Yes, r/politics, the alleged all US political news website (it's not, I have experience of that), which is really, with many posts, little more than a #BlueAnon circle jerk.
Take this one, about a Newsweek story about how the Pentagon said the looming (as of last week) government shutdown would not affect arms shipments to Ukraine, and how "the MAGA" were all butthurt about it.
Circle-jerk indeed. The words "treason" and "traitor" were of course freely used without substance, as was "Russia's behind all this" and variants. Then, when an actual leftist (yours truly) tries to row an oar, he gets attacked just like a MAGA.
They even downvoted THIS guy, just because he apparently didn't toe the line enough on the circle jerk:
I mean fuck MAGA and Trump.
But as a fed who'll have to work without pay during this shit.
Why the fuck do we have money to kill people but can't pass a budget which endures I can buy some fucking food?
That's mouth-breathing. (Except that that commenter, per his whole Reddit feed, and this post, is lying about being a federal employee, unless comment above is intended to be rhetorical. In that case, he's spot on, and the downvotes are mouth-breathing.)
Other posts are that way, too. And individual commenters. I saw people elsewhere on r/politics, or other subs, spinning for Biden and the UAW when challenged over his railroad strikebreaking and more. And, it was third-grade level spinning. Not even close to convincing.
I wound up losing about 100 karma points from downvoting. Interestingly and hypocritically, one of the likely downvoters, and a clear BlueAnon circle-jerker, on his profile said that downvoting was chickenshit, or words to that effect.
Well, I gave back downvotes to him and others. And blocks to him and at least 20 others. And, using old Reddit, blocked r/politics from showing up in my feed again.
After that, after a second wind, I went back to that post, and blocked at least 7-8 more. Then a third wind, after seeing a few people fighting the same battles as me on that post, or on other posts that I saw the second round of people I blocked commenting on. I dropped a few quick comments, while having the people THEY were responding to already teed up for a third round of blocks. It's like blocking the wingnut #BlueCheckMorons on Twitter.
I mean, BlueAnon, or to use the other hashtag word on Twitter, BlueMAGA, acts and comments in as much of evidence-free ways as does MAGA.
r/worldnews, which has a Russia-Ukraine War flair-controlled sub-sub-reddit, is almost as bad, on that sub-sub. These people, with user names like "sirkillsalot" are scary. I just blocked about 20 people there Sunday night.
Update: After hitting this BlueAnon pandering post from The Daily Beast at r/politics, I learned that Reddit apparently has a daily blocking limit. (And, apparently an overall one, too, though I don't think I'm that close to it. I found that out by hitting an r/help post, with someone asking why you'd block people. Well, used to, I thought Reddit retaining downvotes was a good thing, but it's clearly not.)
Update, Oct. 26, 2023: Turns out there's #BlueAnon chuds at r/geography, too, as I found out, in response to someone else calling a commenter a "vatnik" and I said I agreed, but with an introductory caveat that not everybody challenging the US party line is a vatnik. I eventually blocked three. True that stuff like there doesn't often spill into politics, but? The number of downvotes I got means that #BlueAnon, like #MAGAts must use bots or at least burner parallel accounts.
And, I owe Brett Welch an apology for trying to defend Reddit having a downvote button.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Your comments are appreciated, as is at least a modicum of politeness.
Comments are moderated, so yours may not appear immediately.
Due to various forms of spamming, comments with professional websites, not your personal website or blog, may be rejected.