You have fallen into one of the liberal echo chamber traps. I like to think these traps were born of genuinely good intent and have simply been overused. An issue that liberal echo chambers can have is bad faith actors trolling the various forums and social media. For example, an unabashedly “pro-life” conservative wading into the topic of abortion calling themselves “pro-choice”. Then they start Just Asking Questions and ultimately reveal they think the choice should be to not have sex. And once someone is pregnant, they’ve made a choice and now must live with the consequences.
So liberals have these “traps” that started as somewhat of a defense mechanism. Rather than waste time attempting to truly flesh out a position with someone acting in bad faith, they will begin the process by sort of vetting the person. If you ask the “wrong questions” or provide the “wrong answers”, you’ll be effectively labeled a bad faith person. This will be evident initially by a flurry of downvotes on a few comments. Once the avalanche has started, it’s hard to avoid. People will barely peruse your comments and follow the judgement that you are acting in bad faith.
It makes it impossible to play devil’s advocate or really dig deep on topics that have tons of nuance and layers. Once a comment chain gets long enough maybe 1 or 2 other people will still follow it. If you’ve been judged earlier on, any valid points or questions you proffer will be ignored and/or downvoted.
FWIW I’ve come to describe myself as “horrifically liberal”. Even given that, I have been downvoted to oblivion on topics where I didn’t pass whatever purity test the first few viewers required.
Edit: as you can see, I’ve already been downvoted. Basically proving exactly what I said in my post.
You have fallen into one of the liberal echo chamber traps. I like to think these traps were born of genuinely good intent and have simply been overused. An issue that liberal echo chambers can have is bad faith actors trolling the various forums and social media. For example, an unabashedly “pro-life” conservative wading into the topic of abortion calling themselves “pro-choice”. Then they start Just Asking Questions and ultimately reveal they think the choice should be to not have sex. And once someone is pregnant, they’ve made a choice and now must live with the consequences.
So liberals have these “traps” that started as somewhat of a defense mechanism. Rather than waste time attempting to truly flesh out a position with someone acting in bad faith, they will begin the process by sort of vetting the person. If you ask the “wrong questions” or provide the “wrong answers”, you’ll be effectively labeled a bad faith person. This will be evident initially by a flurry of downvotes on a few comments. Once the avalanche has started, it’s hard to avoid. People will barely peruse your comments and follow the judgement that you are acting in bad faith.
It makes it impossible to play devil’s advocate or really dig deep on topics that have tons of nuance and layers. Once a comment chain gets long enough maybe 1 or 2 other people will still follow it. If you’ve been judged earlier on, any valid points or questions you proffer will be ignored and/or downvoted.
FWIW I’ve come to describe myself as “horrifically liberal”. Even given that, I have been downvoted to oblivion on topics where I didn’t pass whatever purity test the first few viewers required.
Edit: as you can see, I’ve already been downvoted. Basically proving exactly what I said in my post.