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One I always think of when looking at this sub forum. And this isn't a comment about policy here, but in general. A lot of places have this convention, lots of families have it for more harmonious family meet ups. You wouldn't discuss it in my workplace. Instead it would normally come up with close friends who probably shared outlooks and views.

So as many commentators have asked, did societies shying away from fractious topics help or hinder their consideration and debate? I have seen a shift in my lifetime for people to be taught more about previously unknown topics (e.g. in schools you new get told the basics of other religions instead of assuming they didn't exist), but it doesn't yet come with the same confidence to critique until you get to the more heady heights of education in this case. Do you think people get equipped with the tools necessary to think about, empathise and critique other views and beliefs?

Right place, right time.

I don’t discuss my faith at work. And it’s not something I feel comfortable discussing in the pub unless with friends.

Because everyone has their own view, and I don’t want to offend or rub anyone the wrong way because of what I do or don’t happen to believe in.

In a private conversation or debate? Sure thing. But online it just seems…daft.

Same with politics. I’m comfortable in my political views, but outside of election time, is a wargaming forum really the place for it? Because there are forums for just that topic.

And by no means are my views and opinions entirely harmonious with those of my friends. But we do at least enter into such discussions in good faith, and are happy to drop it and change the subject entirely if needs must.

In short, it's turning ugly. The internet easily connects us with people who will reaffirm our beliefs, no matter how deranged they might be, and gives us a safe way to attack those who disagree, without ever being challenged. It's conditioning us all for vicious righteousness. Of course, the effect might be more problematic on the one political side that literally wants to subjugate or exterminate certain groups of people.

I saw something a few months ago (might have been a Kurzgesagt video) that suggested it’s not the “echo chamber” effect that’s the biggest problem; in “traditional” life (I.E. without social media), you will actually tend to live and work with people who have broadly similar views, either through you choice of friends or through general social factors such as economic status, geography, etc. So people would actually traditionally live in what we would now call an echo chamber.

However in the world of globalised social media we get exposed to a huge variety of different world views, some of which are very challenging to our default expectations. This causes a lot of stress and anxiety, because our simple monkey brains want to live in a harmonious, aligned social group. This part of what leads to depression from social media, doom scrolling, etc., but I can also see how that triggers people to lash out. Of course, exacerbated by the anonymous nature of the internet and the fact that the chances of the person being attacked being able to present an actual physical threat to you being near zero.

It will be interesting to see if gen Z, or more likely gen Alpha, will cope with this better, because they’ll have lived all of their lives with this exposure. Most of the adults currently on the internet still had a “pre-digital” upbringing before diving online.

Was it this one? I found it an interesting article as well.

Also, my generation were really the first to dabble with the internet in a non-professional capacity. As it landed properly when I was around 17-18, my education didn’t cover how to parse truth from fiction online.

Just the other week, a friend sent me a link which tried to portray Amandla Stenberg as a wrong’un. Except the quote was delivered without context, and attributed to the wrong show.

A cursory google demonstrated that. And in the right context, the quote made sense and was entirely uncontroversial.

And it’s that sort of stuff we’re living with. Deliberate attempts to misinform and misrepresent. We see variants of this from all sides in the entirely manufactured “culture war”. A lot of that depends on some mook trawling the internet for the most pants on head, hatstand, bat guano crazy “the sun seems positively freezing by comparison” hot take they can find, then presenting it as a Majority View of which ever “other” they’re trying to smear, regardless of how disavowed and disowned the person behind such nuttiness might be.

 Jadenim wrote:
So people would actually traditionally live in what we would now call an echo chamber.

That feels like it's flipping OP's (and my) premise upside down.

You live in an echo chamber IRL because you have to talk it out with people you interact with until everbody's comfortable with the local... average view, or whatever you want to call it, and extremes are toned down unless you find yourself a city of all klansmen to move to, or whatever.

Online, you can find a city's worth of klansmen telling you you're right and just with no effort and extremes get reinforced.

An algorithm that ties revenue and outrage does not help.

I think the trouble is politics pervades everyday life at all levels, it's closely tied to this hobby and Warhammer in particular. The birth of Warhammer and it's lore is very political.

To decide what counts as "political" and what isn't it therefore tricky. In general the idea is to avoid it so we don't get endless back and forth drivel on topics because people don't know when to stop.

There is a serious problem in our society with an extremely gullible group of people who are purposefully targeted by a minority of wealthy people who gain from strife and who propagate material online and in printed media designed to create discord and hatred. The internet just does the job of allowing it to spread wildly with no critical thinking and works to target people who are easily swayed.

In the UK in the 60s and 70s, workers unions provided places to debate and funding for college courses. Libraries were widely available for people to improve their education. Simply having things available online is not the same as actual education, despite what people think.

There’s also a peculiar resistance to being proven wrong.

As someone always happy to become better informed and more knowledgeable, I still have my moments, but am open to correction all the same.

Others? Not so much. Indeed there’s folk on Dakka who’ll share single source guff, and present it as incontrovertible truth - despite a total lack of corroboration. And it’s done to try to cause controversy and poison the well with regard to tv shows and movies of all things.

Yes, once we think something, or worse believe, we will go to incredible lengths to not be proved wrong.

And note I am by no means advocating for such rule changes here. Every so often some wise keyboard warrior will come out with opinions (facts ) about, say, women in wargaming. Or worse defend GW And I will be left wondering if the Microsoft chatgpt rival escaped and is living on Dakka.

While in many ways its great wargaming brings so many people together - in my normal club it seems we have both socialist revolutionaries and neo fascist monarchists - it definitively only seems to work if the arguments are restricted to debating incomprehensible rule sets

Brexit incidentally (UK leaving the EU) has been pretty much the only thing that penetrated that unspoken defence, though occasionally someone will pass a outcome judgement on European colonialism and that sets a few people off for and against, though it trails off and people get back to game rather than continue to try and carry their points.

lord_blackfang wrote:

 Jadenim wrote:
So people would actually traditionally live in what we would now call an echo chamber.

That feels like it's flipping OP's (and my) premise upside down.

You live in an echo chamber IRL because you have to talk it out with people you interact with until everbody's comfortable with the local... average view, or whatever you want to call it, and extremes are toned down unless you find yourself a city of all klansmen to move to, or whatever.

Online, you can find a city's worth of klansmen telling you you're right and just with no effort and extremes get reinforced.

The_Real_Chris wrote:Yes, once we think something, or worse believe, we will go to incredible lengths to not be proved wrong.

And note I am by no means advocating for such rule changes here. Every so often some wise keyboard warrior will come out with opinions (facts ) about, say, women in wargaming. Or worse defend GW And I will be left wondering if the Microsoft chatgpt rival escaped and is living on Dakka.

While in many ways its great wargaming brings so many people together - in my normal club it seems we have both socialist revolutionaries and neo fascist monarchists - it definitively only seems to work if the arguments are restricted to debating incomprehensible rule sets

Brexit incidentally (UK leaving the EU) has been pretty much the only thing that penetrated that unspoken defence, though occasionally someone will pass a outcome judgement on European colonialism and that sets a few people off for and against, though it trails off and people get back to game rather than continue to try and carry their points.

And I think that’s one of the key things, in the real world you have to moderate your views, or risk becoming a social pariah. I also wonder if we’re also a bit more willing to accept alternative views and change our opinions from people we know and trust in the real world? (Side note, I think this is the psychological effect that “influencers” exploit; “I like and trust this person, therefore I will give more credence to what they say.”)

The OT forum that Dakka users moved to for those discussions is insanely toxic.

 Olthannon wrote:
An algorithm that ties revenue and outrage does not help.

In the words of the great Italian Spearman Mario Mario; The human condition reacts more viscerally to negative environmental changes.

Naturally, some people have realized you can profit from this basic mental tendency XD

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Also, my generation were really the first to dabble with the internet in a non-professional capacity. As it landed properly when I was around 17-18, my education didn’t cover how to parse truth from fiction online.

Just the other week, a friend sent me a link which tried to portray Amandla Stenberg as a wrong’un. Except the quote was delivered without context, and attributed to the wrong show.

A cursory google demonstrated that. And in the right context, the quote made sense and was entirely uncontroversial.

And it’s that sort of stuff we’re living with. Deliberate attempts to misinform and misrepresent. We see variants of this from all sides in the entirely manufactured “culture war”. A lot of that depends on some mook trawling the internet for the most pants on head, hatstand, bat guano crazy “the sun seems positively freezing by comparison” hot take they can find, then presenting it as a Majority View of which ever “other” they’re trying to smear, regardless of how disavowed and disowned the person behind such nuttiness might be.

this. So much this.

As an example I heard/saw plenty of recently: the famous Turkish "hit man" Olympian. Initially, there were some serious articles discussing how long he's been shooting, his previous career, family, etc.

But then, a friend shared a funny post from a facebook page called "The Sports Memery". OK, cool, it's like The Onion, but focusing on sport. It made a whole post about how he'd just showed up one week, practicing after a divorce cuz he "wanted to see his kids on the weekend". It was darkly humorous, for those who don't want to find it.

Then the problems show up. The next day, fb algorithm shows me a different friend shared a post by "Law Enforcement Today", which is a 'serious' page for law enforcement to discuss issues they face, and posting articles about new tech or whatever. They share this post by The Sports Memery, with a bit of their own commentary (it was weird, boot licking positivity. It was honestly pretty gross). . . And here's the thing, THEY DID NOT GET IT WAS A JOKE. They ran with the story, tooting their own LEO horn in the process as if it were a serious and factual post.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
There’s also a peculiar resistance to being proven wrong.

That is not true at all.

I kind of couldn't care less because if one part of the forum is a dumpster fire of political trashtalk, as long as it is segmented and doesn't invade all of it. Thing is it tends to crawl into other parts of the forum, the latest GW controversies being an example of this politics sipping into our hobby

Arguing is fine, but as doc said, you just need to do it in the right place.

Besides, unlike war gaming, some subjects are likely to digress into politics. I had some issies with this in the gun thread, but to be fair, this is tipically a topic that is inherently linked to politics, though laws, rules, place of weapons and weapons related sports in society... In that case, you ought to be aware of it if you choose to partake.

Unfortunatly, at the end of the day, the main pain in the butt to me is simply that people can't seem to keep polite and admit to be wrong. Or, because we're not always wholesale wrong, making compromises and letting the facts and ideas of others change or add to your ideas. Which... is pretty much the same in real life. But on the internet, unlike real life, I can just shut the forum page down and it won't quite ruin my day anyway!

Anyhow, my ramblings on that matter.

I used to be a regular participant in OT politics threads. I moderated the politics discussion board at my university for a while, and I even argued politics on Reddit.

I came to realise that for me at least, it was nothing more than a displacement activity. A waste of time, a way of making myself believe I had done something when in fact I had done nothing at all.

I did learn some things, and even had my POV changed by posters here (now mostly long gone) about certain things. But when measured against the amount of time and emotional energy invested, I regret that I spent so much time doing it now.

I rarely post on the broader internet these days, and never about politics. I'm happy to post a little on Dakka about hobby related topics. I vote in every election I am able to, and I have attended protests and written to my representatives about issues that are important to me. But any politics outside of Europe I have no influence over and therefore there is no point in me wasting my time thinking about it. Too many Europeans are obsessed with the politics of another country and know little about their own or a neighbours politics. It's embarrassing.

I was annoyed at the politics ban when it was new, but now, even if they allowed political discussion I hope I would stay away and not post anything.

 Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote:
I kind of couldn't care less because if one part of the forum is a dumpster fire of political trashtalk, as long as it is segmented and doesn't invade all of it. Thing is it tends to crawl into other parts of the forum, the latest GW controversies being an example of this politics sipping into our hobby

Arguing is fine, but as doc said, you just need to do it in the right place.

Besides, unlike war gaming, some subjects are likely to digress into politics. I had some issies with this in the gun thread, but to be fair, this is tipically a topic that is inherently linked to politics, though laws, rules, place of weapons and weapons related sports in society... In that case, you ought to be aware of it if you choose to partake.

Unfortunatly, at the end of the day, the main pain in the butt to me is simply that people can't seem to keep polite and admit to be wrong. Or, because we're not always wholesale wrong, making compromises and letting the facts and ideas of others change or add to your ideas. Which... is pretty much the same in real life. But on the internet, unlike real life, I can just shut the forum page down and it won't quite ruin my day anyway!

Anyhow, my ramblings on that matter.

I don’t recall any recent controversies of any significance from GW.

Primaris was the last big hooblah, but that’s not particularly political.

Oh….there have been. I won’t list any here as that seems singularly counter productive.

But in terms of the Mod Team? Their role here is to moderate a wargaming forum. Without intending to denigrate their efforts, that’s a very different thing to moderating political discussion.

If I say I don’t like Tau*, that’s pretty inoffensive and non-controversial. If I start harassing Tau players? Yeah that’s not gonna fly.

If I say I don’t like insert some Other? And then start harassing those I consider, with evidence or not, to be said insert some Other? That can rapidly become a criminal offence, at least in the UK.

And so a blanket ban on politics, religion etc is just the sensible one. Because on all sides there are those quite impressively adept at pushing the nominal line between acceptable and unacceptable in whichever direction they need it to move to get away with whatever it is they want to get away with, for good or for ill.

*I don’t dislike Tau. That is just a random example.

Problem is it’s pointless. You can try to show someone their thinking is wrong, but you can’t prove it. It only makes people double down otherwise they have to concede a whole part of what makes them, well them, is wrong. The only thing it results in is name calling and gak-posting.

Yup. Two words are enough to sum this up: cognitive dissonance.

DeathKorp_Rider wrote:
Problem is it’s pointless. You can try to show someone their thinking is wrong, but you can’t prove it. It only makes people double down otherwise they have to concede a whole part of what makes them, well them, is wrong. The only thing it results in is name calling and gak-posting.

It's not entirely pointless. At best, you can get them to see the light. If not, you've exposed someone whose thinking doesn't mesh with a civilized society. If you can't get someone to realize "racism = bad" (which is honestly a pretty low bar to clear), then you know that person isn't worth giving the time of day.

I used to have up on the wall to remind myself to leave it a great little cartoon. One stick figure is saying to the other won't you come to bed, and the other on the computer says 'I can't, somebody on the internet is wrong!'.

Ah, an XKCD classic.

Oh, I wont hesitate discussing my beliefs of Adeptus Mechanicus anytime, anywhere. Bring it on.

I'm already a social "pariah" IRL, although I like to think its because I have always aligned with a "sigma" mentality when it comes to most things (ie. I like what i like, regardless of what others think about it). I miss the days of yore, when we still had passionate, and sometimes enlightening IRC sessions when I was younger.. seems like a lifetime since I had truly profound discussions on any given topic, really.. In 2024 its so much easier to resort to gakposting than to find someone who you could actually converse on a deep level with, in spirit of solidarity, free of bias or judgement.. Paranoia runs rampant, and too many are looking for enemies instead of actual intellectual resonance

This topic also feeds back to the topic "The Warp Is A Metaphor Of The Modern Internet" I once tried to start, but that topic never went anywhere.. I doubt it would do so now either.

It has resulted in a world were everyone is blind.

It's not this forum, it is everywhere. Wherever we go there is a hand clamped down over our eyes, another over our mouth, two more around our throat.

People cannot make themselves heard, information cannot spread, people are not allowed to see what others see.

People become both ignorant and confident in their ignorance. Empty words are to be treated as solid ground.

It is not voluntary. Any place that does not clamp down, suppress, isolate themselves and make sure to obediently exercise control becomes a target. Even if they deal with the conflict inherit in places that allow some relief - where everyone starts flooding and where realities that have become completely separate suddenly starts to clash - even if they find a way to manage that they become a target. Fanatics may harass them, corporations they rely on may exclude them, politicians may threaten them, banks may freeze their accounts, they may get sued or jailed. And realities that are wholly disconnected will not synchronize regardless, so you have to look for other reasons to keep at it than forming some new consensus.

It is easier to just not allow for communication.

Because both the powerful and the powerless have become reliant on their false perceptions this state of affairs can only become worse in the future. Ever more extreme measures to suppress communication are going to be needed and desired.

...wow. I think you really need to dial it back a bit, there, Champ.

There's a world of difference between suppression of speech and not tolerating intolerance. I suggest you learn it.

Agreed and that kind of posting is why we banned the topic.

The fact that you can post that also indicates its own falseness.

 Manfred von Drakken wrote:
...wow. I think you really need to dial it back a bit, there, Champ.

There's a world of difference between suppression of speech and not tolerating intolerance. I suggest you learn it.

There is not and suggesting there is misses all the evidence where that statement was currently just used to cludegon speech.