I have been on reddit for just about 12 years now. Something I’ve noticed over time is just how hateful the place has become. A complete outrage machine. Every single sub became filled with it. I’ve filtered so many subreddits over the last few years, it’s insane. I don’t know enough about this place to be sure, but I do hope it doesn’t become the same type of echo chamber of anger.
I remember a while back when the first comment was always someone debunking the clickbait article headline with a good source and succinct summary. Redditors famously never read the article, but the comments were often better than the article.
Now, you have to scroll down half the page to find any original thought. You see dozens of people spouting nonsense or even defending nonsense because they…don’t want to be wrong?
One example: an image from the 50s displaying a child with their hand caught in a fire pull with a caption explaining that the device would trap the kid at the spot to deter pranksters.
The device was indeed designed to deter pranksters, and it would attach to the user’s wrist, but it would come free. So you would know the kid who did it because they have a thing stuck on their hand.
I recognized the device and had a video demonstrating its proper, safe function. People were still arguing with me.
Why would anyone want to put any creative/intellectual energy into a place like that?
It certainly became degrading after a while. I have had some amazing conversations on Reddit, but as time went on they became more and more sparse.
I haven’t thought back on Reddit much until lately with all the bullshit that’s been happening and man, being in this space reminds me of why I enjoyed Reddit in the first place.
I can relate in so many instances on Reddit where I recognized something and would explain it, but people would argue against (like you said) or my comment would get overlooked entirely as it wouldn’t create enough buzz.
I think the fediverse is just the soft reset that the internet needed.
Don’t forget the same low effort pun threads cropping up over and over. Or someone writes a pretty decent joke and the replies immediately have at least one person repeating it in a worse form. It’s not as bad as the contrarianism for its own sake or the aggressive strawmanning, but goddam. So much about discourse on Reddit had been exhausting for fucking years.
Anger is an extremely effective way to spread an idea.
Posts which incite emotion in you make you engage - upvote, comment and share. CGP Grey (a redditor himself) made a great video about this a while ago.
We can only hope Lemmy users are more self-aware, and choose to engage with things they enjoy more than things they hate. But given human psychology, it’s unlikely…
If Lemmy stays just niche enough to keep the hoardes of angry internet users away, I think we might just have a goldmine.
Reddit didn’t always use to be such a cesspool of hate. I think as things grow and attract the masses, they attract the type of people that are only on the internet to be driven by their emotions. The up/downvote system solidifies that too.
My thinking is that you can have a campfire with 20 people around it and still have meaningful conversations. Put 1000 around that same campfire and shit will go sideways.
The up/downvote system solidifies that too.
I keep saying this even as former reddit users keep wanting the same damn karma system here :( this isn’t reddit and I don’t want it to be. I hope lemmy’s friendlier culture survives the influx.
I think the old forums had it right and I hope we can see that persist here. Don’t need karma or algorithms to surface content, just mid-size/smaller communities and good moderation.
I’m mainly lemmy.world right now and have a few federated subscriptions, but I imagine at some point I’ll branch out and spend more time on the local feed of some other instance because I’ll be chasing that mid-size population.
I wonder if the increase of porn will affect this. From past experiences I got the impression the people and/or the way they communicate changes when it becomes a platform to search for fapping material. Either because it attracts a different type of person or because it changes interaction between users.
About 10 years here. That’s why I had Apollo. I filtered out all that shit. Everything you could imagine. Hundreds of things hidden.
Eventually I had a home feed of crafts, patientgamers, every cat sub you can imagine, bread, and a bunch of other peaceful things.
Before that I was just so angry all the time and arguing with redditors. I won’t go back to all that.
Don’t know how one could possibly use the site without filters from apps like that or RES. it’s so chaotic.
Exactly why I refuse to participate anymore among a dozen reasons.
My partner liked specific communities there but kept getting recommended upsetting stuff (got sucked into AmITheAsshole in a bad way, etc) so I uninstalled the official app and installed Apollo instead and their mental health greatly improved. But healthy satisfied people aren’t profitable for corporations.
I have mostly good things to say about Reddit and the more I read about it, the more I realize that that’s just because I always connected to it through Boost for Reddit.
I haven’t used either but I think boost has a lemmy app. I’m pretty sure it’s made the same dev(s) but I’m not fully sure
This is the way. Though despite all that I started to keep my Reddit browsing a secret as the average person considers a “redditor” a pretty negative thing to be.
Tbh kinda glad in that sense that the API fiasco revealed the true colors of the company and gave me a very clear reason to leave. It hadn’t felt “good” in a long time and now I know why.
the average person considers a “redditor” a pretty negative thing to be.
Redditors consider a redditor a negative thing to be. It works because no redditor believes they are one. It’s everyone else who’s a part of the gross hivemind, not me. Reddit thinks this and reddit does that, but not me. I’m different and special. Not one of them.
r/notliketheotherredditors
It’s also the case that several things can be true at once. Like, maybe you are part of the reddit mob-mentality, but on certain issues you have opinions that very much go against the grain.
Though despite all that I started to keep my Reddit browsing a secret as the average person considers a “redditor” a pretty negative thing to be.
Damn, it didn’t always used to be like this. In the early 2010s, Reddit used to be a great conversation starter.
I feel like most of the comments were from people who were doing Internet as a lifestyle.i mean, I wouldn’t know a better way to get depressed and bitter…
It was so helpful to block users, especially in my local cities subreddit.
Am I the only one who never looked at a general feed on Apollo? I would open the app which was set to open to a particular sub and then I would navigate back to the list of favorite subs and pick which one to check in on. I would prefer an app that shows me that list of favorite communities at launch but haven’t found it yet.
Also, I want to add something: Beware of people fetishizing the fediverse as a cure-all to all or most of Big Tech and social media’s problems. Remember, the technology is rarely ever the problem, the humans are. So long as humans remain really clever apes, you are not going to solve hate speech, spam, or outrage.
In fact, it seems like outrage about Reddit is currently driving the majority of engagement on Lemmy so far, even though it’s been three weeks since the API protests. Just look at all of the most upvoted posts here. Discussions about how bad Reddit is currently and how Lemmy/fediverse will save everything and make everything good. On social media, moderation is still extremely important, and from the snark and trolling I’ve seen here and there, I hope the mod team doesn’t fall behind and I hope that the Lemmy developers create better mod tools, because if Lemmy does blow up, expect bots to show up. Expect propaganda. Expect automated trolling. All this shit hit Reddit as it got more popular.
Exactly. I honestly don’t care about reddit anymore. It’s frustrating opening my feed here and having a large portion of the posts and comments complain about reddit. Like who cares? I think we can all agree that we don’t like the route reddit too which is why we’re here. Complaining about it more isn’t going to do anything.
Eh , its probably just temporary. People just had apps they’ve used for 10 years yanked away and it’s jaring how it all went down. Of course people are going to want to talk about it.
I think a lot of it is just Schadenfreude. A lot of people sunk a lot of time into Reddit and felt betrayed when this happened. The fact that they (and I’m including myself in this) migrated here to begin with was a huge change/step for them. So it’s only natural that many aren’t going to be able to simply just “walk away” and never think or talk about it again. It’s still fresh in people’s minds and the people who it affected the most need that feeling of vindication whenever Reddit does something to screw itself up even further.
All of that to say, I get where you’re coming from, but it’s not going to be forever. Once everyone has had a chance to blow off their steam we will see things start to normalize again. At least until Reddit finally collapses at which point that will probably be the talk of most social media platforms for some time.
To be fair, all ex-pats aside, the complete collapse of reddit would be almost inarguably noteworthy in and of itself, and I would expect there to be pretty extensive discussion of it no matter what.
Addressing the “it’s humans, not the tech”.
The tech established and designs an interaction and presentation system humans interact with.
Human behavior may be the problem, but it’s embedded in and influenced by the environment and systematic influences.
A simple voting without differentiation will always lead to people voting as agree rather than contribution worth or quality. It’s designed as a mingled mixed concern.
Based
Thanks. Somehow people are basking in the glow of potentially having found a solution to centralized social media. But here’s the thing: someone has to pay for it, and someone has to moderate it.
Many Mastodon instances couldn’t handle the increased load of sign-ups when Twitter crashed or malfunctioned. I see a lot of smaller Lemmy instances begging for money already even though those places aren’t host to as much content as Lemmy.world does.
We need to be aware of the limitations of the fediverse too. No, it will not solve hate on the Internet because the people who self-select to be here are somehow virtuous and above the “average Redditor”. You still need money and good moderation.
If i had to guess then maybe a bunch of instances could solve that with ads and selling big data (info of the users). Not that we would whant that but its the most sthealty way to do that.
Lol people have had debates about that on Mastodon for ages. The consensus is that most people are unwilling to donate anything or see ads on the instances they use. They expect hosts to keep the instance up out of the goodness of their own hearts, and many instances have shut down over the years because hosting was no longer economically sustainable for their owners even as those owners begged for donations.
Most users (especially those who just consume free software/fediverse services and contribute little else) want something to be both free and good. That means subsidized by the owner because they believe in the cause and good because of the lack of monetization.
I had to make sure I didn’t somehow write this in my sleep or something, it’s word-for-word exactly what I’ve been thinking for the past few years.
Many subs are solely focused on generating outrage, hate, anger, being infuriated, and just general discontent. Baiting people with strawmen of groups they dislike, obviously fake tweets/exchanges to get people riled up, etc.
Although none of this is particularly new, /r/fatpeoplehate, /r/____inAction, and other straight up racist subs were vicious to the point of some being banned years ago.
But now it’s more of a general ragebait machine that creeps onto /r/all regularly and can take over any subreddit completely without proper moderation.
I received the most incredibly chiding, condescending and critical reply on Lemmy the other day, for saying one sentence which was just adding some info to a reply chain. “Oh, that’s also called this”. I was told “pedantic much??” and then the person ranted for a paragraph about how I was a terrible person seeking to spread discontent, and various other bizarre insulting bullshit. Best part: they mod 6-7 subs on some instance. So… Lemmy isn’t a magic formula, unfortunately. The same people are excited to make it just as bad as reddit ever has been.
This is because people are people. Some of us are “good”, some of us are "bad, most of us are in between. But anyplace that people congregate is going to see at least some of the bad.
Sadly it seems to aways happen to sites that get too big.
my monkey brain reaction while reading the title
I want to start an argument. The sky is obviously blue and water is wet.
Oh yeah? What about when the sun sets you ignorant bitch?!?!? And water isn’t wet: water MAKES STUFF WET.
Whatever, I don’t kinkshame
The sky is indeed reflecting blue light wavelengths and water is definitely damp and moisty.
Unfortunately that hasn’t been unique to Reddit. Outrage, hate, and conspiracies generate clicks and engagement on platforms. Recent events within the last decade gave rise to a lot of coordinated hate campaigns. User created subreddits were a double edge sword for this in both being able to filter out these groups but also giving them their own echo chambers to congregate and embolden one another. The transition from liberal freedom of speech to absolutionist right to hatred made social media companies millions simultaneously in accepting money to promote controversial topics and harvesting the resulting outrage on their platforms. Reddit and their staff effectively became one of many internet war profiteers giving all sides bases of operations.
To end on a semi-positive note, with the rise of federated services, instances may still give these extremists places to seethe but they can at least be ‘sanctioned’ or defederated from the rest of the larger fediverse very easily.
This was also part of the strategy of foreign influence in western politics. Britain, France, and The United States got hit by this, hard. Driving anxiety pushes people to the political extremes and prevents actual political process from happening. And don’t get me wrong, there’s a degree to which outrage is warranted. The economy has yet to fully recover from 2007 and looks to be taking another dip now, police violence, a broken binary political system in America, you name it. There are all sorts of stuff to be frustrated with. But Russia and China feed that. Reinforce it. Encourage us all to hate each other
You used to be able to tell who the bots were, but now we have political movements espousing the same thing the bots are because they are both feeding off the same source.
What really broke hope for me is the pandemic. At the beginning of the pandemic, before the vaccines or effective treatment, n95 masks were the best protection. This should not be a controversial statement, just one of fact. A former Republican candidate for Governor of Connecticut, helped to get free masks distributed to every community in the state. His economic policies were way too conservative for me to consider him as a candidate, but he stepped up to help when it counted, so points to him. Unfortunately, after the worst of the pandemic, he ran again and while he never officially endorsed the anti-maskers, but he didn’t denounce them either, and went to rallies cosponsored by them. He knew what the right thing to do in 2020 was, but when he ran in 2022, the outrage machine was in full effect with countless “unmask our kids” groups and instead of doing what he knew was right, he did what was easy and convenient. He still lost, because the Democratic governor of the state who had led the state through the pandemic had done a good job. Propaganda turned something that was common sense into a political statement.
A simple and easy thing that would help prevent needless deaths became a political football kicked around by the right. Much of the anti-vaccine rhetoric (some now being spewed by a “Democratic” candidate 🤦♂) originated in Russia and was meant to keep the population there from seeking western vaccines when the Russian vaccine was shown to be inferior. But because everything gets pushed into political framing, public health and science became team red vs team blue instead of humans united against a virus that kills. When we get a really nasty virus (COVID isn’t that deadly compared to an avian flue), the world is screwed because so much anti-science has been pushed in order to generate engagement in media and social media.
It was around the 2016 election that things started to change. Before that, there was still a mentality of open and genuine discourse in most subs. But after the election that started to die, people started realizing bots and alt-righters had no interest in open discourse, on the contrary they would see to abuse such channels as a platform for their hate, and would use such hate and anger in an attempt to shape and suppress discussions. This forced the community to become far more jaded and less open, realizing just how vulnerable the community was to radicalization and firehouse misinformation.
On the early internet, we all had this vision that free access to information would free everyone, that unlimited information could only do good. Most of those people now understand how nieve we were, unlimited information means unlimited disinformation, and that organizations would always see to weaponize information the way they weaponize everything else. We are in a different internet age, now.
As a non US person I was reading your post and thinking how right you are and how international politics also got into the same problem of increased anger. And than got to:
But Russia and China feed that. Reinforce it. Encourage us all to hate each other
As proof it is really working even on aware people. It is a big problem seeing thing just from one perspective, that “feeding” even if intentional actually started from west. Just look at the movies, Russians and Chinese are always bad guys, for decades. What do you think they will think about west if they grow up looking how west is seeing them? How will they react?
How will someone in Afghanistan support west when someone from west destroyed their country and killed family and friends, maybe with good reason and couldn’t be done differently, but I am talking about individuals here.
I don’t think there is ultimate truth, but we can try and see events from a bit wider perspective.
Unfortunately that hasn’t been unique to Reddit. Outrage, hate, and conspiracies generate clicks and engagement on platforms.
Yesterday I stumbled upon this post. Really sad.
The longer you think about that scenario the more fucked up it gets. Google argues that it’s a problem of scale, which is outrageously BS when you consider Google of all companies let their own account system be easily botted, and don’t use any of the ludicrous number analytical tools purpose built for detecting spam trends (3rd parties use them all the time to spot political spam).
Their mention of signal:noise struck a chord for me.
Ever since this gelled for me a few years ago, I have been on a miserable (and obviously impossible) mission to find places to see and discuss useful, HUMAN information with other useful HUMAN people on the internet.
Blocking whole forums on topics I really enjoy is mechanically easier than curating the contributors to those conversations on an individual basis. It hurts my heart to do it, but it is impossible to keep the noise out without wholly ignoring signal that I enjoy.
Even people I used to really enjoy talking to have had to be ignored. They stopped caring about nuance, and got intellectually lazier. They switched from reading to skimming, and the well thought out comments got shorter, and more hostile.
This is undoubtedly the snake eating it’s own tail.
They filter their inputs so heavily, and have done battle with bad faith for so long that their outputs resemble the very thing they were trying to avoid.
Unsure what my point is other than commiseration with OP. It’s utterly disheartening to realize that the technology that was created to connect us all has been co-opted and subverted - transforming it into a hideous monster of hate, and misery that forces us all to internally disconnect from entire parts of it.
That’s not to say that it couldn’t have been expected… but I have no fucking idea how it could’ve been prevented.
To be fair to reddit, it really depends on the sub. If you go on /r/fightporn or /r/crazyfuckingvideos you’re going to get a certain demographic that tends to be reactionary.
Then if you go on /r/politics or /r/socialism or /r/conservative you’re gonna get clickbaity echo chambers
But there are subs with great discussion on niche topics. /r/zizek or /r/credibledefense or /r/askhistorians all have very little outrage and instead good discussions and analysis.
The problem is not unique to reddit. It’s a side effect of a large enough community. The focus gets broad and the issue is that posts like Twitter screenshots or memes are easier to digest. Because they are easier to digest, more people click on them and upvote. Therefore these posts will almost always reach the top before articles or other long for articles.
This over time gives incentive for posts that can a) draw the most attention with a headline and b) is fast and easy to digest
Outrage porn is exactly that. You see an image “DeSantis passed a bill to out toxic chemicals in roads!”
People don’t bother to do research on what the law says m and they immediately go to the comments and make jokes or berate the GOP/DeSantis
Nuanced discussion gets pushed to the bottom and once again people will downvote whatever they feel is against the narrative constructed by the OP.
Tldr: no reddit isn’t getting worse in this regard. It’s a function of large online communities. This website will likely see the same effect should certain communities get large enough.
Zizek is a sexpest obsessed with comparing everything to rape and his followers are a cult of personality. This is a very strange one to include in your list of non-echo chambers, particularly as he and his audience are political partisans just like the first three you criticised.
The inclusion here seems more like snifffff ideeeology, as he would say.
I admit my inclusion is ideology- I am trying to subconsciously convert people to Stalinism. You will be the first to get sent to the gulags.
On a more serious note, it’s obviously partisan but it’s not click baity and it’s a small community that’s actively moderated. Posts are kept on topic so the focus of the sub doesn’t get too broad and lead to the phenomenon in question.
For a sub that got wrecked, check out /r/chomsky
Before 2016 it was a place to post long form articles, interviews with Chomsky, nuanced discussions, etc. Afterwards it was placed on some astroturfing list and now it’s just a generic center left Twitter screenshot type sub. Get similar content as /r/politics or /r/whitepeopletwitter
Which brings me endless amusement to find out when most people on the sub actually hate Chomsky’s belief in freedom of speech or his opinion of the Ukraine war
I don’t think the Chomsky sub going to shit matters much given the Epstein connections now tbh. Left needs to move on from him just as much as zizek
I think you focus too much on the messenger and not enough on the message, which is ironic that you complain about cult of personality. Manufactured Consent would be just as valuable even if Epstein write it himself.
Have you read any works by either Zizek or Chomsky? I don’t ask this in a “gotcha” attempt. I’m genuinely curious if you have, and if yes what specifically do you take issue with? I’m a fan of both although Chomsky hates Zizek. I think Chomsky has done a massive public service cataloging and broadcasting US War crimes, while Zizek is a bit more theoretical
I think you focus too much on the messenger and not enough on the message
Should the left say the same about Stalin?
Serious question. I want to know if you apply this logic consistently or if you see an issue with it now.
Have you read any works by either Zizek or Chomsky?
Of course I have this is a strange question to be asking unless you think I’m a teenager new to the left or something, these people are very entry-level cringe-leftism 102 stuff, they were good gateways into various things for their time but nothing more radical because to be so would be to lose the platform and “prestige” they both covet provided to them by capitalists. Neither of them have made significant contributions to the left that were not made first by other people, Chomsky’s most known work Manufacturing Consent is just a rehash of Parenti’s work Inventing Reality, while Zizek on the other hand is focused on philosophy of ideology and media literacy rather than action.
I think Chomsky has done a massive public service cataloging and broadcasting US War crimes, while Zizek is a bit more theoretical
You have these backwards. Zizek is not theoretical, Zizek is philosophical. Theory can be applied as action, that is not what Zizek does.
Would you mind posting some good authors or thinkers to move forward from Chomsky please? I’m only familiar with him and would like to broaden my knowledge. I see you mentioned Parenti so I’ll look them up.
Can do. Some suggestions:
Blackshirts and Reds is your starting point with Parenti.
You should look into Vincent Bevins. His Jakarta Method is a serious wakeup call about the use of mass murder against the left around the world and what last resort capitalism is willing to go to.
Vijay Prashad should also be on your list. He wrote Washington Bullets and continues to be extremely valuable and influential in the left today. He’s also a really fucking good speaker, like Parenti.
Oh and anyone who considers themselves to still be a socdem (rather than an anticapitalist of some sort) should read Imperialism in the 21st Century by John Smith.
Tldr: no reddit isn’t getting worse in this regard.
Post-API, reduction in good moderation might be a factor, though.
Reddit has so many people on it it behaves like society. If you’re in a bad neighborhood (sub) you’re going to deal with bad people.
Some subs are awesome, r/olkb, r/linuxmint to name 2. But bigger more general subs… They can be shocking, I generally didn’t bother with them.
jack humbert is an awesome dude. that’s all I have to contribute.
Reddit helped me a lot over the years with my doubts and issues. Whenever I had any doubt with anything, I always found atleast one or two posts about it with some helpful answers. But yes, Reddit is filled with nasty people with their criminal minds. People use downvote feature for their personal satisfaction. If they do not like your comment (even if it is true), they will downvote you and then constantly harass you until you delete the comment. Moderators delete your comment and block you without giving you any explanation or a chance to explain yourself. The best way to use Reddit is to use it without an account.
I’ve definitely and obviously noticeably seen voting as disagree here too in many instances. That’s not better here. Maybe less impactful due to size. In most cases still outweighed by upvotes (of agree or good contribution intention).
Moderation will likely run into the same issues. Because it’s fundamentally the same approach and system.
What’s great about Lemmy is that it isn’t just one big community but a bunch of small ones that band together to share content. If a community gets too toxic there’s a migration path to a new one without getting locked out of the system as a whole.
Back in the old days of the internet when a forum started to get too big they often started to get toxic. Since each forum was isolated leaving it would be pretty hard since you’d not want to lose the good with the bad. Lemmy improves in that in that you can leave for a new community but you don’t get locked out of all the content from elsewhere so there’s less lock in giving users more choice to find a community that works for them.
One thing that would help is account linking which would decrease lock in even more.
I was on Reddit since 2010 and it has always been a shit place. I stuck around for small subs, but Reddit at large was always a refuge for racists, misogynists, and reactionaries. I was around for the fall of violentacrez; anyone remember that disgusting creep and how Reddit gave him a stupid fucking golden Snoo for running an insane number of creepy and violent subs? Until the existence of r/jailbait became a scandal and liability, so they axed him, and the majority of users from what I could see were wailing and gnashing teeth over not being able to post sexual pictures of minors? Anyone remember the r/creepshots debacle?
Idk why y’all think there was some golden age of reddit. It was always a hellsite run by creeps and Nazi sympathizers that happened to also be an okay platform for niche forums (which, in my experience, were constantly getting trolled and harassed by the knuckle-draggers who formed the site’s primary demographic). The only thing that surprised me about the last month’s events were how many people were surprised.
Reddit was a washed down 4chan. For those who came from a forum life in the 00’s and knew 4chan too, Reddit made sense.
That kind of content will keep happening and popping, and there will be a lot of people supporting it. Because we’ll always have teenagers eager to see fringe stuff, and social misfits that want to be seen/heard.
I think that we need to understand that Lemmy and the Fediverse can hold such things, but they aren’t at fault for that. Reddit was faulty as a corporation, but not as a platform. And because Lemmy, the Fediverse and ActivityPub are techs free to anyone, they aren’t liable for this, but the owners of the instances of these techs are.
We have already seen how this plays out, thankfully. We’ve seen a lot of instances defederating exploding-heads.com, and this is good. The same with many people saying to defederate from Meta’s new social network.
I think we need to understand that, profoundly, human beings are very heterogeneous. We’ll always have nice and bad people. And that communities reflect that. Having everything in one instance (Reddit) is not a very good solution. Having them in different instances and each one with their own ethos, makes more sense as a society. Especially because we behave like that. I usually don’t mingle with douchdbags.
I never saw this side of Reddit. I have no idea of who you are talking about either. I was there for awhile and my take was that it was an anonymous chill place to discuss things.
I learned about some things I never would have guessed and was exposed to sides of life I never would have known otherwise. There were some good times and bad. I can see an increase in aggression and bots. I do agree that taking away the down vote changes things. But I have changed too. So I don’t see it as a cause and effect. It’s just website. It’s not my singular reason for existence.
Tbf lemmy just went through a huge wave of fuck spez posts not too long ago. And still is ongoing to some degree
Its justice when villains like spez and trump get their daily dose of hate.Hate only deserve to bad people.
“Hate is worse though. It’s poison that corrodes it’s container: more damaging to the one who hates than the one hated”
Unfortunately Lemmy is not immune to this behavior. I made a comment about what I think of the current general political situation in the U.S. and some loon flew off the handle, throwing around the standard anti Fox tropes and name calling
Some people just can’t help themselves. Especially when it comes to politics and the like. They are incapable of having a discussion and all they do is attack and name call. Their identity is wrapped up in their political views and they can’t think for themselves. They come from every side and are everywhere.
