the_donald was very hateful but I wouldn't call them violent. They were a cultish meme sub like /r/Conservative is. They got banned was for brigading not for being violent and hateful.
I would go as far as to say it was a childish meme sub (edit: and cultish, ye). I wonder if it was like that Flat Earth Society started. Once the "Qanon" type of guys turn up the memes become dogma.
I might have a different threshold for hateful on the internets or I didn't look closely enough.
Likely take a break from social media and talk with some real people. Lots of people voted for trump aren’t radical actually none that i know are. I come from a small town in a red state and yes they completely disagree with democrats on pretty much everything but the stuff you read on reddit is so far fetched and extreme I don’t know how anyone would take it seriously.
They believe people hate Americans and everyone should be ashamed traveling overseas. As someone who travels all the time to multiple continents not just Europe i have never encountered anyone who asked or even cared. Most people don’t live in a political bubble where they need to stop being friends with people over politics.
Anyway a lot people are choosing to live in an angry little bubble. It is really sad to see.
> Lots of people voted for trump aren’t radical actually none that i know are.
The same can be said for the supporters of many radical and terrible historical regimes. I'm not radical, I'm simply pushing this radical boulder along, and I can stop it whenever I wan tooo-oops."
No need for histrionics, it's simple: Someone doesn't need to actively desire a terrible outcome to be morally culpable of making bad choices, ones they should-have-known would enable or encourage it to happen. Multiple such people can and do form groups.
It's not limited to politics either, which is how we get idioms like "playing with fire."
Notably, people will also be nearly universally angry at anyone who points out the inevitable consequences of their actions in cases like this. Especially if they know you’re right.
Near as I can tell, the biggest failure of the left (and one that keeps getting repeated) is thinking words/knowledge matter in situations like this.
You realise this works both ways? The average left leaning person doesn't have 700 pronouns and isn't calling for a communist revolution. They're not paid by Soros. They don't have blue hair and have a meltdown at the slightest upset.
The online charicatures are just that. In both directions.
Real talk though: the US, via the current administration, is trashing its international reputation. With tariffs and lashing out at (former?) allies. Or with Musk demanding regime change in the UK, for instance. On a personal level people will still be chill no doubt, but you should be prepared for some negative attitudes towards the US if things continue unabated.
I was in Europe for a while starting right after 9/11 and there was a lot of shame and no lack of pointed questions. The locals didn’t hate us, but there was a decent amount of “what the hell is wrong with you guys?” It was not uncommon for American travelers to put Canadian flag pins on their backpacks to try to deflect attention or curry favor.
It’s surely ten times worse now. Trump makes W look like a statesman, and we could at least plead that W didn’t win a majority and only became president because the system is stupid.
I think it's more that there is nothing to be gained about asking an American in Europe about Trump. Most likely, they think he's a douchenozzle too so why bring him up and ruin a vacationer's day. On the off chance they are a Trump supporter, now the European has to listen to an idiot spout Newsmax nonsense until they can get away.
I’ve seen this sequence of events play out before.
In many was ‘go outside’ is dismissive of what many people feel is happening, that to within 15 days of this new presidency. This is a low key way of saying you don’t like people protesting.
While at the same time others are saying people aren’t protesting enough.
If you aren’t ok with all of this, I strongly suggest deleting all social media, including hacker news. Take your advice and go outside. Be good to your neighbors and your mental health.
There is zero space for passive consumption when one of the biggest cultural and economic forces in English speaking Internet land is dismantling itself.
There is going to be very little space for any tolerance of nuance - because Trump is going to continue to escalate. He is going to follow a plan which was known, and it aims at gutting the US, and justifying it with DEI or whatever the cassus belli of the month is.
This is eventually going to result in ‘riots.’
Which will feed the righteousness of the conservatives, which will result in a new round of “well you were so happy when the year started, where are you now.”
It will escalate into attacks on democrats as the devil. And HN will swing from left outrage to right outrage.
At that time the roles will be reversed, and the positions will switch.
Again - If you or anyone reading these comments is tired on Feb 6th - leave the internet right now. This is your tornado / natural disaster warning.
This isn’t meant to be hurtful to you, or to be any defense of anything.
I always assume I am wrong, and I hope I can look back at these comments with embarrassment over what looks like histrionics.
The problem I have is that i deal with social media and online safety as work and as research. Papers on this topic are my fun reading when my brain isn’t fogged up.
This is going to be worse than brexit. And that’s if we are all lucky.
I was asking bankers if there’s any slack in the financial system in November - and I asked this in multiple countries.
The answer was no. So when the trade shocks start hitting the system, expect a downturn.
This is aside from the walking dead syndrome which america will face after gutting multiple systems in-flight.
> Subreddits like r/pics are packed full of thinly veiled death threats towards the sitting president or Elon Musk.
This is just blatant misinformation. Since r/pics is the only example you've chosen to give us, let's evaluate it: I've scrolled through the current first 50 posts in Hot, and 0 of them are death threats, thinly veiled or otherwise. "Packed full", indeed.
And here, so it isn't simply my word vs. his; these are the current posts:
Protest, "Musk Stole Your Tax Data"
Picture of Nazi being punched after making a Nazi salute
Protest, "The Whole World is Watching"
Painting over values at the FBI
McConnell in a wheelchair
Flag upside down outside State Dept.
Kid covering ears with politician in foreground
"Buy Canadian Instead" sign in CA store
Protest, no visible message, flag with corp logos instead of stars
German anti-fascism protest
UFC fight match post KO [KO'd opponent is a neo-Nazi]
US Marine holding flag in distress position
Protestor, "No kings in America", dressed as Cap. America, mouth taped over
Protest "Nobody voted for Elon"
Protest "Stop Musk's Takeover"
Picture of Trudeau
Protest "Smells like Fascism"
… none of which are death threats. I could scroll all night and not see any examples.
There is a certain point where the calls for calmness come across as "stop making noise about the coup in progress". People should be calling out the people blatantly breaking the law and undermining the foundations of society.
Yeah "packed full" is probably a bit too heavy here. To pick a few examples though:
- The nazi punching thread had several moderated comments ranked near the top which were presumably calls to violence.
- The Mitch McConnal thread has many people looking forward to his death, hoping he goes to hell, and a few deleted comments.
- A musk thread has "eat the rich" and storm the capitol. Not super highly ranked.
I didn't go through all of them but it certainly is a bit odious.
Also note though how there's only 1 non political thread and the remainder are anti trump. This is on a general interest sub and what is likely to be an unremarkable day in the administration!
I’m a researcher working at a supposedly prestigious university and I can see homeless people with rotting limbs if I step off my campus and don’t look the other way. Some of my colleagues recently were awarded significant private funds to push a compound for a currently incurable dementia to clinical trials. They attended an instructional conference with other awardees and found that several were not there because they are at the NIH and so are under a gag order and travel ban. I am pretty sure Mitch “McConnal,” who spent his career obstructing any progress on the issues I describe below and who paved the way for current events, is actually dying of either a related dementia or the one they are working on, btw. So, what do you recommend Americans do? Never reveal we might have some anger towards being at the whims of people who would rather die themselves than help others? Don’t get me started on the genius who invented the single-person subway or et al.
You are misattributing American madness to the people it is being inflicted on rather than the instigators. We have oil wells behind our homes and schools and the white picket fence chemists I knew and looked up to as a kid are the reason we all have PFAs in our blood. Our president vacillates between saber-rattling at our closest allies, starting a new war in the Middle East, and causing constitutional crises every other day. We don’t have a single-payer healthcare option like every other developed country and our “social safety nets” are so impacted and difficult to get, they might as well not exist for most people. We do, however, have some very, very profitable oligopolies (some which make very tasty fish sandwiches) and higher income inequality than India or Russia.
Merely looking forward to someone’s death is now going too far? I get why overt threats are bad, but that’s getting ridiculous. Public figures are going to get some hate and that’s within the boundaries of what should be acceptable. Are we supposed to pretend there aren’t a bunch of destructive people in power we’d like to see gone?
There is a reason people are angry and the truth is Musk/trump have gone too far. It's bizarre to say but we are watching the downfall of the USA in real time. The country has been captured by criminals who are working to destroy it–folks are going to be angry about that.
Are you for real? Is this seriously a good faith argument? My man, you may be a true believer, and that is no compliment. Course correct. Try to steelman a bit.
The nazi salute is a fact, the question is where do you draw the line. Is his nazism okay because it's a joke? Not that big a deal for other reasons? I admit it's difficult for me to steelman here because the best arguments I can come up with for him are unconvincing.
If you feel the need to defend the salute I would suggest digging into that.
That helped the issue click into place - NONE of the past 15 days are unremarkable. And again, ITS BEEN 15 Days!
If you stop your thought at just “people are losing their shit”, thats seeing half the world.
I’d say thats disingenuous, because it misses or dismisses the incredibly alarming actions that have precipitated them.
If you genuinely care about it, then you might be interested in knowing why people are responding like this. For example, people generally hate Nazis, and punching Nazis is a popular idea.
DO people expect themselves to be polite when the see a takeover and destruction of their government? “it looks like pre WW2 Germany out there, do pass the salt dear.”
Let me put it another way. Trump is likely to try many outrageous and unexpected things.
As someone who tries to be non partisan, and isn't even american, I am fatigued by all of the claims that the world within the USA is ending. Whenever I take the time to examine any of the claims they tend to be fairly hollow or making slippery slope arguments.
As an international user of reddit, there are many of us I presume, I want the outrage to be saved for Trumps undeniable and worst offenses. In my eyes the memecoin was worse than anything which has happened since he became president and yet it has completely left the collective focus. Everything since then has just been a mix of people allowing trump to dictate the media cycle and the deep state deploying its immune system.
If we review democracies through history that have at some point become less democratic, I think describing the process of how that actually happens as being a slippery slope is quite apt. I’d say it’s more of a fallacy to assume that democracy is a secure default state of being rather than an ideal that we must collectively support or lose entirely—that we can safely “slip” a little without risking a slide further down the slope.
The reason why a slippery slope is a fallacy is that the starting point is an arbitrary threshold. Nothing here indicates the end of democracy to me. To someone looking to find some indication, anything can look like the beginning of the end.
Many of the circumstances being called out as concerning in recent weeks map well to historical examples—the framing of the argument alone doesn’t inherently invalidate it when we have good examples of comparable events (e.g. purge and installation of unqualified loyalists) precipitating critical, difficult to recover from outcomes (democratic backsliding) in other societies. When the stakes are so high, vigilance is rational.
Personally I enjoy slippery slope arguments which is why I didn't use the term fallacy. What I dislike is the reddit framing of having already slipped!
You're missing the point. The real issue is that r/pics, a subreddit that should be about photography enthusiasm, has become so hyperfocused on politics, that it only features posts that are critical of Musk and Trump. As is evident from the list of active topics you posted.
Is r/pics explicitly apolitical? Does it tend to feature current events and is that lineup just proportional to the magnitude of what's happening right now?
> You're missing the point. The real issue is that r/pics, a subreddit that should be about photography enthusiasm, has become so hyperfocused on politics,
No, I'm not. I'm making a statement about a particular claim: that Reddit is overwhelmed with leftist death threats.
I said nothing about r/pics being apolitical, and I'm not taking a stance in this comment chain about whether I think r/pics should or should not be apolitical. That's a different claim, and you're moving the goalposts.
I think it's ironic that people are up in arms about random posts on Reddit while many of those same people cheer at pardoning those who attacked the capital and brought actual violence on police officers. Will people letting off steam on Reddit lead to a violent insurrection?
The temperature is so high right now, and it's only continuing to rise because there seems to be zero accountability for what's happening whether it's pardons or Musk running unfettered through government accounts. Unfortunately, it's natural for people to keep escalating when they see no other avenue.
> after this liberals are going to be proud members of the NRA.
I grew up an active NRA member, shooting since I was 6. I have long since disassociated myself with the group but want to make it clear - a lot of liberals have guns and regularly practice using them.
We don't need the NRA (a Putin funded organization) to do that!
The only way to round up the numbers Trump wants to round up at this point is by going to job sites. You may think differently, but I don't think criminal gang members are typically working construction, in meat packing plants or picking crops. They are busy doing...you know, criminal things.
Also, Biden has already addressed the numbers coming across the border [1]. So again, the people who are left are mostly hard working people trying to make a life.
It feels like everyone forgot Reddit's roots as far as its politics are concerned. Namely, the place was Libertarian Central on the internet until 2015 when it got astroturfed basically overnight to swing the other way. I was there to witness it and the whiplash was something fierce.
Reddit has been basically unusable for anything concerning politics since, and nowadays with politics leaking out into every damn sub possible it definitely has a problem.
It’s not a Reddit thing. I also remember the days when everyone online was a libertarian. But Conservatives then turned to nationalist ideologies that don’t emphasize the free market, that are anti-immigration, and that take a dim view of personal sexual freedom. There are fewer people expressing libertarian points of view all over the shop. There’s a good article about it here: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/06/05/the-individual...
Libertarianism was never my thing, but I get the impression that it's not as popular with people in their teens and twenties now as it was in the 2000s.
What do people think others will do, when they see that the_donald behavior gets rewarded by electoral and political support?
If its not clear, everyone is going to radicalize, because its getting success.