Is it just me, or does it feel like "conservatives" have finally discovered the internet? Over the last few months, it feels like friggin everything has become Obama's fault, or suddenly "leftists" are responsible for X.
I'm not trying to be combative, or start a political argument. I have my own political leanings, sure, but I derive no joy from bitching about it on the internet. I just know that everything I read on a daily basis has veered to the right in the last few months.
Is this a cultural shift, or a demographic that was relatively unheard in this medium asserting itself for the first time? I'm not making a value judgement either way, just wondering.
(Don't get me wrong, shit like Conservapedia has been around for years now. But most of the stuff I read, for better or worse, has been pro-social justice, pro-multiculturalism, etc. until now. Do fewer people buy into that nowadays? Or is what I'm seeing the result of more people participating?)
DT's "victory" has encouraged a lot of folks to feel like they can speak their mind freely. For many, the "victory" is a symbol. It says "you are not alone." It's not that there's any more of them than there were last year; now they feel like they're on the right side of things and are feeling confident.
In hindsight, I observed the same thing with Obama's two terms. A lot of talk about rape culture, safe spaces, etc. Everyone who didn't agree was out of step with where America was really going and was gonna be left behind. So they thought...
That side felt really emboldened and overplayed their cultural hands. Now it's the right's turn to over estimate how much everyone agrees with them.
It's almost certainly multi-faceted, but I don't think it's just "conservatives discovering the internet," or at least anymore than it was 4 years ago.
Two things that I think contribute heavily to the phenomenon you're seeing:
1) We've had 8 years of a democratic president. People were similarly fed up with conservatism at the end of GWB's presidency. If things haven't been going well for you for the past 8 years (and for most Americans, they haven't been going great), it's easy and common to blame the president for those troubles. And by extension, the president's party and theoretical political ideologies.
It's much easier to have strong feelings after such a long time with one political party in charge (theoretically).
2) I'd wager a large sum that most of those comments come from white males who earn at or less than the median income, who previously may not have felt that strong of a political ideology or at least not enough to comment on an internet forum.
Much of the current liberal discourse in America is focused around historically oppressed groups, e.g. black Americans, or people who don't fit into classic gender identities. This comes at the expense of ignoring (or in some extreme instances, trivializing) the struggles of the working class or middle class who may not necessarily fall into one of those historically oppressed groups.
I think it's easy to imagine that if you're a white, poor male you might not feel like American liberalism in its current state really cares about you or your problems. Not that I think Republicans really care about their problems either, but at least they pay them lip service.
I've found that most comment sections in so-called MSM is filled with conservative flames, and has been for years.
I've also found that the sources as a developer I (and I suspect you as well) find the most interested seem to be heavily liberal. In such environment I see a ton of what I'd call "SJW bullies" - even hinting at a thought that violates the groupthink there quickly devolves.
In that environment, what has changed? Are conservatives becoming thicker skinned? Is "me too" SJWism being replaced with a more mature version of online liberalism? In any event, I think conservatives are speaking up more in those environments.
The mystery to me is why sites like the Washington Post have a comments section at all. Think of the time and money they spent implementing and running it, possibly requiring the most technical effort out of their entire publishing endeavor.
All to get tons of horrible garbage dumped at the bottom of their pages every minute of the day.
Tons of high traffic sites have these wild west zones at the bottom of their otherwise tightly controlled articles. They have next to no oversight, there are barely any technical barriers to prevent abuse, and yet they still command a significant portion of the main content's reach.
This is absolutely not lost on people who want to promote certain views loudly, quickly and cheaply. I really doubt that all (or even most) of the comments on a site like the Washington Post's are actual people who actually think those things.
But somebody does, and some people will start to find those views more acceptable when they see them everywhere at once.
I figure for most of them it came with their CMS anyway or it was sold as "just add this piece of JS" to increase engagement by some 3rd party. People sign up with their mail in a fit of "someones wrong on the internet" and you can effortlessly spam them.
Having a comment section feels right on the internet, particularly for sites that religiously avoid using any sort of links, at all.
Remember where conservatives tend to live. Getting anything better than a 28.8 kilobit/second modem isn't easy. Eh, for you city folk, that's a 0.0288 megabit connection. The decimal point is 3 or 4 places to the bad side of what you are used to getting.
As tolerable internet makes it's way out to rural America, you can expect to see a change in the average political view on the internet.
ESPN is cable, right? Don't most (if not all) cable providers have internet packages? If that's the case, anyone who's getting EPSN is surely has access to connectivity greater than 28.8 kbps.
In the late 90s I lived in a little town (though it was the biggest in the area) in Oklahoma. They had cable internet there before many other areas, due to the simpler infrastructure.
I'm not trying to be combative, or start a political argument. I have my own political leanings, sure, but I derive no joy from bitching about it on the internet. I just know that everything I read on a daily basis has veered to the right in the last few months.
Is this a cultural shift, or a demographic that was relatively unheard in this medium asserting itself for the first time? I'm not making a value judgement either way, just wondering.
(Don't get me wrong, shit like Conservapedia has been around for years now. But most of the stuff I read, for better or worse, has been pro-social justice, pro-multiculturalism, etc. until now. Do fewer people buy into that nowadays? Or is what I'm seeing the result of more people participating?)