Has social media made the UK more right wing?

[Alvin-blue-qhd]

Railway is a complex system that requires land acquisition, a large amount of construction equipment, personnel, steel, signal and control systems.
There are many components in between, and when your financial system brings inflation to the entire society, each component is rising in price.
You need to multiply by many (1+x%), which will cause your overall price to rise exponentially.
You can't bear this kind of rise, so your railway system is struggling.
This can be anything, not just railways.
Undoubtedly, the British people need a complex industrial system. And everything that can support it, not only finance, but also people's thoughts and ideologies. Britain was once the place where industrial civilization began. I don't know if the current British are ready for another industrialization. People seem more willing to discuss how to protect democracy.

 

[blueinsa]

People love acting like arseholes with no comeback. Social media is perfect for this. Indeed, If folks said what they say on social media in public they'd be twatted fairly quickly.

Social media is also an echo chamber for like minded opinions - left, right, religion and tin-foil-hat. People join groups that match their opinions and are gratified that others share them. It also emphasises and hardens their opinions as they don't have to face their opinions being scrutinised by others. That also breeds intolerance and that is probably the biggest problem with modern societies the world over.

To be honnest this politics forum is a bit of an echo chamber for those of a socialist persuasion. Centrists through Right wingers avoid it like the plague for the most part.

Spot on, again.

 

[Johnny Mars Bar]

Social media has made people more divided as a whole but not necessarily right wing.

I don’t really do social media anymore for that reason but there’s plenty of crazy far left nonsense as well.

 

[Johnny Mars Bar]

People love acting like arseholes with no comeback. Social media is perfect for this. Indeed, If folks said what they say on social media in public they'd be twatted fairly quickly.

Social media is also an echo chamber for like minded opinions - left, right, religion and tin-foil-hat. People join groups that match their opinions and are gratified that others share them. It also emphasises and hardens their opinions as they don't have to face their opinions being scrutinised by others. That also breeds intolerance and that is probably the biggest problem with modern societies the world over.

To be honnest this politics forum is a bit of an echo chamber for those of a socialist persuasion. Centrists through Right wingers avoid it like the plague for the most part.

Bang on, including about the politics forum on here.

My politics could be described as New Labour centrist remainer and I get made out to be some kind of Tommy Robinson character by some posters on the politics threads!

 

[I'm With Stupid]

Social media has made people more divided as a whole but not necessarily right wing.

I don’t really do social media anymore for that reason but there’s plenty of crazy far left nonsense as well.

I think social media makes (certain) people say and read more extreme things whatever views they have, and it explicitly rewards that sort of thing. Extreme/controversial views create engagement, which is what these things run on. It's why fairly normal Youtube videos have to come up with ridiculous, clickbait titles and thumbnails.

You then add to that the sort of echo-chamber nonsense, where people get status in their in-group by being more pious than everyone else. It reminds me of religion a bit. You see those guys in Spain walking through the streets whipping themselves and wonder what they get out of it. If it was just about a personal belief, then there would be no need to do it publically. But that's not what it's about, it's about showing to the rest of the group how pious you are. And it's the same on social media. 'Woke' leftists and 'gammon' right wingers trawling the news for things to get offended by. And these things become more and more minor over time as the list of things to be offended by becomes more and more petty.

 

[inbetween]

Railway is a complex system that requires land acquisition, a large amount of construction equipment, personnel, steel, signal and control systems.
There are many components in between, and when your financial system brings inflation to the entire society, each component is rising in price.
You need to multiply by many (1+x%), which will cause your overall price to rise exponentially.
You can't bear this kind of rise, so your railway system is struggling.
This can be anything, not just railways.
Undoubtedly, the British people need a complex industrial system. And everything that can support it, not only finance, but also people's thoughts and ideologies. Britain was once the place where industrial civilization began. I don't know if the current British are ready for another industrialization. People seem more willing to discuss how to protect democracy.

The problem with the railways doesn't just come down to infrastructure, it's also just really badly run and it isn't seen by the government as a critical piece of infrastructure when it should be. I can get to Manchester in 30 minutes on the train however further investment in steel and concrete is pointless when those trains aren't running. We do need new infrastructure but once built you'd really struggle to find any confidence that it would even operate.

I'm not just blaming the franchises because it is the attitude of the government that is directly responsible. The government has effectively nationalised the railways in this area and nothing has changed. The reason why it hasn't changed is they just don't care and they can't comprehend just how important it is to people.

They know full well about this failure and it's why they choose to focus on other issues such as migrants in boats however that is really funny because their record on that is absolutely awful too. And this is why they're facing electoral oblivion.

 

[Palerider]

I am quite new to facebook and its full of right wing stuff, i have been on twitter for years and that is a pit of hatred. Who needs the Daily Mail when you get hate for free on social media.

Am i wrong? whats your experiences?

I don't use Facebook or Twitter at all. The only forums I use are bluemoon, the Telegraph and the Guardian. All are biased and full of people who 'know' what is right. So if Facebook and Twitter are even worse count me out! Maybe the question 'Is being right wing, centre or left wing best?' would be interesting. It seems that many people just assume that because they are right wing, centre or left wing that, of course it's best.

I saw a rather chilling interview with a Russian official last week. The gist of it is that the the western interviewer asked the official something like 'Is it right that Putin had virtually no opposition in the election?' The Russian official answered 'Why do you want to tell everyone else what to do and think? We do not think like you".

Here's a list of the politicians that have killed the most people,
Top Ten Most Evil Dictators of All Time (in order of kill count)

• Kim Il Sung (1.6M deaths) ...
• Pol Pot (1.7M deaths) ...
• Ismail Enver Pasha (2.5M deaths) ...
• Hideki Tojo (5M deaths) ...
• Leopold II of Belgium (2-15M deaths) ...
• Adolf Hitler (17M deaths) BREAKDOWN. ...
• Jozef Stalin (23M deaths) BREAKDOWN. ...
• Mao Zedong (49-78M deaths) BREAKDOWN.

It might be fun to put political affiliation of right, centre, left next to the names.

 

[BrianW]

The reason why many think this Tory government is left-wing is because they are incapable of rational thought and merely parrot the nonsense they read in the Daily Mail and on many online sites.

Objectively, the Macmillan (Tory) government was way, way to the left of the present one. They used to boast about how many council houses they had built.

I would suggest the problem is that the radical right is now seen by many as being 'conservative'. It is not, by its very nature, as radical and conservative cannot exist in the same paradigm. Brexit was the least conservative policy imaginable. Radical constitutional change, undertaken without any real consensus that it was justified and carried out without any proper plan or vision. Indeed, arguably it was the most radical change since the Glorious Revolution.

The radical right has nothing to offer but slogans and simplistic solutions that do not survive contact with the real world. However, such slogans and simplistic solutions are often what people want to hear. We live in a world where many people are fearful, desperate, or both. In such circumstances, fuckwitted demagogues like Farage and Johnson get a hearing, when in 'normal' or prosperous times they would be laughed at.

 

[I'm With Stupid]

I don't use Facebook or Twitter at all. The only forums I use are bluemoon, the Telegraph and the Guardian. All are biased and full of people who 'know' what is right. So if Facebook and Twitter are even worse count me out! Maybe the question 'Is being right wing, centre or left wing best?' would be interesting. It seems that many people just assume that because they are right wing, centre or left wing that, of course it's best.

I saw a rather chilling interview with a Russian official last week. The gist of it is that the the western interviewer asked the official something like 'Is it right that Putin had virtually no opposition?' The Russian official answered 'Why do you want to tell everyone else what to do and think? We do not think like you".

The point is that they've got no way of knowing how "we" think, because there's no opportunity for 99.99% of people to actually express what they think. What he means by "we" is the handful of people who control the country.

I've seen the PM of Singapore giving a similar answer, but it's less of an issue when the person saying it isn't a murderous dictator, and to my knowledge Lee Hsien Loong isn't killing people and subjugating his people.

Here's a list of the politicians that have killed the most people,
Top Ten Most Evil Dictators of All Time (in order of kill count)

• Kim Il Sung (1.6M deaths) ...
• Pol Pot (1.7M deaths) ...
• Ismail Enver Pasha (2.5M deaths) ...
• Hideki Tojo (5M deaths) ...
• Leopold II of Belgium (2-15M deaths) ...
• Adolf Hitler (17M deaths) BREAKDOWN. ...
• Jozef Stalin (23M deaths) BREAKDOWN. ...
• Mao Zedong (49-78M deaths) BREAKDOWN.

It might be fun to put political affiliation of right, centre, left next to the names.

I don't really want to engage in murderous dictator top trumps, but let's be honest, death tolls are often more a measure of how many people you happened to be in charge of rather than how evil you are. Mao is at the top because China's a big country, but the reality is that most of his deaths were caused by failed economic policies leading to famine (not that he wasn't also a murderous dictator, of course). Is that worse that Cromwell (is he technically a lefty too?), who killed 40% of the Irish population? Or Pol Pot, who was in charge of a smaller country, but managed a genocide of over 20% of the people? Or Bagosora, who deliberate killed 75% of the Tutsi population? Does it even matter whether the deaths were deliberate genocide, incompetence, or callousness and negligence?

 

[Phil1]

The irony meter is off the scale the last couple of pages.