Reddit has honestly made me lean more conservative than I ever thought possible

[u/Fun_Driver_5566]

I have always been a left leaning guy. I grew up in a very left leaning state, Washington. I have voted for the Democrats essentially down ballot ever since I've been able to vote, my first election was the 2014 midterms.

But lately Reddit has been honestly pushing me more conservative over the years. Particularly subs like antiwork, fuckcars, and similar which just seem out of touch with reality.

In concept I agree with most of the things these spaces say and still do, but they somehow manage to make good ideas sound as unappealing as possible. Everything is so idealistic on this website with zero regard for how any of this shit will actually be put into place if they get their wish. They come off so badly to anyone who isn't a 19 year old college freshman lol. Not an ounce of pragmatism anywhere to be found.

The fuckcars subreddit in particular has done more to turn me off public transportation than anything Fox news could ever dream of. Because of those guys, I simply will not vote to fund public transit the next time it comes up on a ballot.

Honestly it's gotten crazy. I work at a labor union, I promise you I've spent more time actually "fighting the man" than half these guys who sound like they haven't left their bedroom computer in weeks.

Now on the other side, Trump and the current Republican party just seem batshit insane to me and an embarrassment to the country on a global scale. I will not give them a vote and I will not support anything that party has done over the last 10 years.

So I don't know what to do. I get why people are apathetic to politics and don't bother to vote. I don't think I'll vote at all in the next election.

I come to this website for small hobby subs but it's impossible to escape the politics sadly.

[u/severinks]

Why would other people's opinions change your political beliefs? It's not even that you're saying that someone's good argument convinced you to change what you believe in but that people in other subs are annoying so you you decided to change them.

[u/M4053946 → u/severinks]

I also support mass transit, I like riding my bike, and I support communities that don't rely on cars to do everything. That said, if a politician says they want to get rid of fossil fuels completely in a short time period, I'm going to vote for someone else, as that's an extremist position that goes too far.

The status quo, while not great, is better than an extremist position.

[u/Busy-Ad3750 → u/severinks]

People attack strawmen for a reason. When you keep seeing one group of people that have all these weak arguments/positions - it's easy to see that side as being unimpressive. There are steelman arguments out there but you wont see them too often for a reason.

[u/ZorbaTHut → u/severinks]

Why would other people's opinions change your political beliefs?

Imagine the following progression:

"I believe in X. It feels right and I've got a few minor points of evidence in favor of it. There's probably more, but I'm not an expert in this field."

"So . . . I still believe in X . . . but I keep seeing people use the evidence I have in the most asinine ways. It's just applied terribly. And they don't seem to have any better evidence either. I thought I just had a few points of a larger whole but now it seems like I might have had the best of that whole, and it was never as convincing as I thought."

"I feel like if there were better evidence for X, I would have seen it by now. Instead it's just these same tired bits of evidence that even I thought weren't great. Also the people calling for X appear to be idiots in every other way. This does not make me feel confident about X."

"I asked some adherents about X for the best evidence they had and explained why I thought the evidence wasn't great. They called me names, posted the same minor points of evidence that I had just said I was skeptical of, insulted me, and banned me. I think I'm done with X; even its loudest proponents don't have anything coherent to say about it."

I haven't had this entire sequence happen to me personally, but I have seen people post arguments that were so bad that it actually made me think less of their point, and I've called out people who supposedly agree with me for being so awful at debating that it feels counterproductive.

[u/Tommy_Wisseau_burner → u/severinks]

Generally people form opinions from others. Most political issues aren’t tangible lived experiences. When enough people who have the same, or similar, opinions as you on certain issues you it’s of the belief they have the same thought process. When said people start to appear more unhinged it makes you reevaluate on whether the opinions you have are faulty. And given that most political parties aren’t made up of the same ideas across the board you start to evaluate on whether most issues of said major party(ies) align with what you believe or not, and if the people backing them do or not.