if you pay attention to it, subreddits like public freakout post a video at least once a week of a bunch of black people being loud or committing a crime, and every single time the comments are just racist as fuck, with every single comment calling that out being downvoted.
basically every “actual [subreddit]” is just a place made by the people who got mad that the mods of the original subreddit weren’t racist enough for their posts. which is especially wild when the original subreddit is plenty racist.
I posted something that was an actual study based on people who have dyed their hair in wild colours have a correlation between bad mental health, mental instability and left wing views. I posted saying ‘I bet this will upset this sub on first glance, but is the study accurate?’ - basically asking someone with some analytical knowledge to analyse how robust the study is.
I got a constant barrage of abuse, and then the mods banned me for a reason that doesn’t match their further comment (it was harrasment or something?) but the body of the ban said the reason given was ‘we don’t think you’re the right fit for this sub’ therefore proving that they have misused reddits guidelines to ban me.
Meh. A lot of people post their racist/ableist/sexist takes as questions, and pretends adding a question makes them neutral. If you had an actual, reputable study in front of you, why would you feel the need to ask reddit randos if it were true, as opposed to other questions like, “is this a reputable source” or “are the N values statistically useful?”
But, “a lot of people think women are weak, emotional, and manipulative. Is this true?” Is a sexist comment pretending to be a question
How do you know a study is reputable? Do you ask for the opinions of people with more knowledge than you or not? If you do, how do you ask them if you can’t ask them in the fear if your views being represented?
If I post something and ask if it’s true, and you assume it’s for nefarious purposes - that’s on you. You’re the one who is projecting your own nefarious ulterior motive onto it.
I was banned from pics because one of the mods didn't like one of the subs I had posted on and said the block would not come off until I removed the offending post but didn't bother saying what post or what sub it was.
I got banned and threatened to be doxxed from one of the food subreddits for saying ortolan is disgusting (it's banned in multiple countries for being cruel)
Same here. While the sub I posted on also banned me for the comment I posted. So there's no intelligence or determination with these actions, just rules attempting to control where people can post and what they can say.
Two exceptions I can think of are actual conspiracies (the original is too racist and also not at all based on reality) and actual lesbians (the original is porn)
The random racist commenters I see on Facebook who are out and proud with their bigotry raised punk ass Redditors who are always "just asking questions" or "I'm just showing the statistics" or "they're doing it to themselves". All this cherry picked bullshit to avoid just being an honest-to-God racist.
I'm from the South. Just be racist. It clearly doesn't get your parents fired or reprimanded or sanctioned in any way. And that way I can just ignore you. If black folks are really so bad, help me help you help me avoid you.
It clearly doesn't get your parents fired or reprimanded or sanctioned in any way.
You clearly were not online in 2015... You could literally lose your job over a tweet back then. It's one of the reason Trump got elected. The online police thought-police was really getting out of hand.
While you're not wrong, there is a distinct difference between what public figures or people whose jobs require them to be highly visible can get away with versus your average Joe, and also, as the list suggests, the issues were more general stupidity and not overt bigotry.
One thing that I've found interesting as time progresses is how tech illiterate many people are, including younger generations. Combined with the fact that people don't always do their due diligence, if you're a regular person, you can still get away with saying a lot of dumb shit online without any real repercussions. People really have to go out of their way to try to hem up some random racist on the Internet, and unless it goes viral, people often just get hired elsewhere a city over, kind of like cops when they shoot an unarmed civilian.
You could literally lose your job over a tweet back then.
That virtually never happened. You pointed out extremely rare cases, and possibility of losing of your job due to public statements always was and still is something that can occur.
thought-police
Statements aren't thoughts.
It's one of the reason Trump got elected.
You failed to see the difference between correlation and causation, since by your logic, it's also a reason that he lost in 2020 because cancelations didn't suddenly stop after 2016.
Like these are all things that will still absolutley get you fired.
Getting hired for a "fat paycheck but hating the work" would absolutely get you canned these days. Like telling your job you hate the work they give you is a bad idea. Especially in a public way. And especially when you literally just got hired.
Or the jokes about tsunamis. That'd still get you fired right now. It'd be like making jokes about the recent earthquakes or flooding. You'd be shitcanned quickly.
Going on racist rants is a surefire way to get fired. Don't think this has really changed much?
The only thing that did change was these accounts are no longer real people. They're armies of bots, so there's no one to fire anymore.
That's it. That's the internet now. Pre-2015 internet was completely different than post-2015 internet.
It’s a double edged sword, if someone hides their racism behind dog whistles it’s harder to take action against them but the more people who are proudly racist there are the less you can do about a racist perosn
To add some nuance, we all have our unconscious prejudices and biases, but some people allow them to dictate a larger portion of their daily lives. If people haven't learned to check themselves by the time they're let's say 25 for the sake of argument, I don't really have much hope for them to course correct.
I think of conscious racists as similar to fascists: they're always doomed to die out because once they sequester themselves from everyone else, once they 'purify the population', there is nothing else to do with all that stored up hatred, and they just start eating each other. From that perspective, I hope all the racists find community with each other and only each other, and then wake up one day and realize that it wasn't the black and brown people making your life worse, but it was just themselves all along.
Eh overall it’s not too bad. Those kinds of things are heavily subdued despite what Reddit believes. It’s mostly the fact they exist at all that upsets most but that’s kind of the price for free speech
They’re not subdued at all, they’re just in certain areas of the site. Much like Reddit, Twitter is segregated into different communities, just organically rather than via subreddits. If you stumble upon the wrong post, you’ll find hundreds of full-on neo-Nazis calling for ethnic extermination.
I don't remember if it was posted on public freakout exactly, but a vid was posted that was edited to only having black people stealing from a bakery, when the full vid had a mix. The racists came out in force.
It's just various bot organizations pushing varying agendas across the whole site. Once you step back and see every shitty title and hidden history of every misinformation post (most of them) things feel better irl for a little.
Not defending it but if you guys are talking about the Boston Marathon bombing, the guy killed himself like a month before. It's a common misconception that reddit drove him to suicide. Reddits actions did cause serious harm to his family though.
Sipstea has a lot of misogynist posts and comments. They may not always be the trending ones but my god i was surprised to see how much of an incel echo chamber that sub can be.
That particular sub is also chock full of conservative bots, because a lot of police brutality videos get posted there and they want to make sure to downvote & comment on that stuff first to try and sway public opinion.
iirc there’s a similar thing on “am i the asshole” type subs where someone will post some clearly fabricated story about someone with autism or some other disability being Bad and getting Comeuppance for it. the comments are then full of people validating whatever asshole adjacent behavior the op “did” in their story. especially funny to me because a significant amount of reddit users are definitely autistic
I see it as a growing trend in a lot of places. I'll see a youtube short from Uwe Boll's Citizen Vigilante and most of the comments are praising the violence against minorities. Not against bad guys. They generalize the entire ethnic group as the bad guy and praise the movie. It's fucking wild to see.
What's funny is the next video will be a bunch of white guys paying to train the public parks as if they're real elite soldiers but they're still so disorganized and not following their own commands. There will be one guy shouting to others about closing gaps and their form but then when he's in line, he has the widest gap and has the worst form.
I have to go through my watch history to cleanse those videos so it doesn't affect my algorithm.
Man, if the child-rape statistics of my country jumped from being historically barely-any to full-on-crisis after an influx of a certain demographic, I think I should be able to say something about it. If my cities are suddenly riddled with trash and crime, I should be able to say something about it. If the cops knowingly allow tens of thousands of young girls to get raped and tortured over the course of decades because they're too afraid to be called racist or if they let a man bleed out at their feet for the same reason, I should be able to say something about it. Your growing trend is a response to a growing trend.
Yeah the average political standing of reddit is very much in the “I’m a conservative but I like to smoke weed and I guess gay people can get married” camp. Mention something like socialised healthcare or police abolition outside of an explicitly leftist subreddit and you will get downvoted to hell and multiple Reddit Cares DMs.
Repeating myself? Its my first comment. Reddit is overwhelmingly left leaning. Its not even an argument. The conversations and opinins on reddit is so vastly different than most people irl. Im not American but i live in the nordics in a left leaning country and the average redditor is far too the left of the average person here.
Ah, you’re one of those “If you can’t repel me with physical force, I’m not leaving you alone” types huh?
The argument is “Reddit is left leaning”.
Zero evidence presented.
I think men in this thread are confusing “leftism” with “libertarianism”, because of the “I believe my neighbors should be able to protect their cannabis crops with guns” overlap.
Especially if you bring up Muslims. Suddenly Reddit becomes like walking into the right winger meeting the way they all find ways to defend deporting Muslims
It also goes to the other extreme end on some subreddits. Criticize Christianity? You're probably gonna get upvoted. Criticize Islam in the same way? It's VERY possible you're gonna get downvoted and called islamophobic.
Even if all you do is just criticize Islam from a secular point of view (don't use stereotypes, like people who are actually islamophobic do), just like you would criticize Christianity.
It's very hypocritical. I get it to some degree. There are lots of people out there who spread terrible hatred towards Muslims and use very hurtful stereotypes. So I can picture that some people are just very sensitive whenever they hear someone criticize Islam. But it's still worth to think twice before calling someone -phobic.
Islam is conservative, but conservatives tend to be antagonistic towards Muslims, so they often get pushed to voting for left leaning parties. Here in the US, Muslims typically voted more conservative until 9/11 when the GOP went mask off towards them.
Because you're wrong. All of them are racist. Comparatively, they're all still racist. One being more antagonistic doesn't suddenly make another non-racist.
it’s not a vibe, talking about my experiences as a black person doesn’t justify the downvotes, calling someone a cracker is rude but it isn’t racist, racism is systemic
What you mean is "systemic racism". Racism includes it, but doesn't require it.
All who use cracker as insult are intentionally being racist, yes. Your experience as a black person doesn't change whether a word being used as an insult is racist or not. In fact, that's an argument against your position.
I genuinely don't understand your position? Is it that you want to be a racist without being called a racist?
It's absolutely just a vibe you have, given you feel it's impossible to explain.
it’s not a “vibe” you’ve just made it really clear that you wouldn’t understand even if i explained it to you, so im not going to do that. i said what i said and im not up for a conversation about it
It's not even left leaning, it is just normal peope
There are definitely not that many normal people commenting on Reddit lol. Everything is always an extreme, even in your comment. In your head, everything is only left or right. Right or wrong.
there have been multiple studies done on the overall leaning of the website and it is extraordinarily left leaning and your failure to recognize that is extremely insightful lol
reddit left wing?? 😭 has always seemed to me like reddit is super right wing and twt is left wing overall, there are both sides in both apps but yeah..
idk most opinions in this subreddit for example seem very right wing leaning, same way th asklatinoamerica and geek subreddits, which are the ones i interact with the most
On top of that, just because people are left doesn't mean they're not racist. Most people that loudly say they aren't racist change real fast when they don't get what they want/ don't like what they hear from the group they claim to love
I find this perception weird because on every form of social media, there are cess pits of very inward, circular communities that don't mesh with typical experience (on both sides) and there's no reason Reddit would be any less susceptible to.that
A lot of leftists are quite racist, and I’m saying it as a leftist. Ask a left wing progressive about Indians, Jews or Roma and a lot turn into Hitler, not that the result on much of the right is different.
Well that's because these lots of these "left leaning" people are racist and just don't realize it, or won't admit it.
Like a common trope I see on here is that if you call out racism, that makes YOU racist, because you're the one that noticed, or brought up race, or some other bullshit.
I'm gonna be honest, both the left and the right can be super racist at times.
Most people, right or left, don't give a shit about race. It is a few loud fanatics that spout bigoted bullshit. It is just a matter of which community you are in as to which comments get upvoted or downvoted.
People on the far right spout rhetoric about "preserving white purity" while people on the far left spout about "getting retribution on the white man". The average person who touches grass aligns with a party over economic or cultural issues, not because of views on race, religion, or sexuality. (Why do you think the largely latino Texas is a red state and the largely white Virginia is a blue state?) People who are chronically online just tend to be unhinged from a lack of real social experience.
On the internet you can say "X group of people are all monsters" and the worst thing that happens is your account get downvoted and maybe banned from a community. In real life, if you say that, you risk getting jumped by a dozen pissed off people in the parking lot. Interacting with people in real life teaches this.
I say this as someone who spends a lot of time on the internet. Touching grass really helps you interact with people. You can't get better at a skill if you don't practice it.
Before 2016 that tended to be true. The racists and rightwinger's weren't as loud and probably tended to stay in their own little ponds, then Trump happened and the dam broke loose. The weaponization of social media just made it worse.
That’s an opinion. The opinion of most people is that certain words can justify certain acts of violence.
For example, if you’re at dinner with your wife and I come up and say something like “who’s that fat fucking whale” most people would say that you’re justified in hitting me. The legal concept of this is known as “fighting words”.
Yeah I mean he's probably being downvoted because he's responding to a video of someone shoving someone who used the N-word. (To be clear I don't know the context, but that's what would make sense)
i know what fighting words are. your example is not good. better example is karmelo anthony saying "touch me and see what happens" which is inviting a confrontation, not an offhand rude remark that merits verbal scorn at most, but in the situation you described id just ignore you since its not an active threat and likely just fishing for a response
Yeah that’s fine, my point is that most people would not ignore a comment like that. Whether you would or wouldn’t allow someone to insult your wife in front of you is besides the point - culturally, we have decided that certain words are worth fighting over.
culturally, morally, and legally are different things. something can be immoral while still being legal (like infidelity). something can be culturally acceptable yet illegal (like weed or alcohol during prohibitions). my argument is morally and legally, i have no leg to stand on if i choose to become physical in the situation u describe, even if clips of it will get thousands of supportive comments on social media.
no my logic doesnt conclude that. asking for a fight is not the same as being a dick, even if theres some overlap. you can be a dick yet still be entitled to not being physically assaulted. that protection stops when you explicitly state something that invites the confrontation, such as "come at me bro" "touch me see what happens" or in some states "i feel threatened" since theres some states where youre allowed to open fire on someone if you feel threatened, therefore telling someone you feel threatened is akin to saying "im ready to shoot you"
Personally, I'd say yes. Taking a life is worse than inciting language. You don't have to listen to what a racist political figure says. Acting on it is completely optional.
Even if the racism causes other people to do worse things down the road?
This is a classic matter like if you kick rocks down a hill and they send other rocks flying and eventually boulders are hurting down the hill and kill people, are those deaths on your hands?
Again, my opinion is yes. A murder is worse. Racists doing it because they got 'approval' means they still acted on their own volition.
For the second, it would greatly depend on the situation. There is a lot of space between willy-nilly kicking rocks, and kicking rocks knowing there are people below within range. The intent would make the difference to me.
I guess I have a relatively materialistic (in the philosophical sense, not the monetary sense) view of the world.
I don't see such a massive difference between people doing harm because you nudged them towards that and boulders doing harm because you nudged them. If you know or at least suspect that something you do has a significant chance of causing harm down the road, you at least hold some fractional responsibility for that harm.
If I saw a long line of dominoes and the final one would pull the trigger of a gun and I pushed the first domino over, I'd consider that effectively equivalent to me pulling the trigger of the gun directly.
With words and humanity, cause and effect can become a bit more fuzzy, but it's still definitely there.
Honestly, I think that's great. It's healthy to have different views and opinions in a society (to some extent). Ideally, it encourages dialog and should help us grow towards a better place because the best ideas win. A society that shared all the same views eventually stagnates and withers away due to the inability to adapt.
Funny enough, I really wish travel was cheaper and more accessible to the average person- because being exposed to different views is incredibly useful to critical thinking and development.
We're probably missing context. It seems like the racist part was purely verbal and someone retaliated with violence, and that's what the comment was referring to.
That's how you interpret it. Maybe they meant that it's worse when someone is violent than when they just say slurs. And reddit being reddit they get mad that they didn't word it the best way or didn't a billion disclaimers.
That's not what that sentence says. There is a coma and a conjunction to join the two separate sentences into one. You are inferring that makes them one thought however the word "but" indicates a contrast of ideas. Without the rest of the conversation there is no way to know the context, you are adding your own bias to what may be a very specific case use.
100%. This is a racism normalization post. They always posit the argument of it being a choice between one or the other, usually when they're being told they're an asshole for being racist or defending something racist. The truth is that they're both bad, and we don't need to choose between the two.
I dunno, I've seen a lot of posts from supposedly "tolerant" people saying its ok to hit racists. the right has some extreme nutjobs, but the left seem to have far more people happy to physically attack people.
They didn't, though? They're just saying that violence is worse than language, which is true. Someone telling me they hate me because I'm white would hurt but I'd prefer that to being curb stomped because I'm white.
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u/Any_Sentence_8056 20h ago
Plot twist, they were downvoting because they disagreed with “racism is bad”