benefits.. everyone needs a safe place to retreat to. The world tends to be a harsh place.. and has turned into a place where if someone doesn't like your opinion, not only will the tell you in no uncertain terms, but they probably have 5+ friends with them being just as upfront about it.
But let's not pretend that they don't come with that big down side also. And while it's easy to say "as long as you don't get your only source of information from such places"..... many people, and forums, these days tend to fall on the exact same side of polarity. Humans love to make things binary. Much easier to process.
Ultimately I believe we are heading toward some sort of major social upheaval. With so many points of view being distilled into a binary "us vs them" mind set.. eventually we will end up in a cultural revolution that will coming crashing down on both sides. The far left and/or far right as we know it will become culturally insignificant.. and we will likely enter into a dark age (which is what's happening now). Once that completes.. we'll then eventually have a new renaissance where curiosity and open/free thinking begin to bloom again and this binary mindset is a remanant of a darker time.
I see a number of posts in this thread saying "echo chamber is just an insult used to defend spouting bad opinions or disinformation", things along those lines.. No, echo chamber is used to describe a place where the conversation, from the users all the way up to the moderators, is highly moderated, both figuratively (through user behavior) and literally.
Obviously they do have their benefits.. everyone needs a safe place to retreat to. The world tends to be a harsh place.. and has turned into a place where if someone doesn't like your opinion, not only will the tell you in no uncertain terms, but they probably have 5+ friends with them being just as upfront about it.
But let's not pretend that they don't come with that big down side also. And while it's easy to say "as long as you don't get your only source of information from such places"..... many people, and forums, these days tend to fall on the exact same side of polarity. Humans love to make things binary. Much easier to process.
Ultimately I believe we are heading toward some sort of major social upheaval. With so many points of view being distilled into a binary "us vs them" mind set.. eventually we will end up in a cultural revolution that will coming crashing down on both sides. The far left and/or far right as we know it will become culturally insignificant.. and we will likely enter into a dark age (which is what's happening now). Once that completes.. we'll then eventually have a new renaissance where curiosity and open/free thinking begin to bloom again and this binary mindset is a remanant of a darker time.
I dunno, man, you might be surprised. There's a lot these people don't know or just take on faith.
The echo-chamber effect definitely reinforces the problem. A big issue is that these people distrust information that isn't convenient to them. Like they just go "Oh some liberal made that up." It's really frustrating when you see that, and it's getting worse, but that really just reinforces for me how important it is not to let people retreat into their little cults and to keep them engaged in dialog.
Can I be petty and request this poster gets a "The Boogeyman" or "Baba Yaga" tag?
Without fail, the ones who claim the power to change minds through discourse show themselves unwilling to have their minds changed through discourse.
One day I'll be wrong about those people, but not today.
One day I'll be wrong about those people, but not today.
Institutionalized hated does not just change easily. It can be hard to escape when it's all around you in many facets be it friends, family, school, music, etc. When it's just ingrained in their culture and community that goes beyond being an echo chamber.
It's also important to remember that you can exist in a "liberal echo chamber" but still exhibit signs of casual racism, bigotry, and misogyny (hint: that's been pointed out here, as in Era)
So should for example places like this be more lenient on people who are bigoted in order to "educate them"?
Worldviews are one of the most ingrained and innate identities that people have. It is very difficult to change, but not impossible. It usually takes continued exposure or some strong catalyst, with some investment or passion on the topic.
That's why discussing anything political is so difficult, because these are two conflicting worldviews and no one wants to compromise on their own self-identity. But it is so important to continue discussions, for the reasons above. It is important to discuss important and impactful issues.
This is important. It is fine getting all your news from GAF or Reset. That doesn't mean I have to think about the news the way the OP might push me to. Plus, this way I don't have to see bullshit "news" about Mariah fucking Carrey.
I mean you realize this is mostly America.. and not a whole ton of other civilized countries. Our two party system here sucks. There are actually plenty of different views within the country.. yet left and right are wheat this country is distilled to in the mainstream media and political campaigning. If we actually instituted laws and regulations to ensure that other parties were on even ground with the RNC and DNC.. this country would probably be a whole lot different. Unfortunately there is way too much money around and invested into Washington for that to ever happen.
I think echo chambers on the internet are terrible. I like seeing opposing view points. How are you ever going to grow as a person if someone posts a political thread and all the replies are yeah fuck the other side they are all stupid morons. I want to see opposing views presented and argued so I can think about them myself. I believe in what works, I don't rigidly follow an ideology and blindly support it even if evidence to the contrary is presented.
For sure, the most frustrating experiences are when you actually get through to someone, only to have it go away once they go back to the group, because that voice is just drowned out.
That's why I think we should be having these conversations more publicly in a way that can reach a large number of people.
It really depends on the context. If someone is trolling or attacking people, then of course not. But if they're having a civil debate with people but they just have objectionable view points, I personally think we should be more lenient on that, up to a point, because I think those conversations can be productive.
I also just generally think that learning how to talk to people with different backgrounds is a really good skill for people on the left to have in trying to campaign and message these things. Again, I'm not really talking about Nazis here, I'm talking about connecting with that teachable 10% that we need to really change this country.
No thanks, I've done exactly what you've suggested here and you know what I got for it? Nothing.
Do you have an example where this may have happened, meaning the conversation didn't happen due to fast ban or shunning?
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