
Spiraling Self-Censorship in the United States - admiralspoo
https://twitter.com/robkhenderson/status/1287063678592995329
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rbecker
A few comments in that thread are guessing that it could be because the 1955
study might not have polled minorities. But they forget that _even if_ that
was the case, the US was only 11% non-White in 1955:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_racial_and_ethnic_d...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_racial_and_ethnic_demographics_of_the_United_States)

So even if _all_ of that 11% were to say they self-censored, it would only sum
to 13.4% + 11% = 24.4%, compared to 2019's 40% self-censorship.

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errantspark
I'm guessing that as pg puts it, orthodox privilege was more widespread back
then. I wasn't anywhere near being alive during McCarthyism but I would be
surprised if this is a result of 2-4x greater pressure to self censor now vs
70 years back; but rather a result of a much more heterogeneous US population.

Someone more familiar please fact check me on that though.

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tdeck
I expect survey responses like this are very context dependent. This makes me
think of happiness research. In some countries, it's considered a bit self-
indulgent and tacky to be happy all the time, whereas in others it's
considered antisocial to be unhappy - you should be happy constantly. Guess
which countries' citizens report higher levels of happiness when surveyed?
That doesn't necessarily mean that those countries are happier, because
there's this confounding variable of value judgment associated with the two
answers.

It's a lot "cooler" today to have edgy and polarizing opinions, so people make
that a part of their identity. This is why even some people with mass media
audiences in the millions complain constantly about how they're being
silenced/censored. Imagine the reception such a complain would have gotten
from a media personality (on their own show) in 1955 vs today.

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nojs
Can you give some examples of polarizing opinions that you think are
considered “cool”?

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tdeck
Sure, look at the self-styled "intellectual dark web".

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nojs
(Genuinely curious) in what sense do you mean that it’s considered cool? I
don’t think most of these people are treated with admiration and respect in
popular culture in the way normally associated with the word “cool”.

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addicted
The simple reason this is true is because people didn’t hold very unorthodox
viewpoints at the time.

They didn’t really feel space sores because US society all largely agreed on
everything.

It was the 60s the Vietnam war and the civil rights movement that led to large
numbers of Americans questioning the US and the orthodoxy.

In the decade or so following the end of WW2 Americans did not really hold
views that were outside the norm.

