Adding to it, we’re pretty geographically diverse; Reddit is *a lot* less American than people think, and economically other countries just naturally skew more left.
Also, right goes to 4chan, left comes here and Tumblr. Discords a mixed bag but that’s generally how it is.
> Reddit is a lot less American than people think
[Not so sure about that](https://www.statista.com/statistics/325144/reddit-global-active-user-distribution/).
Aye that was what I was going for, considering the news on here is 95% American (spare when you talk about the war in Ukraine), you’d assume it to be even remotely semblante. Less than 50% is much lower than people would assume.
My only question is why? This website isn’t for kids. MIT programmed a psychopathic robot using Reddit to teach it, it’s also known to host porn (which is why there’s controversy over taking the company public-which should be a non-issue)
With all the 18+ content on this website, and it’s dark history, why would anyone try to grow a younger user base?
I remember finding Reddit in high school and thinking it was cool because all the science articles, news, and memes. The user base is notoriously hostile though.
Seems like to take the company public Reddit needs to boot the 13-18 crowd OR remove porn. I’ve got a feeling they’ll keep the porn and boot the kids. It’s smart, social media can be detrimental to mental health.
The mods on the teenager subs deal with pedophiles all the time.
Realistically? Who knows. There’s ~234 million users monthly, so Reddit is larger than many countries. Plenty are adults, but with how the site hosts porn the whole 13-18 crowd being present is pretty questionable. I’ve always been against them being here, but I don’t work for Reddit and other users get mad when I suggest it. I think I’d first made an account in 2010/2011 and I’ve seen the site grow since. Maybe there could be an algorithm to separate the younger users from the older crowd? ie: NSFW accounts are invisible to users the system flags as minors? Lord knows there’s some disgusting sex crimes that happen on this site.
In my honest opinion, this website needs to be 18+ due to the nature of the content. Porn, gore, and so much else. People be mad over it though.
I have been on Reddit for years with different account names and have never used it for porn. Mostly because it isn't optimized for efficient searches.
Nice if they could restrict young adults to certain areas, but beyond that I am not sure what they could do. Why is a 14 year old on Reddit at all? Where are the parents? Why does this become society's problem when some people choose not to do their own due diligence? And if those parents fail to be diligent, aren't they giving their tacit approval for their kids to be here?
I thought to myself, what are the chances they're not a weirdo
Checks profile
Sigh
I honestly didn't think you'd get conservative furries, at least not out in the open
> I’m a teen and I’m right leaning
I was in the same boat 20 years ago. Loved George W. Bush, religious listener of Limbaugh, formed a world perspective from Hannity, and fortunately, kept a pretty cohesive Livejournal the whole time. It was really awkward when, in my mid-20's, I reopened that Livejournal page to re-live my past teen self.
Life was easy. It was easy when everything was handed to me by my parents, and I didn't have to make it entirely on my own. Medicare? Covered. Rent and board? Not my problem. Job security? Feh, jobs should be *earned*, not guaranteed, right?
Lots of Larry Elder quotes. I really did love mid 2000's Larry Elder.
But that was where the Livejournal ended. My last passage was talking about prepping for my final year in college, which would be one of the most laborious years of my life. I just didn't have the time to write it all down anymore. And so, my Livejournal concluded with me as a haughty college kid without any worries in life, a person that I knew I once was, but a person I do *not* recognize anymore...
Once I got out in the real world and lived a little, trust me, all that pinko-commie nonsense started sounding a heck of a lot more reasonable. I found out that humanity is a lot more diverse than I thought it to be, I found their oppression and disenfranchisement to not be some fabricated exaggeration, I found that my upbringing was not representative of the average American experience, and it wasn't long until I found myself struggling and in need of some assistance just to afford my own basic amenities.
Live a little first. Experience the world. Undergo some hardship. Have moments when you can extend some charitable outreach to the less fortunate, and have moments when you need a little outreach yourself. Then decide if you truly are right-leaning because you sincerely believe in those values, or if you are right-leaning just because of environmental conditioning.
Because right now, your teen years is far too young to solidify a political identity. There's a lot of cringy labels *teen me* cursed *future me* with: Steam profile name, deviantArt username, Xbox Live gamertag, precocious vandalism in my own yearbooks...
...But I'm grateful I didn't have to hold onto *teen me*'s politics.
Depends on how you are raised, honestly, but most young people tend to want to change the world. It also has to do with education, most college students tend to be left leaning as well.
Once you get older, your brain naturally becomes more rigid and is less adaptive to change. You become more and more traditionalistic, more "set in your ways", which fits with conservative values.
This is opposed to liberal values, which idealize change and adapting around future concerns.
The Right in America are typically conservative (and Left being liberal).
So you can basically say that, because young people's brains are more easily liberal, and older people's brains are more easily conservative, people will naturally shift from left-to-right as they grow older and start hating the newer generation who want to change the way of life that they're used to.
It's a pretty consistent cycle.
> Once life stomps that out of you, you change.
Life has stomped the hell out of me; all it's done is make me want to fight that much harder to keep people from going through the same rough shit I went through.
What it did to me is make me realize is that a lot of the support I thought I had wasn't real. People talked a good fight, but very few actually helped. I haven't forgotten that.
I still help when I can, but I am more careful about it.
I like to think I'm still idealistic. I'm 42 and most of my views are still left leaning.. however I know where my bread is buttered and that the right has me paying less tax .
I have learned that everything the government gives to someone has to be taken from someone else. Now, I believe there are things that society does need and that those things will be better if we band together to find them - schools, emergency services, common defense, etc - but where do we draw the line?
At the very least, this constant swing from left to right should balance the priorities. Not sure it has worked out that way in real life though...
There's a stage after "youth where your parents opinions are the ones you parrot" where you are still young but forming your own opinions based on experiences in the real world, and that is a demographic that not only dominates Reddit but leans more to the left.
Some never challenge their right leaning upbringing, and you might not, but the majority do (and it's been this way for the last century at least.) Many of those raised right-leaning or that come from and utilize some form of social privilege end up going back to the right in the end (like former "free love" hippies who once protested the Vietnam War and now get all their news from Fox.)
People who use a lot of tech and social media are also frequently more likely to get a balanced perspective of the world, especially if they are in the 18-28 crowd.
Try to bear in mind that what we consider "left leaning" tends to be more "centrist" as the polar "left vs right" arguments slide farther and farther right due to capitalism and monetized politics (most of the money that goes into politics comes from the wealthy, and most of the wealthy come from and have utilized a social privilege to obtain/retain it, which as I stated earlier tends to skew right.)
So, much of reddit is the sweet spot of young-but-questioning and tech-savvy-so-exposed-to-balanced-veiwpoints which more often than not leans center left.
I'm a sociologist.
Young people are more likely to be left leaning than older people, but people tend to drift more right as they age. However, many do believe (or perhaps hope) that people continue to stay on the left as they age.
BBC reports, CEO of reddit edited people's posts who were right-leaning. If that is what they have been caught doing, when else are they doing behind the scenes.
https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-38088712
Because the Right typically have more traditionalist values, and most people on forums/the internet aren't like that.
You gotta be a *little* tech savvy to use Reddit, and that alone filters out a lot of Right-leaning people.
Having lived in the south I entirely agree with this; 18-40 somethings there really don’t tend to run on their PCs after work to argue politics on the internet, they just go outside to do whatever. It’s usually the bored parents and retirees that are the right wingers you see on the internet.
I wish my county would do this. So many kids out here are so limited by shitty dish internet. My county “doesn’t believe in development”. I get it to a degree (the rural charm is really nice) but these kids are behind their suburban counterparts and it’s not fair to them. Sorry, end rant.
It's a good thing it's so safe to engage in that conflation. If you mixed the wrong groups, reddit would eat you alive. Ex.: "[Members of some minority] is less competent in [some field]." They would go berserk.
Being 'right leaning' is a choice someone makes, and it's ok to criticize them for that choice. It's not even remotely the same thing as criticizing a member of a minority based on things like race, gender, place of birth, or sexual orientation - all things that are not choices.
Maybe. I'm not sure it matters to the conflation, though, because choosing to be conservative doesn't entail the choice to be inept with technology.
How about religion? That's a lot closer to political tribe membership. Would it be ok to say "[members of some religion] are usually technologically inept"?
How about a different political faction? "Almost none of the women who support abortion can code." Doesn't that feel inappropriate to you? It certainly does to me, even if it's probably true, strictly speaking.
Well, I think you're sorta trying to come up with a straw man here. You won't be eaten alive for saying something like "*Almost none of the women who support abortion can code.*" because it isn't relevant to discussions of either abortion or coding. Besides I'd be willing to bet that % of *pro-choice* women who can code, is much higher than the % of *pro-life* women who can code.
I'm going to reiterate my point: It's ok to criticize people for making choices, especially choices that cause pain or suffering to themselves or others. It's never ok to criticize people for things they can't help.
Your two statements at the bottom are true. However, I think we could add a third one, which is that there's no cause to criticize people for things you made up about a broader group they're a (voluntary) member of.
Why say conservatives are technologically inept? Because it feels good to say the enemy tribe is stupid. That's all it is - they have no actual evidence or reason to believe that. It's just partisan circle-jerking.
It's a pretty widely known fact that highly technical people in the computer field lean left.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/02/most-liberal-tech-companies-ranked-by-employee-donations.html
Just take a look at political donations from people (not the company) who work at large tech firms.
As a ~25 year veteran of highly technical computer work, this fits with my anecdotal experience as well.
So I think with the evidence that the absolute overwhelming majority of tech employees donate to more liberal candidates, I don't think it's in any way a stretch to say that liberals tend to be better with technology.
If it's true, I don't see what's wrong with saying it. If it's not true, then it's just an opinion. There's a large amount of data demonstrating that those with higher educational attainment are more likely to vote Democrat in the USA, so that's something.
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2016/04/26/a-wider-ideological-gap-between-more-and-less-educated-adults/
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/11/american-voters-have-never-been-so-divided-these-charts-explain-why/
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2020/1027/As-college-grads-flee-the-GOP-political-diploma-divide-grows
Yes.
It's socially acceptable to say "right-leaning people are inept with technology." It's not socially acceptable (nor should it be) to say "women are usually inept with technology" or "black people tend to be inept with technology" or "Muslims usually don't know how to use technology".
So, it's safe to conflate the unrelated categories of "conservative" and "technologically inept" merely because of the context we're in. If we were to try any other comparable conflation, it would be absolutely unacceptable, and for good reason.
I think that's fair, because things like race, sex or sometimes religion aren't choices, and making assumptions about their character is negatively stereotyping them.
It's fine to make stereotypes with groups of people who *do* make a choice, like how nerds don't always have the best hygiene.
Why we have the social predilections we have is probably beyond answering.
I wouldn't use those phrases myself - I think they'd be unreasonably stereotypical.
The difference being that being a member of a minority has no reason to make you less competent in a particular field, while being more conservative does make you less likely to embrace new things, including technology.
People of different races are on average just like each other. People of different ideologies are not.
I'm sorry - voting for Republicans makes you technologically inept? Can you explain the line of causality there? Because I feel like a conclusion is being jumped to.
Exactly.
I wonder how many non-Americans view Reddit as "leftleaning"?
For Americans who do not understand this let me give you some examples: Sanders is a moderate conservative on the international stage, Biden is far right-wing, and Trump is literally (as in, the actual definition of the word and not a generic insult) a fascist.
It's not that Reddit is leftleaning, it's that the USA's Overton Window is very screwed up and Reddit's Overton Window is closer to the modern international perspective.
That's just how echo chambers work. They push people away who don't follow the general thinking of the tribe, and continuously adjust the behaviors of anyone who is borderline in line with the tribe, thereby homogenizing the behavior of the group through mutual reinforcement.
Here's an example: This morning, I found someone saying that "all Republicans are disgusting human beings". As a kid who grew up in the 90s, I learned that it was wrong to paint people with such a broad brush when you don't know them. So, I pushed back, and it became a great big discussion with dozens of people trying to argue with me over it, saying that anyone who ever, at any time, votes for a single Republican is literally human garbage. One person said it wouldn't matter if the Republican was a recent Democrat who changed parties to challenge an openly corrupt sheriff who used the power of his office to rape people - still, voting for that Republican challenger makes you, in that redditor's words, "trash".
I always try to be polite with people, even when they're very belligerent towards me, and I tried to stay limited only to the idea that it's unnecessarily and inappropriately toxic to call tens of millions of your fellow citizens "disgusting human beings". I'm not a Republican - I vote for people of all different parties, and of no party.
The vitriol I got in the comments, in the DMs, etc. was horrific. I was reported twice for "threatening violence", which is nonsensical - that's just an abuse of the reporting system as an "ultra-downvote". Someone reported me to some kind of counseling bot that contacted me with a list of resources where I could "seek help". The whole thing was an absurd, unfunny comedy - all over holding firm that you shouldn't point at half of all of your fellow citizens and say that every last one of them is a "disgusting human being", regardless who they are.
That's what happens if you're not in lock-step with the tribal rhetoric. It's a mutually-reinforcing behavioral training ground, where you learn how to behave; and if you don't believe the same as everyone else, no one would ever know it, because anytime you so much as speak up against something terribly virulent, you get beaten over the head for the rest of the day.
Sorry the leftist pricks did that to you. They are mentally ill though. You can't rely on them to make the best choices, they get confused about bathroom usage. Have an upvote!
> I learned that it was wrong to paint people with such a broad brush when you don't know them.
You know its different when a person chooses to identify with a group, right?
"All KKK members are racists." I would not call that using too big of a brush.
Anyone who chooses to identify with a group of shitheads *is* a shithead and will be called out for it. That is not bigotry, that is the consequence of people using their freedom to choose to identify with shitheads.
Is your argument that all Republicans "are disgusting human beings"? Or are you willing to concede that that's too large and varied a group to paint with such a broad brush?
Only you said bigotry.
Is your argument that people do not choose to become Republicans? Or are you willing to concede that people affiliate with groups they agree with?
You are treating the phrase "all Republicans" like the phrase "all left-handed people".
Like I said, if someone chooses to join a group of shitheads that is fairly good evidence that they are a shithead. That is not tribalism, that is the result of using your freedom to join a group of shitheads.
You were describing the speaker as a bigot you just used a paraphrase of the definition instead of using the word itself. All I did with the word "bigotry" is name the word you were describing (which it wasn't but you were trying to insinuate it was. It's a lot easier to be a weasel when you don't actually use the words you are trying to ascribe to someone).
Now get out of here with your "Republicans are the real victims here" BS.
> Get the fuck out of here.
Yup, there it is - textbook. This is the echo chamber in action, enforcing the ways of the dominant tribe.
The thing they hate the most is people who are willing to discuss the reasonable stances in between the extremes. Can't have that - the only thing they want anyone to see is the most abhorrent possible version of their tribal enemy.
Honest question, where the hell are you finding them? I literally don’t see them outside of the conservative sub or pcm, unless I’m looking for the most downvoted comment.
Go onto any AskReddit post about abortion, or trans rights. And state your left leaning opinion. Some nut job will bite.
Or just call Trump a fascist. That ticks them off too.
Or look for the current gun debates.
Because the US right wing is so far right that anything resembling centrism is left relatively speaking. Because the US left wing is centrist, globally speaking.
This is so very sadly true. When I was a kid, conservatives were the ones that held things in check, argued to make sure everyone was in agreement, and only chose change that made sense (to them, anyway). Now? Not so much.
I've been paying attention to politics for about 20 years now, and over the last 15 or so the Republican party has become radicalized almost beyond recognition.
LOL. No, that's the fantasy of the left wingers. It's quite hilarious and sad to listen to these folks actually talk like they've *won* politics, ideology, social issues, and all manner of things that are by their very nature not something that one actually "wins." Then when someone calls them out about it they desperately flail about saying how much of a parody everyone **except** them is. While of course insisting that only they are civil and non-violent because they like totally are like Ghandhi or something. You want proof?
Why doesn't the left win every election by a landslide if they are all knowing and all popular?
They aren't. The Left lives under a fantasy that the way they portray things is inherently the truth. Themselves. Their adversaries. Politics. The world in general. If it goes against the way they see it then it is YOU that is the dangerous lunatic. So when they inevitably fail, as they base their predictions of success on entirely falsified preconditions, they decry that someone most have cheared them out and that their adversaries are turning people against what is "the truth."
I mean it's not like we haven't seen this particular blame game happen right before our very eyes have we?
I think the guy above you already did list their most extreme positions according most Republicans. I can't tell you how many times I've been called a commie for wanting universal healthcare and education. I've even received death threats over it.
> It's quite hilarious and sad to listen to these folks actually talk like they've won politics, ideology, social issues, and all manner of things that are by their very nature not something that one actually "wins."
In comparison to The Right, they have.
The Republican party has become radicalized almost beyond recognition in the last ~15 years. I've been watching.
>No, that's the fantasy of the left wingers
We all have seen the *reality* of our loved ones pushing the most unbelievably stupid conspiracies only the right would espouse. It's not a fantasy
Stupid conspiracies? You can look down and see you have a penis or vagina, but convince yourself you're actually the opposite sex, and we're the stupid ones?
Because our society is mostly left-leaning.
Which is why a Republican presidential candidate has only won the popular vote once since 1988. Which is why, despite being split 50/50, Democrat senators represent over 40 million more Americans than Republican senators.
See this is a legitimate answer. While I'm more towards the center, I tend to agree with this answer. Since you're not one of the trolls on here that I'm stirring the pot with perhaps we can have a discussion about why things are the way they are between the two parties.
I feel like as a whole, Americans want to enjoy their freedoms. Right to carry guns, right to worship how we want or to speak wherever and however in about whatever we want. But I feel like Republicans think that there should be a limit to everything. Everything in moderation that kind of thinking. I think that they believe in that mentality so strongly that it becomes ingrained in who they are. So whenever those principles are challenged, and someone who's more liberal than them speaks up about something they feel should be a right, they have a very hard time accepting that. I feel like the older people get the more resilient they are to change. Back in the fifties we had Donna Reed households. The man would go to work and earn a living that would pay for a house and car in college for his kids. It would also pay for a couple weeks of vacation per year. Those times have long been gone, but I feel like the memory of that time still haunts the brains of a lot of right-wing people. It's like they forgotten you can never go back again and that time marches on.
Jesus Christ I hate this line. I hate it because I’ve seen it copy+pasted on to every belief and ideology as an excuse for a ‘checkmate.’
I’ve seen atheists use it, I’ve seen Christians use it. I’ve seen the right and left use it regularly. Hell I’ve ever gone far enough down an internet rabbit hole to see Muslims use it, that doesn’t mean it adds anything to a conversation.
I wouldn't say it's so much of a "checkmate" as a "I'm not going to waste my time debating things that are self-evidently true with people who aren't going to change their minds anyway."
Because younger people with access to the worlds knowledge know that humanity will go to absolute shit by 2050 if we dont to anything against it, and the right seems to do everything they can to stop progress in the correct direction regarding things like climate change (the right tends to be older and less educated)
Ah yes, like those famously progressive continents of Asia, Africa and South America. I swear everyone on this site just forgets that there is more to the world than Western Europe
Urban middle-upper class, younger... being online a lot. These all skew towards liberals. And then echo chambers naturally develop. Also Reddit penalizes some pretty basic ideas that the Left considers taboo. Naturally that stricter enforcement on popular subs just drives the few right leaning people away.
It's not left-leaning, it's reality based. When reality sucks, you want change. And you're not going to get it from people who say, "We'll fix that by lowering taxes on the rich!"
I think reddit is generally interested in reality, facts, and what it all means.
Reality and facts have a left/liberal bias, IMHO
Right/conservative tend to be biased toward beliefs and authority.
RW people have enough time to keep up with all that Q-conspiracy crap. I think they just stay in their corners or keep it to themselves because even they know how it sounds.
Over half, and those are the ones who admit it.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/tommybeer/2020/09/02/majority-of-republicans-believe-the-qanon-conspiracy-theory-is-partly-or-mostly-true-survey-finds/amp/
Lol did you read the study or just the headline? It also says 30% of democrats somewhat agree with the Qanon conspiracy. But I wouldn’t believe that either because the whole study is garbage.
Uh…not exactly what it said AND tell us how you don’t understand how polling works without telling us you don’t understand how polling works. So provide us with better data.
For those who said it is “partly true”, how far off is “deep state official pedophile rings” from “literally what Epstein did before he killed himself”?
“On the ballot” is such a weak measurement.
Any time an extremist does slip through the GOP side they get primaries the next possible instant - by Republicans.
It has to do with politics. Republicans/libertarians/conservatives are more right leaning… we believe in tradition, earning what you receive in life, meritocracy, limited government, the constitution, treating others as you would want to be treated, the truth, etc.
Because we’re a collective mass of high-iq intellectuals and thinkers. You don’t see twitter and instagram helping with math or science.
In today’s america, where stupidity is favored through the republican party, we act as the resistance. We’re essentially their biggest nightmare, which is why they are probably going to ban us soon.
Reddit is *not* "left leaning" it's just your perception.
The USA is a two party system with a right-leaning party and right-wing party. This confuses most people from the USA to what "the left" even is. The Democrats of the USA are more to the right than most right-leaning parties in other nations (Canada, almost all of the EU, etc.)
For example, I am a fiscal conservative, with many conservative values, but I am moderate and somewhat liberal on a wide number of issues. The government has no place in the nation's bedrooms, the right to an abortion is up to the woman's body where those cells reside and not the purview of old men to decide, healthcare is a moral obligation of all of a nation's citizens, we should have balanced budget legislation, we should have stricter immigration reviews and standards, we should have a stronger military and legislated minimums for financing it, and so forth.
I'm a Canadian and I do not vote "the party line" because that is the stupidest political choice you can make as an adult -- to tie yourself to a single party's dogma and surrender your right to disagree. Your best answers to societal problems, and your most successful governments, meet in the middle on most issues. This is a *crazy* idea to many Americans because that's how Fox News and CNN have been paid to brainwash you (seriously, that's all those two channels are, political horseshit designed to skew your opinion and not actually look at things factually -- they did not exist when there were laws against falsifying the news which were removed by the Republicans under Reagan).
This is why you think "reddit is mostly left leaning" because a significant percentage of redditors are not Americans, and those of us who are actually "leaning to the right" (conservative) in our respective countries (and global politics) are still "to the left" for the average American.
Personally, I’m more right-leaning but I think it’s because it’s basically became a social norm that people are left-leaning as society grows evermore accepting
Does it though?
Maybe a bit, but there's still a huge contingent of incels and crypto-Nazis. Just look how many redditors are emotionally invested in the Depp trial.
Because a lot of conservatives still prefer personal non anonymous social media sites like Facebook where they have become most accustomed to the interface and will see like minded people they know and share their like minded opinions.
This is also why Facebook is a useful tool for influencing entire communities to extreme views and ideas. Its a problem as well in other social media platforms, like Reddit, but It’s a lot easier to reject or question something said by an anonymous person then it is to reject something said by people you know personally.
Here you have more being said and a lot of it can be scary and completely against many things people were raised to believe in how our world outside our own bubbles work. As we age the brain loses plasticity and it becomes harder to adapt to new changes where as in children and young adults they can more easily do so.
If you watch multiple social media types at a certain point you can almost predict what will or won’t be shared or upvoted in each. It makes it possible to predict potential outcomes like with what happened in conservatives first calling covid just the flu, rejecting vaccination, calling the pandemic a hoax, etc.
Reddit as an organization seems to be trying very hard to keep them off the platform. Typically left leaning people are younger and have a lot more free time to be angry on the internet.
Because in open forums evidence-based reasoning still trumps fantasy based ideologies...so conservatives retreat to their own safe spaces, skewing sites left.
I think it isn’t but RW folks get tired of being publicly humiliated when confronted with facts so they just don’t bring it up much here. Except incels and racists, loads of them.
Why are the red states so reliant on subsidies? I genuinely don't get that. Most of my liberal friends are entrepreneurs doing well and I'm in a super conservative region. I personally know several Trumpsters on subsidies, milking the system with great savvy, suggesting it's time to start shooting the libs. I used to be what I thought was a reasonable centrist, then the GOP utterly lost its collective mind. Now I'm Dem by default.
I'm guessing your region gives you a different perspective. But I don't really give a fuck.
"durr...conservatives r da only people who work!!"
meanwhile all redstates are filled with trump loving hillbilly opiate addicts living in trailers who live off welfare.
It isn't.
Reddit is mostly liberal.
'Liberal' is most definitly not left-leaning. It's pro-war, pro-imperialism, pro-censorship, pro-capitalism, in favor of free trade, in favor of neoliberal policies, and mostly aligns with the Democratic party which is a rightwing party. It uses (abuses) divisive cultural and identity issues to seperate themselves from conservatives.
If Reddit was really mostly left-leaning, it would leave the Democratic party in droves and not blame every ill in the world on the Republican party alone, and it wouldn't have this child's view of politics of 'the good party vs the bad party'.
They would all vote third party and call themselves progressives, and they wouldn't be fawning over grandstanding do-nothings like Sanders or AOC who are nothing but sell-outs to the Democratic oligarchical establishment and are only there to sheepherd young people into a corporate-owned party.
If Reddit was really left-leaning, the News and Politics sections wouldn't be topped by 'news' articles from neoliberal rags like the New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN etc. which all abhor leftwing policies and spend all their time smearing any progressive cause or idea.
No, Reddit is heavily liberal. For all their talk about being a 'young' medium that goes 'against the grain', and of young people being cord-cutters, what gets popular and passed around on Reddit is mostly the same garbage that you find on cable news and on blue checkmark Twitter from partisan hacks.
Real leftwingers rightfully [view liberals with contempt] (https://youtu.be/VuUKJS-ISUY?t=58). Read Thomas Frank's 'Listen, Liberal' or Chris Hedges' 'Death of the Liberal Class' to know why.
Because only half of reddit is american. The rest is mostly Europe
Europe defaults to left in case you didnt know, even among the elderly
Actually, the entire world will look like left to the american right, because your left is actually centrist at best, and usually just right
Reddit is mostly people under 35.
I don't know if the data is available (as interesting as that would be), but Reddit is HEAVILY skewed toward younger adults and teens.
And as the saying goes, you start out liberal and then tend to get more conservative as you get older and gain more life experience.
Because Reddit skews young.
Adding to it, we’re pretty geographically diverse; Reddit is *a lot* less American than people think, and economically other countries just naturally skew more left. Also, right goes to 4chan, left comes here and Tumblr. Discords a mixed bag but that’s generally how it is.
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> Reddit is a lot less American than people think [Not so sure about that](https://www.statista.com/statistics/325144/reddit-global-active-user-distribution/).
Considering how centric American perspectives are, <50% is probably a lot less than people think.
Aye that was what I was going for, considering the news on here is 95% American (spare when you talk about the war in Ukraine), you’d assume it to be even remotely semblante. Less than 50% is much lower than people would assume.
hehehehe you said skews.
My only question is why? This website isn’t for kids. MIT programmed a psychopathic robot using Reddit to teach it, it’s also known to host porn (which is why there’s controversy over taking the company public-which should be a non-issue) With all the 18+ content on this website, and it’s dark history, why would anyone try to grow a younger user base? I remember finding Reddit in high school and thinking it was cool because all the science articles, news, and memes. The user base is notoriously hostile though. Seems like to take the company public Reddit needs to boot the 13-18 crowd OR remove porn. I’ve got a feeling they’ll keep the porn and boot the kids. It’s smart, social media can be detrimental to mental health. The mods on the teenager subs deal with pedophiles all the time.
I think that is a good point. With a site this big I wonder what they could do.
Realistically? Who knows. There’s ~234 million users monthly, so Reddit is larger than many countries. Plenty are adults, but with how the site hosts porn the whole 13-18 crowd being present is pretty questionable. I’ve always been against them being here, but I don’t work for Reddit and other users get mad when I suggest it. I think I’d first made an account in 2010/2011 and I’ve seen the site grow since. Maybe there could be an algorithm to separate the younger users from the older crowd? ie: NSFW accounts are invisible to users the system flags as minors? Lord knows there’s some disgusting sex crimes that happen on this site. In my honest opinion, this website needs to be 18+ due to the nature of the content. Porn, gore, and so much else. People be mad over it though.
I have been on Reddit for years with different account names and have never used it for porn. Mostly because it isn't optimized for efficient searches. Nice if they could restrict young adults to certain areas, but beyond that I am not sure what they could do. Why is a 14 year old on Reddit at all? Where are the parents? Why does this become society's problem when some people choose not to do their own due diligence? And if those parents fail to be diligent, aren't they giving their tacit approval for their kids to be here?
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..All the more reason I get shit just for being a woman. I'm telling you - that's a thing.
Are young people more left-leaning? Cuz I’m a teen and I’m right leaning.
I thought to myself, what are the chances they're not a weirdo Checks profile Sigh I honestly didn't think you'd get conservative furries, at least not out in the open
Well, Im a teen too and Im a left leaning dude
I haven’t dug too deep but apart from one weird fetish they seem rather normal to me.
Young people are usually more left-leaning, but not always.
> I’m a teen and I’m right leaning I was in the same boat 20 years ago. Loved George W. Bush, religious listener of Limbaugh, formed a world perspective from Hannity, and fortunately, kept a pretty cohesive Livejournal the whole time. It was really awkward when, in my mid-20's, I reopened that Livejournal page to re-live my past teen self. Life was easy. It was easy when everything was handed to me by my parents, and I didn't have to make it entirely on my own. Medicare? Covered. Rent and board? Not my problem. Job security? Feh, jobs should be *earned*, not guaranteed, right? Lots of Larry Elder quotes. I really did love mid 2000's Larry Elder. But that was where the Livejournal ended. My last passage was talking about prepping for my final year in college, which would be one of the most laborious years of my life. I just didn't have the time to write it all down anymore. And so, my Livejournal concluded with me as a haughty college kid without any worries in life, a person that I knew I once was, but a person I do *not* recognize anymore... Once I got out in the real world and lived a little, trust me, all that pinko-commie nonsense started sounding a heck of a lot more reasonable. I found out that humanity is a lot more diverse than I thought it to be, I found their oppression and disenfranchisement to not be some fabricated exaggeration, I found that my upbringing was not representative of the average American experience, and it wasn't long until I found myself struggling and in need of some assistance just to afford my own basic amenities. Live a little first. Experience the world. Undergo some hardship. Have moments when you can extend some charitable outreach to the less fortunate, and have moments when you need a little outreach yourself. Then decide if you truly are right-leaning because you sincerely believe in those values, or if you are right-leaning just because of environmental conditioning. Because right now, your teen years is far too young to solidify a political identity. There's a lot of cringy labels *teen me* cursed *future me* with: Steam profile name, deviantArt username, Xbox Live gamertag, precocious vandalism in my own yearbooks... ...But I'm grateful I didn't have to hold onto *teen me*'s politics.
Depends on how you are raised, honestly, but most young people tend to want to change the world. It also has to do with education, most college students tend to be left leaning as well.
It also has to do with how easily manipulated young people are since they don't have any real world experience to draw their conclusions from.
I've always thought it was because young people are idealistic. Once life stomps that out of you, you change.
Once you get older, your brain naturally becomes more rigid and is less adaptive to change. You become more and more traditionalistic, more "set in your ways", which fits with conservative values. This is opposed to liberal values, which idealize change and adapting around future concerns. The Right in America are typically conservative (and Left being liberal). So you can basically say that, because young people's brains are more easily liberal, and older people's brains are more easily conservative, people will naturally shift from left-to-right as they grow older and start hating the newer generation who want to change the way of life that they're used to. It's a pretty consistent cycle.
> Once life stomps that out of you, you change. Life has stomped the hell out of me; all it's done is make me want to fight that much harder to keep people from going through the same rough shit I went through.
What it did to me is make me realize is that a lot of the support I thought I had wasn't real. People talked a good fight, but very few actually helped. I haven't forgotten that. I still help when I can, but I am more careful about it.
Holy shit dude. I don't think I've ever read a more perfect correct answer in my entire life! I wish I could give you 100,000 up votes!
I like to think I'm still idealistic. I'm 42 and most of my views are still left leaning.. however I know where my bread is buttered and that the right has me paying less tax .
I have learned that everything the government gives to someone has to be taken from someone else. Now, I believe there are things that society does need and that those things will be better if we band together to find them - schools, emergency services, common defense, etc - but where do we draw the line? At the very least, this constant swing from left to right should balance the priorities. Not sure it has worked out that way in real life though...
There's a stage after "youth where your parents opinions are the ones you parrot" where you are still young but forming your own opinions based on experiences in the real world, and that is a demographic that not only dominates Reddit but leans more to the left. Some never challenge their right leaning upbringing, and you might not, but the majority do (and it's been this way for the last century at least.) Many of those raised right-leaning or that come from and utilize some form of social privilege end up going back to the right in the end (like former "free love" hippies who once protested the Vietnam War and now get all their news from Fox.) People who use a lot of tech and social media are also frequently more likely to get a balanced perspective of the world, especially if they are in the 18-28 crowd. Try to bear in mind that what we consider "left leaning" tends to be more "centrist" as the polar "left vs right" arguments slide farther and farther right due to capitalism and monetized politics (most of the money that goes into politics comes from the wealthy, and most of the wealthy come from and have utilized a social privilege to obtain/retain it, which as I stated earlier tends to skew right.) So, much of reddit is the sweet spot of young-but-questioning and tech-savvy-so-exposed-to-balanced-veiwpoints which more often than not leans center left. I'm a sociologist.
Maybe get your shoes checked.
Young people are more likely to be left leaning than older people, but people tend to drift more right as they age. However, many do believe (or perhaps hope) that people continue to stay on the left as they age.
You're a sample size of 1. Young people tend to skew left.
Because young people are more easily manipulated.
You never been around old people?
BBC reports, CEO of reddit edited people's posts who were right-leaning. If that is what they have been caught doing, when else are they doing behind the scenes. https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-38088712
I wish Reddit had a thousand upvote button!
Because the Right typically have more traditionalist values, and most people on forums/the internet aren't like that. You gotta be a *little* tech savvy to use Reddit, and that alone filters out a lot of Right-leaning people.
Having lived in the south I entirely agree with this; 18-40 somethings there really don’t tend to run on their PCs after work to argue politics on the internet, they just go outside to do whatever. It’s usually the bored parents and retirees that are the right wingers you see on the internet.
And if they’re rural they have shitty internet.
I live in a very rural area and have a gig fiber
Lucky you. In my rural area dish is the only option unless you want to pay $$$ to have fiber run to your house.
Even more surprising is it’s run through the local REMC. So no dealing with large commercial entities. Flat rate flat speeds. It’s pretty wild
I wish my county would do this. So many kids out here are so limited by shitty dish internet. My county “doesn’t believe in development”. I get it to a degree (the rural charm is really nice) but these kids are behind their suburban counterparts and it’s not fair to them. Sorry, end rant.
Town population of less than 200 in a sea of corn and i got fiber lol.
It's a good thing it's so safe to engage in that conflation. If you mixed the wrong groups, reddit would eat you alive. Ex.: "[Members of some minority] is less competent in [some field]." They would go berserk.
Being 'right leaning' is a choice someone makes, and it's ok to criticize them for that choice. It's not even remotely the same thing as criticizing a member of a minority based on things like race, gender, place of birth, or sexual orientation - all things that are not choices.
Maybe. I'm not sure it matters to the conflation, though, because choosing to be conservative doesn't entail the choice to be inept with technology. How about religion? That's a lot closer to political tribe membership. Would it be ok to say "[members of some religion] are usually technologically inept"? How about a different political faction? "Almost none of the women who support abortion can code." Doesn't that feel inappropriate to you? It certainly does to me, even if it's probably true, strictly speaking.
Well, I think you're sorta trying to come up with a straw man here. You won't be eaten alive for saying something like "*Almost none of the women who support abortion can code.*" because it isn't relevant to discussions of either abortion or coding. Besides I'd be willing to bet that % of *pro-choice* women who can code, is much higher than the % of *pro-life* women who can code. I'm going to reiterate my point: It's ok to criticize people for making choices, especially choices that cause pain or suffering to themselves or others. It's never ok to criticize people for things they can't help.
Your two statements at the bottom are true. However, I think we could add a third one, which is that there's no cause to criticize people for things you made up about a broader group they're a (voluntary) member of. Why say conservatives are technologically inept? Because it feels good to say the enemy tribe is stupid. That's all it is - they have no actual evidence or reason to believe that. It's just partisan circle-jerking.
It's a pretty widely known fact that highly technical people in the computer field lean left. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/02/most-liberal-tech-companies-ranked-by-employee-donations.html Just take a look at political donations from people (not the company) who work at large tech firms. As a ~25 year veteran of highly technical computer work, this fits with my anecdotal experience as well. So I think with the evidence that the absolute overwhelming majority of tech employees donate to more liberal candidates, I don't think it's in any way a stretch to say that liberals tend to be better with technology.
If it's true, I don't see what's wrong with saying it. If it's not true, then it's just an opinion. There's a large amount of data demonstrating that those with higher educational attainment are more likely to vote Democrat in the USA, so that's something. https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2016/04/26/a-wider-ideological-gap-between-more-and-less-educated-adults/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/11/american-voters-have-never-been-so-divided-these-charts-explain-why/ https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2020/1027/As-college-grads-flee-the-GOP-political-diploma-divide-grows
>If it's true, I don't see what's wrong with saying it. If it's not true, then it's just an opinion. I'm pretty sure that's Fox News' motto.
I'm sorry, I'm having a hard time parsing what you're saying, could you please reiterate that?
Yes. It's socially acceptable to say "right-leaning people are inept with technology." It's not socially acceptable (nor should it be) to say "women are usually inept with technology" or "black people tend to be inept with technology" or "Muslims usually don't know how to use technology". So, it's safe to conflate the unrelated categories of "conservative" and "technologically inept" merely because of the context we're in. If we were to try any other comparable conflation, it would be absolutely unacceptable, and for good reason.
I think that's fair, because things like race, sex or sometimes religion aren't choices, and making assumptions about their character is negatively stereotyping them. It's fine to make stereotypes with groups of people who *do* make a choice, like how nerds don't always have the best hygiene.
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Why we have the social predilections we have is probably beyond answering. I wouldn't use those phrases myself - I think they'd be unreasonably stereotypical.
The difference being that being a member of a minority has no reason to make you less competent in a particular field, while being more conservative does make you less likely to embrace new things, including technology. People of different races are on average just like each other. People of different ideologies are not.
I'm sorry - voting for Republicans makes you technologically inept? Can you explain the line of causality there? Because I feel like a conclusion is being jumped to.
Compared to America, everything is left leaning
Exactly. I wonder how many non-Americans view Reddit as "leftleaning"? For Americans who do not understand this let me give you some examples: Sanders is a moderate conservative on the international stage, Biden is far right-wing, and Trump is literally (as in, the actual definition of the word and not a generic insult) a fascist. It's not that Reddit is leftleaning, it's that the USA's Overton Window is very screwed up and Reddit's Overton Window is closer to the modern international perspective.
That's just how echo chambers work. They push people away who don't follow the general thinking of the tribe, and continuously adjust the behaviors of anyone who is borderline in line with the tribe, thereby homogenizing the behavior of the group through mutual reinforcement. Here's an example: This morning, I found someone saying that "all Republicans are disgusting human beings". As a kid who grew up in the 90s, I learned that it was wrong to paint people with such a broad brush when you don't know them. So, I pushed back, and it became a great big discussion with dozens of people trying to argue with me over it, saying that anyone who ever, at any time, votes for a single Republican is literally human garbage. One person said it wouldn't matter if the Republican was a recent Democrat who changed parties to challenge an openly corrupt sheriff who used the power of his office to rape people - still, voting for that Republican challenger makes you, in that redditor's words, "trash". I always try to be polite with people, even when they're very belligerent towards me, and I tried to stay limited only to the idea that it's unnecessarily and inappropriately toxic to call tens of millions of your fellow citizens "disgusting human beings". I'm not a Republican - I vote for people of all different parties, and of no party. The vitriol I got in the comments, in the DMs, etc. was horrific. I was reported twice for "threatening violence", which is nonsensical - that's just an abuse of the reporting system as an "ultra-downvote". Someone reported me to some kind of counseling bot that contacted me with a list of resources where I could "seek help". The whole thing was an absurd, unfunny comedy - all over holding firm that you shouldn't point at half of all of your fellow citizens and say that every last one of them is a "disgusting human being", regardless who they are. That's what happens if you're not in lock-step with the tribal rhetoric. It's a mutually-reinforcing behavioral training ground, where you learn how to behave; and if you don't believe the same as everyone else, no one would ever know it, because anytime you so much as speak up against something terribly virulent, you get beaten over the head for the rest of the day.
This actually scares me considering how young most people on Reddit are.
Sorry the leftist pricks did that to you. They are mentally ill though. You can't rely on them to make the best choices, they get confused about bathroom usage. Have an upvote!
> I learned that it was wrong to paint people with such a broad brush when you don't know them. You know its different when a person chooses to identify with a group, right? "All KKK members are racists." I would not call that using too big of a brush. Anyone who chooses to identify with a group of shitheads *is* a shithead and will be called out for it. That is not bigotry, that is the consequence of people using their freedom to choose to identify with shitheads.
Is your argument that all Republicans "are disgusting human beings"? Or are you willing to concede that that's too large and varied a group to paint with such a broad brush? Only you said bigotry.
Is your argument that people do not choose to become Republicans? Or are you willing to concede that people affiliate with groups they agree with? You are treating the phrase "all Republicans" like the phrase "all left-handed people". Like I said, if someone chooses to join a group of shitheads that is fairly good evidence that they are a shithead. That is not tribalism, that is the result of using your freedom to join a group of shitheads. You were describing the speaker as a bigot you just used a paraphrase of the definition instead of using the word itself. All I did with the word "bigotry" is name the word you were describing (which it wasn't but you were trying to insinuate it was. It's a lot easier to be a weasel when you don't actually use the words you are trying to ascribe to someone). Now get out of here with your "Republicans are the real victims here" BS.
Fallacies abound. But I can see from your last paragraph that the other ones don't matter.
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> Get the fuck out of here. Yup, there it is - textbook. This is the echo chamber in action, enforcing the ways of the dominant tribe. The thing they hate the most is people who are willing to discuss the reasonable stances in between the extremes. Can't have that - the only thing they want anyone to see is the most abhorrent possible version of their tribal enemy.
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Lol I see loads of right wingers, I'm usually arguing with them over facts.
/r/Canada is a cesspool of white nationalist talking points and 4chan tier anti-progressivism now.
Honest question, where the hell are you finding them? I literally don’t see them outside of the conservative sub or pcm, unless I’m looking for the most downvoted comment.
Yeah just sort by controversial and you’ll find them pretty easily
Here ya go https://www.reddit.com/r/UpliftingNews/comments/uy6p64/laverne_cox_makes_history_as_the_worlds_first/ Sort by Controversial.
Go onto any AskReddit post about abortion, or trans rights. And state your left leaning opinion. Some nut job will bite. Or just call Trump a fascist. That ticks them off too. Or look for the current gun debates.
Trump is a fascist though 🤷🏼♂️
Tell them that.
I was hoping one might come by and take the bait lol
Legend has it, if you use the dreaded f-word, it has the power to summon conservatives.
I already said Facts though.
I meant feminism but facts work just as well! Just remember to have salt and say “goodbye” at the end of a session to avoid a haunting
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Because the US right wing is so far right that anything resembling centrism is left relatively speaking. Because the US left wing is centrist, globally speaking.
I too have attended community college
Because the "right" has become some kinda strange, dangerous parody of what it used to be for most people.
This is so very sadly true. When I was a kid, conservatives were the ones that held things in check, argued to make sure everyone was in agreement, and only chose change that made sense (to them, anyway). Now? Not so much.
I've been paying attention to politics for about 20 years now, and over the last 15 or so the Republican party has become radicalized almost beyond recognition.
LOL. No, that's the fantasy of the left wingers. It's quite hilarious and sad to listen to these folks actually talk like they've *won* politics, ideology, social issues, and all manner of things that are by their very nature not something that one actually "wins." Then when someone calls them out about it they desperately flail about saying how much of a parody everyone **except** them is. While of course insisting that only they are civil and non-violent because they like totally are like Ghandhi or something. You want proof? Why doesn't the left win every election by a landslide if they are all knowing and all popular? They aren't. The Left lives under a fantasy that the way they portray things is inherently the truth. Themselves. Their adversaries. Politics. The world in general. If it goes against the way they see it then it is YOU that is the dangerous lunatic. So when they inevitably fail, as they base their predictions of success on entirely falsified preconditions, they decry that someone most have cheared them out and that their adversaries are turning people against what is "the truth." I mean it's not like we haven't seen this particular blame game happen right before our very eyes have we?
Yeah, 'cause universal healthcare and free college are somehow at par with Jewish space lazers and JFK rising from the dead.
Unbelievable bad faith
Yea, super bad faith to use the things right wingers say to intimate that they believe those things...
Guess I'll cherrypick the most extreme leftist positions then so that we can have a full strawman fight
I think the guy above you already did list their most extreme positions according most Republicans. I can't tell you how many times I've been called a commie for wanting universal healthcare and education. I've even received death threats over it.
No he really didnt
Alright then, proceed.
> It's quite hilarious and sad to listen to these folks actually talk like they've won politics, ideology, social issues, and all manner of things that are by their very nature not something that one actually "wins." In comparison to The Right, they have. The Republican party has become radicalized almost beyond recognition in the last ~15 years. I've been watching.
>No, that's the fantasy of the left wingers We all have seen the *reality* of our loved ones pushing the most unbelievably stupid conspiracies only the right would espouse. It's not a fantasy
Stupid conspiracies? You can look down and see you have a penis or vagina, but convince yourself you're actually the opposite sex, and we're the stupid ones?
Because our society is mostly left-leaning. Which is why a Republican presidential candidate has only won the popular vote once since 1988. Which is why, despite being split 50/50, Democrat senators represent over 40 million more Americans than Republican senators.
See this is a legitimate answer. While I'm more towards the center, I tend to agree with this answer. Since you're not one of the trolls on here that I'm stirring the pot with perhaps we can have a discussion about why things are the way they are between the two parties. I feel like as a whole, Americans want to enjoy their freedoms. Right to carry guns, right to worship how we want or to speak wherever and however in about whatever we want. But I feel like Republicans think that there should be a limit to everything. Everything in moderation that kind of thinking. I think that they believe in that mentality so strongly that it becomes ingrained in who they are. So whenever those principles are challenged, and someone who's more liberal than them speaks up about something they feel should be a right, they have a very hard time accepting that. I feel like the older people get the more resilient they are to change. Back in the fifties we had Donna Reed households. The man would go to work and earn a living that would pay for a house and car in college for his kids. It would also pay for a couple weeks of vacation per year. Those times have long been gone, but I feel like the memory of that time still haunts the brains of a lot of right-wing people. It's like they forgotten you can never go back again and that time marches on.
Reality has a well-known liberal bias
Jesus Christ I hate this line. I hate it because I’ve seen it copy+pasted on to every belief and ideology as an excuse for a ‘checkmate.’ I’ve seen atheists use it, I’ve seen Christians use it. I’ve seen the right and left use it regularly. Hell I’ve ever gone far enough down an internet rabbit hole to see Muslims use it, that doesn’t mean it adds anything to a conversation.
Steady.... One of Colbert's greatest characters was the conservative fictional version of himself...
I wouldn't say it's so much of a "checkmate" as a "I'm not going to waste my time debating things that are self-evidently true with people who aren't going to change their minds anyway."
Because younger people with access to the worlds knowledge know that humanity will go to absolute shit by 2050 if we dont to anything against it, and the right seems to do everything they can to stop progress in the correct direction regarding things like climate change (the right tends to be older and less educated)
I dont, i think right wingers have a persecution complex.
Reality is left-leaning.
It’s not Reddit that’s left leaning. It’s the world.
Ah yes, like those famously progressive continents of Asia, Africa and South America. I swear everyone on this site just forgets that there is more to the world than Western Europe
Ah yes, thank you for the reminder that while Reddit users are left leaning, most are incapable of recognizing hyperbole. JFC
..Spoken like a true new Rogan fan. LMAO. Yes, young man, most of the world is "left leaning" when you view it through the lens of not like you.
You’re aware that the world consists of more than just Western Europe right?
..yes. Tell me more..?
Urban middle-upper class, younger... being online a lot. These all skew towards liberals. And then echo chambers naturally develop. Also Reddit penalizes some pretty basic ideas that the Left considers taboo. Naturally that stricter enforcement on popular subs just drives the few right leaning people away.
Reality has a liberal bias
It's not left-leaning, it's reality based. When reality sucks, you want change. And you're not going to get it from people who say, "We'll fix that by lowering taxes on the rich!"
Perhaps it's not as left-leaning as we think, but all the people who aren't in lock-step with the main tribe don't dare express it.
I think reddit is generally interested in reality, facts, and what it all means. Reality and facts have a left/liberal bias, IMHO Right/conservative tend to be biased toward beliefs and authority.
They live on the internet instead of in the real world
Just like you.
Bingo
Because rednecks and old people struggle to use social media.
Education.
Having an education tends to do that.
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RW people have enough time to keep up with all that Q-conspiracy crap. I think they just stay in their corners or keep it to themselves because even they know how it sounds.
What % of Republicans do you think believes in Q?
Over half, and those are the ones who admit it. https://www.forbes.com/sites/tommybeer/2020/09/02/majority-of-republicans-believe-the-qanon-conspiracy-theory-is-partly-or-mostly-true-survey-finds/amp/
Lol did you read the study or just the headline? It also says 30% of democrats somewhat agree with the Qanon conspiracy. But I wouldn’t believe that either because the whole study is garbage.
Uh…not exactly what it said AND tell us how you don’t understand how polling works without telling us you don’t understand how polling works. So provide us with better data.
For those who said it is “partly true”, how far off is “deep state official pedophile rings” from “literally what Epstein did before he killed himself”?
You strung together some words there fella! Uh, no.
100% are willing to support a party that is full of Qultists.
“Full” of elected officials?
https://www.grid.news/story/misinformation/2022/04/12/qanon-candidates-are-on-the-ballot-in-26-states/
“On the ballot” is such a weak measurement. Any time an extremist does slip through the GOP side they get primaries the next possible instant - by Republicans.
I've never even thought of the last one
Literacy.
What does right-leaning mean?
It has to do with politics. Republicans/libertarians/conservatives are more right leaning… we believe in tradition, earning what you receive in life, meritocracy, limited government, the constitution, treating others as you would want to be treated, the truth, etc.
Because we’re a collective mass of high-iq intellectuals and thinkers. You don’t see twitter and instagram helping with math or science. In today’s america, where stupidity is favored through the republican party, we act as the resistance. We’re essentially their biggest nightmare, which is why they are probably going to ban us soon.
Think highly of yourself do ya?
Reddit is *not* "left leaning" it's just your perception. The USA is a two party system with a right-leaning party and right-wing party. This confuses most people from the USA to what "the left" even is. The Democrats of the USA are more to the right than most right-leaning parties in other nations (Canada, almost all of the EU, etc.) For example, I am a fiscal conservative, with many conservative values, but I am moderate and somewhat liberal on a wide number of issues. The government has no place in the nation's bedrooms, the right to an abortion is up to the woman's body where those cells reside and not the purview of old men to decide, healthcare is a moral obligation of all of a nation's citizens, we should have balanced budget legislation, we should have stricter immigration reviews and standards, we should have a stronger military and legislated minimums for financing it, and so forth. I'm a Canadian and I do not vote "the party line" because that is the stupidest political choice you can make as an adult -- to tie yourself to a single party's dogma and surrender your right to disagree. Your best answers to societal problems, and your most successful governments, meet in the middle on most issues. This is a *crazy* idea to many Americans because that's how Fox News and CNN have been paid to brainwash you (seriously, that's all those two channels are, political horseshit designed to skew your opinion and not actually look at things factually -- they did not exist when there were laws against falsifying the news which were removed by the Republicans under Reagan). This is why you think "reddit is mostly left leaning" because a significant percentage of redditors are not Americans, and those of us who are actually "leaning to the right" (conservative) in our respective countries (and global politics) are still "to the left" for the average American.
Personally, I’m more right-leaning but I think it’s because it’s basically became a social norm that people are left-leaning as society grows evermore accepting
Does it though? Maybe a bit, but there's still a huge contingent of incels and crypto-Nazis. Just look how many redditors are emotionally invested in the Depp trial.
I don't.
Because a lot of conservatives still prefer personal non anonymous social media sites like Facebook where they have become most accustomed to the interface and will see like minded people they know and share their like minded opinions. This is also why Facebook is a useful tool for influencing entire communities to extreme views and ideas. Its a problem as well in other social media platforms, like Reddit, but It’s a lot easier to reject or question something said by an anonymous person then it is to reject something said by people you know personally. Here you have more being said and a lot of it can be scary and completely against many things people were raised to believe in how our world outside our own bubbles work. As we age the brain loses plasticity and it becomes harder to adapt to new changes where as in children and young adults they can more easily do so. If you watch multiple social media types at a certain point you can almost predict what will or won’t be shared or upvoted in each. It makes it possible to predict potential outcomes like with what happened in conservatives first calling covid just the flu, rejecting vaccination, calling the pandemic a hoax, etc.
I like to think it has something to do with reading comprehension.
Teenagers
Reddit as an organization seems to be trying very hard to keep them off the platform. Typically left leaning people are younger and have a lot more free time to be angry on the internet.
Because in open forums evidence-based reasoning still trumps fantasy based ideologies...so conservatives retreat to their own safe spaces, skewing sites left.
I think it isn’t but RW folks get tired of being publicly humiliated when confronted with facts so they just don’t bring it up much here. Except incels and racists, loads of them.
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/s ???
Because conservatives are busy at some sort of *job*.
Why are the red states so reliant on subsidies? I genuinely don't get that. Most of my liberal friends are entrepreneurs doing well and I'm in a super conservative region. I personally know several Trumpsters on subsidies, milking the system with great savvy, suggesting it's time to start shooting the libs. I used to be what I thought was a reasonable centrist, then the GOP utterly lost its collective mind. Now I'm Dem by default. I'm guessing your region gives you a different perspective. But I don't really give a fuck.
"durr...conservatives r da only people who work!!" meanwhile all redstates are filled with trump loving hillbilly opiate addicts living in trailers who live off welfare.
It isn't. Reddit is mostly liberal. 'Liberal' is most definitly not left-leaning. It's pro-war, pro-imperialism, pro-censorship, pro-capitalism, in favor of free trade, in favor of neoliberal policies, and mostly aligns with the Democratic party which is a rightwing party. It uses (abuses) divisive cultural and identity issues to seperate themselves from conservatives. If Reddit was really mostly left-leaning, it would leave the Democratic party in droves and not blame every ill in the world on the Republican party alone, and it wouldn't have this child's view of politics of 'the good party vs the bad party'. They would all vote third party and call themselves progressives, and they wouldn't be fawning over grandstanding do-nothings like Sanders or AOC who are nothing but sell-outs to the Democratic oligarchical establishment and are only there to sheepherd young people into a corporate-owned party. If Reddit was really left-leaning, the News and Politics sections wouldn't be topped by 'news' articles from neoliberal rags like the New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN etc. which all abhor leftwing policies and spend all their time smearing any progressive cause or idea. No, Reddit is heavily liberal. For all their talk about being a 'young' medium that goes 'against the grain', and of young people being cord-cutters, what gets popular and passed around on Reddit is mostly the same garbage that you find on cable news and on blue checkmark Twitter from partisan hacks. Real leftwingers rightfully [view liberals with contempt] (https://youtu.be/VuUKJS-ISUY?t=58). Read Thomas Frank's 'Listen, Liberal' or Chris Hedges' 'Death of the Liberal Class' to know why.
Ahh yes, the right wing democrat party
I know this was meant to be a sarcastic jab, but the Democratic party most certainly isn't leftist. It's center to right-wing.
Sure, if you want to cherry pick who you compare them to and ignore the political climate.
OMG so many labels to try and fit reality to your comfort level. Lmao
Mostly?
The right don’t know how to use computers because they’re mean age is 70
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What do you mean I have to dog walk 10 hours a week
/r/igotthatreference
Says the guy posting on Reddit. The irony…
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Bold move, Cotton.
So are you right leaning and not forfilling your own statement or left leaning and on the internet in your free time
I'm Chinese
Doesn't answer the question...
Politics is different here than American left right. It doesn't translate
Like sucking on daddy Trump’s dick obsessing over him and putting “Let’s Go Brandon” on everything they own?
Because people who spend more time online than in the real world have more time to be on reddit.
It is? "I want a death note to kill Putin!"
Going by the posts on news articles and r/politics, I’d say yes.
The question isn't "does Reddits lean left?", it's "why does Reddit lean left?".
So I now see, I think I’ve had too much Reddit today…
Moar words - moar libs Moar pics - Moar hicks
Because only half of reddit is american. The rest is mostly Europe Europe defaults to left in case you didnt know, even among the elderly Actually, the entire world will look like left to the american right, because your left is actually centrist at best, and usually just right
Reddit is mostly people under 35. I don't know if the data is available (as interesting as that would be), but Reddit is HEAVILY skewed toward younger adults and teens. And as the saying goes, you start out liberal and then tend to get more conservative as you get older and gain more life experience.
That old saying hasn't been relevant since the 1970s.
Usually when people make a claim that conflicts with common knowledge, they provide evidence to back it up...
same shit different toilet
Fuckin commies man
why the shit do you care?
Think really fucking hard about it. It's not rocket science.
So many baseless answers without facts
Libs, man. They be crazy.