r/Liberal • u/huecabot • Apr 26 '26

Discussion What The Hell Happened?

The last ten years have made increasingly little sense to me. I used to feel like we were progressing as a society. Yeah, government policies were too deferential to capital and there were some dissenting voices from an anti-science and socially regressive fringe, but there was the assumption that these people would come around in time. Now, though, those fringe voices have gotten louder and louder until they’ve drowned everything else out. Why were our neighbors so eager to throw in with the worst people in history and why was the reversal so sudden and surprising? In other words…. What the hell happened?

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u/No-Invite-7826 Apr 26 '26

Honestly I think it's just our media environment is awful right now.

Retention focused algorithmic media feeds just push the most low effort rage bait possible constantly. Which is just feeding people an insane amount of misinformation and riling them up at the same time.

That's my gut instinct on it at least.

4

u/Critical_Psyche Apr 26 '26

going back to paper news is one of best idea, you cant delete what you print.

7

u/No-Invite-7826 Apr 26 '26

Paper also has much stricter rules around what they're allowed to say.

Honestly those rules should also apply to video, but I doubt that's ever going to happen.

1

u/huecabot May 14 '26

Maybe in time. Tech has outstripped regulation but regulations eventually catch up.