Yes, that's partly true, but I'm convinced those feelings are being intentionally fanned into despair. If you're online, you will come into contact with an information campaign designed to amplify those feelings into apathy and inaction. A hopeless working class doesn't try to change anything after all.
I'd urge caution.
We don't have to speculate. It's right there in a Google search. Psyops have been standard in militaries forever, but social media amplified the impact by orders of magnitude. Cambridge Analytica originated as military research. Russia thinks of social media as new warfare.
Its a part of our world now and we need to level up our skills in information consumption because dishonest actors are trying to influence us. It appears to be working too.
Part of the fascist playbook is to spread the idea that there is no hope and that society is doomed. Then you hit them with the idea that only one man can help the country rise up.
The constant doom on social media is orchestrated on purpose to push us all to the right. When scared, populations swing right and more authoritarian.
I'm not saying people aren't having a hard time out there, but it is selection bias and many many people not making posts are having good fulfilling lives.
Fact is, the world is having a hard time recovering after covid and some bad actors are taking advantage. Those bad actors include people like Putin or others more local for many of us: grocery corporations using the opportunity to squeeze customers for all they've got. Add climate change on top of that and it's a recipe for the tanking of morale.
The correct reaction, though, is to dig in and fight harder for our values. Do not despair and swing right. Authoritarian strong man populists will not make things better.
Yeah, there's been a concerted effort for the last decade (really ramped up after covid) leveraging fake news, inauthentic posters, bots, etc. to abuse the open nature of western free-speech democracies and convince as many people as possible that everything is hopelessly decaying, collapsing into chaos, hordes of invading migrants, etc etc.
The best way this is clearly visible right now is the massive unpopularity of every single incumbent in any non-autocratic(non-state controlled media) in every western nation. It doesn't matter who and it's not even directly a far right thing (the Tories are looking like they're going to get destroyed in the UK right now), anyone who has been elected is polling like absolute shit at the moment, Biden is actually on the more popular end of the spectrum.
The purpose is to continue discrediting democracy (can't make decisions if you cant agree on reality), so that fake democracies can maintain the internal illusion that actually they are very normal and every democracy is fake.
On a personal level the best way to help yourself is just to spend more time offline. Most people just aren't even aware of this universe and it's gonna be a great summer, folks done waiting for the other "normal" shoe to drop and are just getting out there and enjoying how well things in reality have actually been going.
Things are great if you were invested before the post COVID boom.
Rent has gotten astronomical, good luck getting a car for the past 4 years.
Every company has pretty much been raping wallets across the board. Highest profits ever, low wages stagnant as ever.
On the other side, don't buy into the whole everything is shit and you can do nothing about it. Opportunity is still here, as there will always be. It takes time and it will not be easy. Enjoy being yourself in the meantime and don't overextend your means. Plenty of happiness in simplicity.
Things are great if you invested during it too.
more than the actual "average worker" too ([and evidently 10x faster pay growth for lowest vs highest wage earners](https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w31010/w31010.pdf)). Competition is high, unemployment is low, workers actually have more leverage and power than they have in almost 100 years, and even really exploitative bottom barrel employers like McDonalds and Walmart have been forced to pay more under the pressure.
The trick about "the economy" that the online brain melting rhetoric has helped many people forget, is that millions of people have always gone broke during the biggest economic booms in modern history -- It's just a fact of life under capitalism (any system that allows people to take financial risk) -- but the reason people have always tracked and talked about the health of the economy is as a measure of the likelihood that any given person's situation is getting better, and right now it's getting better for a lot more people than getting worse.
None of this means that we can't acknowledge real problems like the fact that we had 6 years of inflation over 4 years (and not totally evenly), the double edged sword of rising home values making some people tons of equity and leaving others in the cold, the NIMBY zoning/suburbanism scourge draining tax revenues and bankrupting cities across the country while raising rents. It also doesn't mean we should stop talking about ways to make it better, B
The best advice right now for anyone not getting paid a living wage is try to change employers, even if it's the same job and the same work, people are getting big pay bumps just for being hired right now.
In my experience, Reddit is hijacked by the promotion of posts by like minded individuals.
People who are better off won't neither upvote nor downvite posts, but if same better off people made a post about how great their lives are, they will be downvoted because of the hive mind hate.
Reddit loves to hate success, instead of understanding how to get it.
Doom has always grabbed attention and people who are into doom spend a lot of time delving into it. There's been the economy is going to crash and everyones going to die videos going crazy since before 2020
As a student of history, I agree with the pessimism. We are entering a period of significant societal change due to generational power shifts. This happens every 85-90 years and results in conflicts such as WWII, the Civil War, the Revolutionary war.
We are now in that time frame and all of the pieces are in place.
Massive social unrest, a broken financial system, and looming global war.
While I hope we can avoid a civil conflict in the US, I don’t know if we can avoid a broader war.
The stage is set, and I feel this election cycle will be the spark that lights the fuse.
Let me clarify….
The United States is in a period of social unrest similar to that of 1930’s Germany.
Every institution that a society relies on for stability is under attack. Education, science, health care, media, and the justice system. This effort is being led by a political candidate who demonstrates authoritarian tendencies and has surrounded himself with people who have developed a plan to consolidate executive power.
The right wing is using the same playbook that the NDSP used.
Just study your history and it’s not that hard to begin seeing parallels.
You can always tell when someone's just read [The Forth Turning](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/670089.The_Fourth_Turning) and is taking it far too seriously...
Bingo, that's exactly what I was going to post. It's possible some more right leaning ones are more active but usually it's just spikes during election years.
I’ve seen so many more bots and trolls now. I’ve made comments in different subs supporting Ukraine or advocating to elect people who support Ukraine and a bunch of trolls come quick and all at once. Caught one who called a pro-Ukraine commenter a Zionist and right there caught them red-handed. They are out here en-masse. Also they universally will say something like “everyone who disagrees with me is a russian bot” if you call them out for being a troll. It would be more funny if it wasn’t so dangerous.
I want to know how much of the overblown feelings and 'social unrest' everybody seems to have is just blown up by the existence of social media with every jackwagon on this earth having a platform to spew their nonsense.
Constantly starting at SM everyday keeps you in the cycle, it keeps people thinking about it 24/7 and it keeps people divided.
Before every election, Reddit gets flooded with right wing bot posts. All kinds of subs suddenly have lots of weird posts like you mention, many start with "As a hardcore Leftist Socialist anarchist, I have to agree with random right wing thing..." It's like clockwork. In 2016 many were based in Macedonia. In 2020 it was a more diverse attack. But it is a concerted effort. After the election they will all be gone.
What's the point of that? Who bases what they believe off reddit posts?
I was going to vote for X, but now random anonymous person just said X is evil so I'm voting for Y?
If anything, dumb stuff/lies/etc against your preferred half of the tyranny would make you more likely to go vote just to show that anonymous bot/dork up.
It reinforces some small spark of a thought in weak/undereducated minds. These people are easily influenced and want to find something to make them feel interesting or smart or informed or "better" than someone else.
And much of the stuff in that realm is easy to get engagement on: anti women, LGBTQ, racist, anti poor/disabled/nuerodivergent, etc.
By targeting self conscious people and stoking their fears of the "other", while offending everyone that isn't straight, white, rich, healthy, male, you get reactionary people that are easily swayed by misinformation.
As an added bonus, people on both sides engaging online, which means more ad space is sold.
PS it's been a day and I don't know if I explained this correctly
Even if I don't get any of the other points, the 'more clicks = more money' thing should be obvious to me. I wasn't thinking.
It's been a day here as well, looking forward to a good nights sleep to wash away the nonsense.
Boomers were hippies. Boomers rallied against war, gay rights, created earth day. Now look at boomers. It’s not so much a generational thing as an age thing. People grow conservative as they gain in years. So expect our generation to move more right.
imo at least for me…as i get older i realize i like the way things have been so i see some of the new proggressive policies and im just not feeling it…
No. You're seeing a lot of astroturfing due to election season, which encourages the few right-wingers around to crawl out of the woodwork. The comments on this thread are a perfect example.
In reality Millennials are as strongly left-leaning as ever, and right-wingers are desperately trying to find ways to cope with that by brigading left subs, paying for bots and trolls, and inventing fantasies in their heads about some growing movement that's rejecting the left. No such thing is happening IRL.
A lot of the right leaning millennials have adopted the Teddy Roosevelt method of politics. Speak softly , and carry a big stick. Most are happy to stay quiet and then vote when the time comes.
Yup, that's how all my friends are and most people I know. I don't vote but I am conservative, I just keep my opinions to myself because people are crazy.
Yup. I've largely stopped participating in any political discourse, especially on reddit. There is absolutely no room for nuance, and having a dissenting opinion will only get you banned from a given subreddit.
Punishing people for wrong think is absolutely the standard, now.
>In reality Millennials are as strongly left-leaning as ever
Where can I learn more about this statement? I live in a strong blue state and rarely meet millennials who strongly lean left, I'm not a social butterfly but also not an introvert.
But what if that IS a big point?
I mean both parties have put up less than desireable candidates... again... for the 3rd election in a row.
If RFK point out that he's not one of those two AND can actually show why he is a better option, then I'm happy for a viable third party...ideally in the central/moderate area
The only one I really saw or paid attention to anyways was the one where the person asked what made people more conservative, like why they felt that way.
The comment section was way more civilized than any political conversation I’ve ever witnessed on social media. To me it seemed like a lot of people picked the one they thought wasn’t as bad or are closer to moderate… I think a lot of us would love if 3rd parties would have enough support.
I think extremism is bad in any direction and the media is gonna show the extremes more often so everyone’s clumped into the left/right stereotypes just dividing us more and more.
Yea it could definitely also just be a bunch of outside manipulation.
No. I think it's just the majority of everything on Reddit is far left. And now people are getting fed up with how shitty everything is, so people are moving a bit more towards center. But if you don't blindly defend the far left I guess your considered far right? Silly.
Yeah one of the main reasons I could never see myself as being on the left. I hold many conservative values but I’m also pro choice, an atheist, and I don’t hate LGBTQ and I’ve never been judged or hated by other people who are more Conservative over those views, I’m also younger so that might be the reason though, but I also understand this is probably anecdotal.
I think being conservative or if you lean slightly right that other people who lean right don’t really care if your views don’t 100% align. There’s obviously the exception of those old boomers or extremist which only make up a small percentage yet will get the most coverage unfortunately.
If you lean left and you decide to be pro life or you don’t side with Palestine, you might as well be wearing a MAGA hat to other left leaning people. It’s been pretty clear especially with Palestine vs Israel how divided the left is. Some won’t even vote for Biden over the whole “genocide”.
Yup. I'm very very middle on politics buy say one thing slightly right wing and get blown up as a natzi or say anything mildly left im a woke snowflake. Reddit only goes extreme
The left is more united in opposition to trump and the alt right than it is through any specific policy. A lot of people on the left aren’t happy with Biden’s policy and are feeling increasingly disenfranchised. Hate/opposition can only hold a coalition together for so long and Biden’s foreign policy is exposing the cracks
Funnily enough I hear the same opinion about the right. They are United only because of their hatred of Biden. And somehow Biden single-handedly stands for inflation, DEI, immigration, vaccination, abortion…
The rights schism is even more apparent. Just about everyone can see how maga is splitting the party in their bid for control. The lefts is less obviously but like I said, the cracks are starting to show
The single vote two party system just cant represent the broad range of ideas within our country. We need ranked choice voting
Hear from were? Your imagination?
Are you genuinely saying that people are only voting for Trump because of their hatred for Biden?
Then how did he get elected in 2016?
When it’s most apparent that people voted for Biden because he wasn’t Trump. Didn’t really matter who the candidate was
Funny enough if you believe that you’re hard coping
Reddit is overwhelming pretty far left so not only are subs like r/politics and r/news which in theory shouldn't lean any way super far left but even in state and city subs people talk as if everyone is far left and everyone thinks the same. What your experiencing is a variety of views and to you it seems right
I've maybe seen 2 right leaning posts here with the majority leaning left. What you describe has been my experience across reddit. I'm from Oklahoma and any posts in the state subreddit are overwhelmingly left leaning even though we haven't had a blue county since Bush.
Yeah its insane in states like r/texas r/indiana r/florida not only is most of the content and views left leaning if not far left but everyone in the subs will say things like so sick of florida, all my trumptard neighbors are fucking idiots, whats wrong with these people ie what I find interesting about this is the assumption is everyone in the sub will agree with the post and nobody will be offended since there's one acceptable line of thought in that sub and a sub which in reality should lean the opposite way but again tis reddit
Lol I was shadow banned from my city's subreddit for saying crime was getting a bit out of control during the pandemic and we needed more cops on the beat.
The sub is still pretty left based on upvotes and downvotes imo, we're just seeing an uptick in crazies trolling the internet as the election nears.
I taught American history for a while, and I'd like to argue anyone that says there was a more important election in US history. We're going to see a frenzy of right wing trolls as election season nears; we'll also see a frenzy of "leftists" threatening not to vote, demanding silly things about Gaza, etc.
Be aware that these people often represent a tiny portion of the population.
Bruh this is like the most left leaning site. And it’s about millennials not politics. This sub makes so many posts on far left leaning topics. And you don’t expect pushback? Likeeeeee?
I moderate a 45k subreddit on politics and I really don't think this is a left leaning platform. I am left leaning, but the discourse and the trolls of course, make me feel like it's like 45% left-ish (with at least half of those folks being liberals who are at best centrists IMO), 15% 4chan, 40% right wing, and 5% everything else.
Also who makes the most noise tends to be the more right leaning folks IMO. Then the votes tell a different story.
Redditors don't have a clue when it comes to politics.
After Hillary's loss to Trump in 2016 and especially after Biden's victory in 2020, the entire website has taken a significant right-wing turn towards neoliberalism, conservatism, and fascism as think tanks, astroturfers, and corporate executives gradually realized and manifested the power of this website as a forum to deliberate political issues and to manipulate public opinion.
Slowly, pretty much every mainstream subreddit is being co-opted by centrists, moderates, and neoliberals who delusionally think any progressive or leftist criticism of the political establishment is being done by a secret pro-Trump Russian troll bot.
Even in this thread, a huge fraction of commenters are hallucinating into existence Russian trolls everywhere when, in reality, they are reading the most common talking points echoed by libertarians, conservatives, and fascists.
The average Redditor can't comprehend that progressive criticism of Biden and the Democratic party is made by regular, normal ass progressive Americans seeking radical change. And, inversely, these same ignorant average Redditors can't fathom that the near totality of right-wing positions attacking Biden in favor of Trump are made by home-grown, corn-fed American libertarians, conservatives, and fascists who have nothing to do with Russia.
Reddit users who blame every single anti-Democratic or anti-Biden post on spooky Russian boogeymen hiding under the bed have never been such embarrassingly paranoid, clueless, schizophrenic dopes as they are right now.
They honestly can't cope with the reality and the truth that normal ass people are criticizing their preferred political figures and institutions.
Uggh it’s taken a turn to the political and I hate it. But statistically speaking there are about equal numbers liberal/conservative in our generation.
>But statistically speaking there are about equal numbers liberal/conservative in our generation.
This is false and needs to stop being repeated.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennial\_politics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennial_politics)
Cool wikipedia article. Meanwhile, 47% of millennials voted republican in the most recent election according to CNN exit polls. [https://www.cnn.com/election/2022/exit-polls/national-results/general/us-house/0](https://www.cnn.com/election/2022/exit-polls/national-results/general/us-house/0)
And so did 35% of gen Z
Not honest based on your source. From CNN
>Age 30-44: 47% voted republican.
But that's not the millennial age group which was 26-41 in 2022. The selection you picked cuts off the youngest 4 years of millennials while including 3 years above that weren't millennials.
>Age 25-29: 33% voted republican.
>Age 30-39: 43% voted republican.
>Age 40-49: 52% voted republican.
Not including the 4 youngest years of millennials while including 3 years that were older than millennials skewed results. The real millennial age group was heavily Democrat.
Not true at all - https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2017/03/20/a-wider-partisan-and-ideological-gap-between-younger-older-generations/
Boomers are pretty even, but it goes downhill from there. 54% v 33% (milennials) isn't particularly close, and still wouldn't be 50/50 if you were to assume all independent were really conservative. Although perceptions about 50/50 is pretty interesting - politics has actually become one of the greatest predictors of who your friends, spouse, neighbors, etc. are. So, most people have the opposite perception of demographics - that their political beliefs are the vast majority.
It's somewhat hard to get an actual pulse one way or the other though, especially in relation to how people vote. Many people say they are independent, or they are liberal / conservative, not Democrat/Republican... but especially over the last few election cycles, it's pretty clear people vote single party. For example, in the 2020 election, only 4% of voters voted for a president and senator from different parties.
That’s from 7 years ago. [The newest one puts it much closer for millennials.](https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/04/09/age-generational-cohorts-and-party-identification/) Dems still win, but it’s like +8 for the older millennials and a bit more than 6 out of 10 for those born in the 90s. But yeah, still a majority.
I mean, I just bought a tiny bag of Ruffles for $6.99. Maybe other people are feeling the hurt, too. I gotta pay taxes on top of this stagflation nonsense?
Not really. I think you may be a victim of the echo chamber syndrome that understandably comes with Reddit. You are so used to hearing the same opinions over and over that anything even microscopically different seems radical.
Wacky shit is voting for Biden at this point. Dude is running our country into the ground. Foreign nations don't respect us and see us as a joke. Nations want to ditch the dollar. The world was at peace under Trump. He visited North Korea ffs. Something no other sitting president was done. Youre seeing this switch because people are waking up.
Nothing rightwing over here! I stand proud with our fearless Commander in Chief, Joe Biden. Nothing gets my vote like record high inflation, so lets get 4 more years baby! Lets keep the pain train going CHOO CHOO!!
OP Contrary to popular belief there are just as many conservatives as there are liberal(I lm neither because i think political parties are the what is killing the world… vote for people not parties) in our generation.
Sounds like you spend too much time in echo chambers
People on the right dont last long in many subs which is why you dont see that many of them. Reddit is odd in that imho a sub like r/politics should be kind of apolitical but it may as well be r/antitrump or r/antiwork or r/farleft, evne something like r/news or r/pics is like that.
I lean right but in Pennsylvania we get candidates like Dr. Oz for Senate. Creationists are fairly common lately. I find it harder to vote for republican candidates (speaking about PA). If it’s between a Creationist and someone else I’m picking someone else every time.
That’s why OP sees so many right leaning political comments on political posts on this sub, it’s because we’re all banned from talking politics on any other sub. I was even banned from the PokemonGo subreddit because I’m subbed to a conservative subreddit lol. Reddit as a whole just seems to be extremely left leaning but in reality it’s probably closer to 60/40 leaning a bit more left.
My dad is a conservative and got banned from /r/conservative in 2016 for expressing negativity toward Trump. The echo chamber has been cultivated on both ends for years.
>OP Contrary to popular belief there are just as many conservatives as there are liberal(I lm neither because i think political parties are the what is killing the world… vote for people not parties) in our generation.
That's just false. Gallup polls have consistently shown that more Millennials identify as liberal than conservative.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennial_politics#:~:text=Gallup%20found%20little%20variations%20by,%2C%20and%2026%25%20as%20conservatives.
The fact that false comments like yours are getting so many upvotes on this sub without pushback is proof of OP's point.
It’s more a timing thing? Like you expect a lot of troll farms in the lead up to a national election, and for a fairly leftist generation/sub to go right in the six months leading up to an election is suspect.
Regardless of your views on the actual underlying issues, a certain coalition of protesters is very loud in their frankly scary anti-American sentiment, which is just handing Trump his updated MAGA platform on a silver platter. And when tiktok is full of gen Z-ers saying that Bin Laden had a point, millennials who have living memories of 9/11 are going to get pushed to the center.
There could also be a shift- I know as a liberal millennial I’m starting to get more centered. Still a liberal compared to my parents generation but not sure I count when looking at young gen z’s.
Lol, what millennial are genuinely campaigning for Biden? I have yet to hear anyone say they are excited to get to vote for Biden in November. So it will always seem like more rightwingers cause left has nothing really to brag about.
I suggest listening to RFKJ directly on other topics the mainstream media doesn't cover, beyond vaccines..
I have yet to hear another candidate speak in bipartisan terms about a realistic solution that could solve a number of problems at once, for ex: https://youtu.be/XQNm8sPif_U?feature=shared
We have one candidate with 88 felony charges that stoked a attempted coup and another who will be 86 at the end of his second term who has nowhere near the capabilities - cognitives or phsyical he had when first elected, and RFKJ is 'wacky shit'?
The world has been in decline for nearly sixty years and since the pandemic that decline has accelerated. The US has experienced more than it's share of decline. The thing you have to understand is, is that it is deliberate and the people who are causing it don't give a flying fuck about right or left except that it divides. Division is their favorite tool, while we split hairs over things, they remain invisible. All of our problems are not left v right, right v left. That's all subterfuge to take our eye off the ball of whats really happening. America is not doing well in case you haven't noticed and it's because this administration is not serving America, not serving us. This isn't a D or an R thing. It's about a self serving cabal in the White House that is deliberately dismantling the America we all, left or right, love. If you listen to the main stream media everything is fine. This inflation is pounding the middle class and another four years of this and the middle class will disappear. It's time for all Americans to make an honest appraisal of the situation.
The extreme left is taking this country in an unsustainable direction. I think people in society are leaning more right because of it. No hard evidence to back it, but it’s just the general observation I make, attempting to not be bias, but my bias would naturally lean right anyways.
I also think that people on the right, for a while, have kinda just kept their mouth shut on certain issues, but are waking up to believing they can no longer stay silent.
RFK is right wing? The other day he advocated slashing military spending my half, and stated (correctly) that in doing so we could provide daycare for every family, protect the border, and fund community college programs and trade schools for everyone who seeks those job skills.
Well a lot of people at the very least disagree with Biden and the Democrats and the job they are doing, and want a change in the direction the government is heading.
It’s not just this subreddit it’s the whole world has become more right. The leftist hypocrisy has gone on too far and too long. Everyone is tired of being used and lied to. We can’t trust or rely on leftist government representatives to do what they say they are going to. They just make us look like 🐑, oh wait they treat us like 🐑 too…
New York Times describes this in the video below:
https://youtu.be/hNDgcjVGHIw?si=QFLhAZ7glcOiDuL1
That’s basically all of Reddit. I’m left leaning but when I tell people they shouldn’t just be handed money and they should probably work harder I’m suddenly ultra conservative.
Are you kidding? Almost the entirety of reddit is leftist doom and gloom. People just trying to spew forth hate at every turn. If someone says anything remotely on the right they are down voted and attacked personally
Ikr, and it’s so freaking funny seeing all these comments in here about bots and astroturfing. Like nope, I’m a real human conservative who is voting for Trump. Just because I don’t fall in line, doesn’t make me a bot, but that’s just them coping hard. Of course there’s bots, but those bots aren’t only one sided. Conservatives are all over Reddit, but because it’s so left leaning, they don’t comment on anything political due to the hate. We’re just flies on the wall at this point, and we definitely exist in bigger numbers than the leftist Reddit hive mind likes to believe 🤣
I get you. I try not to post, but the hate gets to me sometimes. In many subs they devolve into practically beasts. Saying they want to kill all conservatives. Even seem a string of posts how they would just breed us out... which made me laugh
Reddit is far left. But there are more people who are fed up with how the political left are running things than ever before. Naturally, if you are a drooling sub 80 IQ commietard like most Reddit users are, everyone right of Stalin is going to be a conservative.
The reality is this: Progressivism has failed and people are awake to it now. Leftists know this, which is explains the concern and panic with respect to regular people invading traditionally leftist spaces to antagonize. Everyone everywhere is rejecting progressivism. It is a failed ideology and a bastion for the biggest losers and perennial underachievers of society
I don’t think Millenials are actually that left leaning. We definitely tend to vote Dem, but Rs are so insane right now that many moderate or center right people still vote Dem. Myself among them.
the funny part about this is the assertion that right wing comments are "weird". why would the political views of arguably half the country be weird?
if it is true that millennials are "left leaning" and that reddit as a platform is also "left leaning", wouldn't that logically suggest that an upspring of right wing perspectives is organic in nature?
also, last time I checked, isnt RFK a democrat? so why would talk about RFK be considered right wing?
Were tribes and you have to agree with 100% of what one party says, RFK despite being 90% left leaning or democrat is "antivax" and doesn't support big pharma so he's a far right nationalist according to redditors, he's also into conspiracy theories.
I don’t think so. I think we’ve become increasingly polarized. For the leftist everyone to the right of AOC is a fascist, while to the troglodytes of MAGAstan, everyone to the left of Tucker Carlson is a Commie. As a moderate liberal, I have more I common with moderate conservatives than with the Antifa/DEI/Capitalism is Patriarchy crowd
Maybe. Just maybe. People Have been doing their own research, and realizing RFK is the most legit candidate we have had for president in our life time.
It's time to break this stupid 2 party system, of choosing the lesser evil.
Wake up people.
I don't know, but you sound weirdly left-wing to me. Kind of weird to stake a claim on the views of an entire generation. Even weirder to suggest that Trump and RFK are the "weird and wacky" of US politics, as if the entire thing isn't a circus, which is the actual view that you will see most often on this sub.
Are you seriously complaining about finding some mildly dissenting views from your own far-left position, on a site that has already purged 99% of dissenters from all other subs? Most posts on this sub, if they're political at all, have always been centrist liberal, not leftist in any modern meaning of the term.
Congrats on being a redditor for 4 months though.
A left leaning generation? Do you think maybe you’re confusing *all of us” with people you surround yourself with? My friends are not left leaning, the people I work with aren’t left leaning. I don’t personally care either way but the left is super annoying
Huh this sub is as liberal as it gets. Do conservatives exist? Sure.
Then there are people like me that think both sides are crazy. Welcome to the melting pot
Quite honestly, I would never vote democratic, for a ton of reasons. I don't think I would vote for Trump either but there's a 0% chance I would ever vote for Biden again. Both sides are just stealing from you one side wants you to eat bugs and control your life
I think a lot of Redditors are completely clueless about reality. Our generation is quite liberal. The problem is that liberal and left aren't the same. The left has shifted so far left that anyone that was an average left of center before is viewed as right leaning or far right to most on Reddit. I see centrists demonized pretty regularly now. Even in that cringe ass celebrity video recently they demonized the center. It's no wonder people are jumping ship. I think the current left is like PETA. They could have a lot of allies by realizing that most people want the same thing as them but to different degrees. Instead they're extremist lunatics so people don't help them.
I’m a millennial and I’d say 75% of my fellow millennial are conservative. You surround yourself with those who have the same values. I’m conservative so I mostly hang out with conservative millennials. You’re liberal so you hang out with more liberal millennials. It’s all perception.
Being gutted by inflation and realizing the people doing it are the same ones telling you to suck it up while they give themselves raises tends to make you lean in a direction opposite of the direction they put you in. Just saying.
actually, all of reddit skews wildly to the left. Moderators are mile gestapo. If you see some comments that are more conservative, they probably stand out against the constant barrage of liberal views.
Have you seen the current president and state of the country??
Never mind, that terrorist are being welcomed at the southern border and asked where they would like to be flown
So what's the problem with differing opinions than yours? Or do you just prefer to live in an echo chamber? FYI I guess you also missed the posts asking for conservatives to give their opinions here.
RFK is running on raising the minimum wage, pro-union stuff, and some generous policies for small farmers and native Americans. It's nothing radical but it's also nothing right-wing in the American sense. Arguably he is running to the left of Biden on nominal terms. He's about the same ideology as an average Democratic state legislator, who is also typically to the left of Biden. Meaning, if you already in a blue state and somehow RFK was elected and all his promises kept, nothing would change much for a blue state resident.
RFK is a lifelong liberal and was a lawyer for the EPA.
If you think it’s “wacky” that he has a HUGE problem with the for-profit, publicly traded pharmaceutical industry, then I just recommend you spent a few moments of your life remembering Purdue pharma and the bullshit they pulled during the opioid epidemic.
Anyone who still believes these companies are good and driven by science are the real whack jobs as far as I’m concerned.
Fuck Trump and Fuck Biden. That doesn’t leave us many more options, sadly.
Call me crazy but just observations: it’s not just here. I noticed a big uptick in the last two months in half a dozen subreddits I frequent. It’s documented historically how political/corporate campaigns have used astroturfing methods on social media to push a campaign narrative.
That’s what I think is going on. I think a lot of money and effort is starting up the machine again. The giveaway, IMO, is how you see catchphrases and verbiage’s suddenly erupt overnight. Similar sounding posts everywhere.
It’s different than honest to god real opinions. There are lots of millennials that are right leaning. Which is great: we are in a democracy after all. It’s not that. That tempo is far different and not actually organic/natural as it should be.
Sources:
[European Consortium for Political Research](https://ecpr.eu/Events/Event/PaperDetails/41595)
[PubMed journal article](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10166499/)
[Sci Rep journal article](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8930979/)
[American Economic Association](https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.31.2.211)
[CISA on Disinformation Campaigns](https://www.cisa.gov/sites/default/files/publications/tactics-of-disinformation_508.pdf)
Not long ago I read something about how conservatism has historically been the popular political ideology, and it was sort of edgy or niche to be involved in political ideologies that a liberal left party would concern itself with.
The early part of this 21st century had a big swing in folks moving to the left, largely thanks to Bush, Iraq, and the divisive measures by republicans to shun climate change.
Right now, this may be a course correction. It's just unfortunate that social media is giving a bullhorn to the crazies. 80% of people are chill and don't care for the extreme ends of either side of the political spectrum. The pro Trump folks I know often don't understand what he's all about, they're just hating in line with the puffed up hysteria that they see on their pocket rectangles.
Same could be said for the loudest on the left. Conservatism isn't an atrocity, but the wedge issues that get eyeball-time are, and we exaggerate our views accordingly.
This is all my experience and point of view, I don't study the stuff, I just try to understand it when I see it.
You're noticing something that has been happening for some time. Calling RFK wacky is a good example of why people are leaving the democrat party. Another thing I've seen is that the Californians that moved to Texas are being changed by Texas faster than they are changing Texas. I guess moving to a state without oppressive gun laws and seeing how much safer it is will do that to a guy.
If you're a millenial that is thinking of voting in big orange boomer because you think that will somehow help your existential dread then I have a bridge to sell you
i still feel like 90% of posts and comments are just pessemistic posts about how shitty things are and how hopeless the future is.
Yes, that's partly true, but I'm convinced those feelings are being intentionally fanned into despair. If you're online, you will come into contact with an information campaign designed to amplify those feelings into apathy and inaction. A hopeless working class doesn't try to change anything after all. I'd urge caution.
This is what makes me think there’s a lot more foreign influence happening than people are giving credit.
We don't have to speculate. It's right there in a Google search. Psyops have been standard in militaries forever, but social media amplified the impact by orders of magnitude. Cambridge Analytica originated as military research. Russia thinks of social media as new warfare. Its a part of our world now and we need to level up our skills in information consumption because dishonest actors are trying to influence us. It appears to be working too.
Yeah and having a stupid/uneducated average population is now dangerous to national security.
I kinda wish there was a minimum IQ required to vote…and drive.
Part of the fascist playbook is to spread the idea that there is no hope and that society is doomed. Then you hit them with the idea that only one man can help the country rise up.
The constant doom on social media is orchestrated on purpose to push us all to the right. When scared, populations swing right and more authoritarian. I'm not saying people aren't having a hard time out there, but it is selection bias and many many people not making posts are having good fulfilling lives. Fact is, the world is having a hard time recovering after covid and some bad actors are taking advantage. Those bad actors include people like Putin or others more local for many of us: grocery corporations using the opportunity to squeeze customers for all they've got. Add climate change on top of that and it's a recipe for the tanking of morale. The correct reaction, though, is to dig in and fight harder for our values. Do not despair and swing right. Authoritarian strong man populists will not make things better.
Yeah, there's been a concerted effort for the last decade (really ramped up after covid) leveraging fake news, inauthentic posters, bots, etc. to abuse the open nature of western free-speech democracies and convince as many people as possible that everything is hopelessly decaying, collapsing into chaos, hordes of invading migrants, etc etc. The best way this is clearly visible right now is the massive unpopularity of every single incumbent in any non-autocratic(non-state controlled media) in every western nation. It doesn't matter who and it's not even directly a far right thing (the Tories are looking like they're going to get destroyed in the UK right now), anyone who has been elected is polling like absolute shit at the moment, Biden is actually on the more popular end of the spectrum. The purpose is to continue discrediting democracy (can't make decisions if you cant agree on reality), so that fake democracies can maintain the internal illusion that actually they are very normal and every democracy is fake. On a personal level the best way to help yourself is just to spend more time offline. Most people just aren't even aware of this universe and it's gonna be a great summer, folks done waiting for the other "normal" shoe to drop and are just getting out there and enjoying how well things in reality have actually been going.
Things are great if you were invested before the post COVID boom. Rent has gotten astronomical, good luck getting a car for the past 4 years. Every company has pretty much been raping wallets across the board. Highest profits ever, low wages stagnant as ever. On the other side, don't buy into the whole everything is shit and you can do nothing about it. Opportunity is still here, as there will always be. It takes time and it will not be easy. Enjoy being yourself in the meantime and don't overextend your means. Plenty of happiness in simplicity.
Things are great if you invested during it too. more than the actual "average worker" too ([and evidently 10x faster pay growth for lowest vs highest wage earners](https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w31010/w31010.pdf)). Competition is high, unemployment is low, workers actually have more leverage and power than they have in almost 100 years, and even really exploitative bottom barrel employers like McDonalds and Walmart have been forced to pay more under the pressure. The trick about "the economy" that the online brain melting rhetoric has helped many people forget, is that millions of people have always gone broke during the biggest economic booms in modern history -- It's just a fact of life under capitalism (any system that allows people to take financial risk) -- but the reason people have always tracked and talked about the health of the economy is as a measure of the likelihood that any given person's situation is getting better, and right now it's getting better for a lot more people than getting worse. None of this means that we can't acknowledge real problems like the fact that we had 6 years of inflation over 4 years (and not totally evenly), the double edged sword of rising home values making some people tons of equity and leaving others in the cold, the NIMBY zoning/suburbanism scourge draining tax revenues and bankrupting cities across the country while raising rents. It also doesn't mean we should stop talking about ways to make it better, B The best advice right now for anyone not getting paid a living wage is try to change employers, even if it's the same job and the same work, people are getting big pay bumps just for being hired right now.
Lots of people are living their lives off TikTok doing stuff.
But isn't that why we drink
Absolutely - Staying hydrated will improve your mood.
And don’t forget the bots are everywhere.
Same. I haven't seen the right wing stuff, just "I'm broke and everything sucks."
In my experience, Reddit is hijacked by the promotion of posts by like minded individuals. People who are better off won't neither upvote nor downvite posts, but if same better off people made a post about how great their lives are, they will be downvoted because of the hive mind hate. Reddit loves to hate success, instead of understanding how to get it.
Pessimism is a measurable boon for conservatives.
Jokes on them, my doomerism and pessimism is actively caused by conservatives and it gives me more incentive to oppose them.
That’s past pessimism and overflowed into spite.
Doom has always grabbed attention and people who are into doom spend a lot of time delving into it. There's been the economy is going to crash and everyones going to die videos going crazy since before 2020
As a student of history, I agree with the pessimism. We are entering a period of significant societal change due to generational power shifts. This happens every 85-90 years and results in conflicts such as WWII, the Civil War, the Revolutionary war. We are now in that time frame and all of the pieces are in place. Massive social unrest, a broken financial system, and looming global war. While I hope we can avoid a civil conflict in the US, I don’t know if we can avoid a broader war. The stage is set, and I feel this election cycle will be the spark that lights the fuse.
What massive social unrest are you talking about?
Let me clarify…. The United States is in a period of social unrest similar to that of 1930’s Germany. Every institution that a society relies on for stability is under attack. Education, science, health care, media, and the justice system. This effort is being led by a political candidate who demonstrates authoritarian tendencies and has surrounded himself with people who have developed a plan to consolidate executive power. The right wing is using the same playbook that the NDSP used. Just study your history and it’s not that hard to begin seeing parallels.
You can always tell when someone's just read [The Forth Turning](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/670089.The_Fourth_Turning) and is taking it far too seriously...
This.
It's an election year. This is reddit. I assume astroturfing and social manipulation campaigns are the norm.
Bingo, that's exactly what I was going to post. It's possible some more right leaning ones are more active but usually it's just spikes during election years.
I’ve seen so many more bots and trolls now. I’ve made comments in different subs supporting Ukraine or advocating to elect people who support Ukraine and a bunch of trolls come quick and all at once. Caught one who called a pro-Ukraine commenter a Zionist and right there caught them red-handed. They are out here en-masse. Also they universally will say something like “everyone who disagrees with me is a russian bot” if you call them out for being a troll. It would be more funny if it wasn’t so dangerous.
I want to know how much of the overblown feelings and 'social unrest' everybody seems to have is just blown up by the existence of social media with every jackwagon on this earth having a platform to spew their nonsense. Constantly starting at SM everyday keeps you in the cycle, it keeps people thinking about it 24/7 and it keeps people divided.
Before every election, Reddit gets flooded with right wing bot posts. All kinds of subs suddenly have lots of weird posts like you mention, many start with "As a hardcore Leftist Socialist anarchist, I have to agree with random right wing thing..." It's like clockwork. In 2016 many were based in Macedonia. In 2020 it was a more diverse attack. But it is a concerted effort. After the election they will all be gone.
This is one of the few correct answers here.
You forgot to identify yourself as a before agreeing.
What's the point of that? Who bases what they believe off reddit posts? I was going to vote for X, but now random anonymous person just said X is evil so I'm voting for Y? If anything, dumb stuff/lies/etc against your preferred half of the tyranny would make you more likely to go vote just to show that anonymous bot/dork up.
It reinforces some small spark of a thought in weak/undereducated minds. These people are easily influenced and want to find something to make them feel interesting or smart or informed or "better" than someone else. And much of the stuff in that realm is easy to get engagement on: anti women, LGBTQ, racist, anti poor/disabled/nuerodivergent, etc. By targeting self conscious people and stoking their fears of the "other", while offending everyone that isn't straight, white, rich, healthy, male, you get reactionary people that are easily swayed by misinformation. As an added bonus, people on both sides engaging online, which means more ad space is sold. PS it's been a day and I don't know if I explained this correctly
Even if I don't get any of the other points, the 'more clicks = more money' thing should be obvious to me. I wasn't thinking. It's been a day here as well, looking forward to a good nights sleep to wash away the nonsense.
Stop trying to gaslight anyone. There are for more left people than right. Most are bots. But good try, shill.
Boomers were hippies. Boomers rallied against war, gay rights, created earth day. Now look at boomers. It’s not so much a generational thing as an age thing. People grow conservative as they gain in years. So expect our generation to move more right.
Most boomers weren’t hippies. It was called “counterculture” for a reason. There were plenty of young conservatives in the 60s
Welcome to reddit during an election year.
imo at least for me…as i get older i realize i like the way things have been so i see some of the new proggressive policies and im just not feeling it…
One day, I hope people will realize the world isn't just black and white
No. You're seeing a lot of astroturfing due to election season, which encourages the few right-wingers around to crawl out of the woodwork. The comments on this thread are a perfect example. In reality Millennials are as strongly left-leaning as ever, and right-wingers are desperately trying to find ways to cope with that by brigading left subs, paying for bots and trolls, and inventing fantasies in their heads about some growing movement that's rejecting the left. No such thing is happening IRL.
A lot of the right leaning millennials have adopted the Teddy Roosevelt method of politics. Speak softly , and carry a big stick. Most are happy to stay quiet and then vote when the time comes.
Yup, that's how all my friends are and most people I know. I don't vote but I am conservative, I just keep my opinions to myself because people are crazy.
Yup. I've largely stopped participating in any political discourse, especially on reddit. There is absolutely no room for nuance, and having a dissenting opinion will only get you banned from a given subreddit. Punishing people for wrong think is absolutely the standard, now.
>In reality Millennials are as strongly left-leaning as ever Where can I learn more about this statement? I live in a strong blue state and rarely meet millennials who strongly lean left, I'm not a social butterfly but also not an introvert.
imagine thinking your whole generation is left leaning lmao
Politics are fucked in both sides, but RFK certainly isn’t the answer “I’m different than the other 2 guys” isn’t a platform
But what if that IS a big point? I mean both parties have put up less than desireable candidates... again... for the 3rd election in a row. If RFK point out that he's not one of those two AND can actually show why he is a better option, then I'm happy for a viable third party...ideally in the central/moderate area
The only one I really saw or paid attention to anyways was the one where the person asked what made people more conservative, like why they felt that way. The comment section was way more civilized than any political conversation I’ve ever witnessed on social media. To me it seemed like a lot of people picked the one they thought wasn’t as bad or are closer to moderate… I think a lot of us would love if 3rd parties would have enough support. I think extremism is bad in any direction and the media is gonna show the extremes more often so everyone’s clumped into the left/right stereotypes just dividing us more and more. Yea it could definitely also just be a bunch of outside manipulation.
I've always been republican 🤷♀️
No, people are just sick of the constant complaining and lack of accountability of our predominantly entitled generation.
Pooootin, Russia, Russian reddit bots!!!!!!111 burrrwerrrwerrr
Honestly, it's likely that our generation is waking up and seeing that what we currently have is not working.
No. I think it's just the majority of everything on Reddit is far left. And now people are getting fed up with how shitty everything is, so people are moving a bit more towards center. But if you don't blindly defend the far left I guess your considered far right? Silly.
Yeah one of the main reasons I could never see myself as being on the left. I hold many conservative values but I’m also pro choice, an atheist, and I don’t hate LGBTQ and I’ve never been judged or hated by other people who are more Conservative over those views, I’m also younger so that might be the reason though, but I also understand this is probably anecdotal. I think being conservative or if you lean slightly right that other people who lean right don’t really care if your views don’t 100% align. There’s obviously the exception of those old boomers or extremist which only make up a small percentage yet will get the most coverage unfortunately. If you lean left and you decide to be pro life or you don’t side with Palestine, you might as well be wearing a MAGA hat to other left leaning people. It’s been pretty clear especially with Palestine vs Israel how divided the left is. Some won’t even vote for Biden over the whole “genocide”.
Yup. I'm very very middle on politics buy say one thing slightly right wing and get blown up as a natzi or say anything mildly left im a woke snowflake. Reddit only goes extreme
Yup, on Reddit if you disagree, you’re a MAGATARD
exactly... get called that daily by liberals just for disagreeing on things like taxes and human rights...
You post on a subreddit called MAGA.
The left is more united in opposition to trump and the alt right than it is through any specific policy. A lot of people on the left aren’t happy with Biden’s policy and are feeling increasingly disenfranchised. Hate/opposition can only hold a coalition together for so long and Biden’s foreign policy is exposing the cracks
Funnily enough I hear the same opinion about the right. They are United only because of their hatred of Biden. And somehow Biden single-handedly stands for inflation, DEI, immigration, vaccination, abortion…
The rights schism is even more apparent. Just about everyone can see how maga is splitting the party in their bid for control. The lefts is less obviously but like I said, the cracks are starting to show The single vote two party system just cant represent the broad range of ideas within our country. We need ranked choice voting
Hear from were? Your imagination? Are you genuinely saying that people are only voting for Trump because of their hatred for Biden? Then how did he get elected in 2016? When it’s most apparent that people voted for Biden because he wasn’t Trump. Didn’t really matter who the candidate was Funny enough if you believe that you’re hard coping
There has been a pretty massive influx of Russian troll-bots lately.
Reddit is overwhelming pretty far left so not only are subs like r/politics and r/news which in theory shouldn't lean any way super far left but even in state and city subs people talk as if everyone is far left and everyone thinks the same. What your experiencing is a variety of views and to you it seems right
I've maybe seen 2 right leaning posts here with the majority leaning left. What you describe has been my experience across reddit. I'm from Oklahoma and any posts in the state subreddit are overwhelmingly left leaning even though we haven't had a blue county since Bush.
Yeah its insane in states like r/texas r/indiana r/florida not only is most of the content and views left leaning if not far left but everyone in the subs will say things like so sick of florida, all my trumptard neighbors are fucking idiots, whats wrong with these people ie what I find interesting about this is the assumption is everyone in the sub will agree with the post and nobody will be offended since there's one acceptable line of thought in that sub and a sub which in reality should lean the opposite way but again tis reddit
That's because those subs kick out anyone who disagrees. I was kicked out of my local state sub for just asking questions.
Lol I was shadow banned from my city's subreddit for saying crime was getting a bit out of control during the pandemic and we needed more cops on the beat.
Sounds about right.
Right which pretty much proves left leaning views not only dominate but are the only thing not censored or banned from reddit
Yeah pretty much.
You should check out r/idaho 😅
lol I got banned from politics for posting moderate opinions
The sub is still pretty left based on upvotes and downvotes imo, we're just seeing an uptick in crazies trolling the internet as the election nears. I taught American history for a while, and I'd like to argue anyone that says there was a more important election in US history. We're going to see a frenzy of right wing trolls as election season nears; we'll also see a frenzy of "leftists" threatening not to vote, demanding silly things about Gaza, etc. Be aware that these people often represent a tiny portion of the population.
why is this the most important election ? people say that every four years. they’re all important.
What makes you think Millennials are left leaning ? But that is surprising on Reddit Define “right winger” You sound like child having an tantrum
Bruh this is like the most left leaning site. And it’s about millennials not politics. This sub makes so many posts on far left leaning topics. And you don’t expect pushback? Likeeeeee?
I moderate a 45k subreddit on politics and I really don't think this is a left leaning platform. I am left leaning, but the discourse and the trolls of course, make me feel like it's like 45% left-ish (with at least half of those folks being liberals who are at best centrists IMO), 15% 4chan, 40% right wing, and 5% everything else. Also who makes the most noise tends to be the more right leaning folks IMO. Then the votes tell a different story.
Redditors don't have a clue when it comes to politics. After Hillary's loss to Trump in 2016 and especially after Biden's victory in 2020, the entire website has taken a significant right-wing turn towards neoliberalism, conservatism, and fascism as think tanks, astroturfers, and corporate executives gradually realized and manifested the power of this website as a forum to deliberate political issues and to manipulate public opinion. Slowly, pretty much every mainstream subreddit is being co-opted by centrists, moderates, and neoliberals who delusionally think any progressive or leftist criticism of the political establishment is being done by a secret pro-Trump Russian troll bot. Even in this thread, a huge fraction of commenters are hallucinating into existence Russian trolls everywhere when, in reality, they are reading the most common talking points echoed by libertarians, conservatives, and fascists. The average Redditor can't comprehend that progressive criticism of Biden and the Democratic party is made by regular, normal ass progressive Americans seeking radical change. And, inversely, these same ignorant average Redditors can't fathom that the near totality of right-wing positions attacking Biden in favor of Trump are made by home-grown, corn-fed American libertarians, conservatives, and fascists who have nothing to do with Russia. Reddit users who blame every single anti-Democratic or anti-Biden post on spooky Russian boogeymen hiding under the bed have never been such embarrassingly paranoid, clueless, schizophrenic dopes as they are right now. They honestly can't cope with the reality and the truth that normal ass people are criticizing their preferred political figures and institutions.
I think we’re just tired of all the left wing views being posted on a millennial sub
Uggh it’s taken a turn to the political and I hate it. But statistically speaking there are about equal numbers liberal/conservative in our generation.
it is an election year... pretty much everything is ends up political during these times.
Aaaaaaaand I hate it
>But statistically speaking there are about equal numbers liberal/conservative in our generation. This is false and needs to stop being repeated. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennial\_politics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennial_politics)
Cool wikipedia article. Meanwhile, 47% of millennials voted republican in the most recent election according to CNN exit polls. [https://www.cnn.com/election/2022/exit-polls/national-results/general/us-house/0](https://www.cnn.com/election/2022/exit-polls/national-results/general/us-house/0) And so did 35% of gen Z
Not honest based on your source. From CNN >Age 30-44: 47% voted republican. But that's not the millennial age group which was 26-41 in 2022. The selection you picked cuts off the youngest 4 years of millennials while including 3 years above that weren't millennials. >Age 25-29: 33% voted republican. >Age 30-39: 43% voted republican. >Age 40-49: 52% voted republican. Not including the 4 youngest years of millennials while including 3 years that were older than millennials skewed results. The real millennial age group was heavily Democrat.
Not true at all - https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2017/03/20/a-wider-partisan-and-ideological-gap-between-younger-older-generations/ Boomers are pretty even, but it goes downhill from there. 54% v 33% (milennials) isn't particularly close, and still wouldn't be 50/50 if you were to assume all independent were really conservative. Although perceptions about 50/50 is pretty interesting - politics has actually become one of the greatest predictors of who your friends, spouse, neighbors, etc. are. So, most people have the opposite perception of demographics - that their political beliefs are the vast majority. It's somewhat hard to get an actual pulse one way or the other though, especially in relation to how people vote. Many people say they are independent, or they are liberal / conservative, not Democrat/Republican... but especially over the last few election cycles, it's pretty clear people vote single party. For example, in the 2020 election, only 4% of voters voted for a president and senator from different parties.
That’s from 7 years ago. [The newest one puts it much closer for millennials.](https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/04/09/age-generational-cohorts-and-party-identification/) Dems still win, but it’s like +8 for the older millennials and a bit more than 6 out of 10 for those born in the 90s. But yeah, still a majority.
I mean, I just bought a tiny bag of Ruffles for $6.99. Maybe other people are feeling the hurt, too. I gotta pay taxes on top of this stagflation nonsense?
Not really. I think you may be a victim of the echo chamber syndrome that understandably comes with Reddit. You are so used to hearing the same opinions over and over that anything even microscopically different seems radical.
RFK is not rightwing and criticizing Biden does not mean "I support Trump"
Yeah, election season.
It's the economy
Left leaning generation...rofl.. dummy, every generation has moved to right once they grow up and actually start having to pay everything themselves.
Wacky shit is voting for Biden at this point. Dude is running our country into the ground. Foreign nations don't respect us and see us as a joke. Nations want to ditch the dollar. The world was at peace under Trump. He visited North Korea ffs. Something no other sitting president was done. Youre seeing this switch because people are waking up.
Right wing on Reddit? I’ll believe it when I see it.
oh god. just let people have their opinions sheesh
honestly. If people know what's good for them they'll be open to engage with people who they disagree with
I'm not even open to engage with people that DO agree with me.
What's wrong with people having a different opinion than you?
Nothing rightwing over here! I stand proud with our fearless Commander in Chief, Joe Biden. Nothing gets my vote like record high inflation, so lets get 4 more years baby! Lets keep the pain train going CHOO CHOO!!
It's close to a major election. Most comments are probably bots or troll accounts made specifically to spread propaganda.
OP Contrary to popular belief there are just as many conservatives as there are liberal(I lm neither because i think political parties are the what is killing the world… vote for people not parties) in our generation. Sounds like you spend too much time in echo chambers
People on the right dont last long in many subs which is why you dont see that many of them. Reddit is odd in that imho a sub like r/politics should be kind of apolitical but it may as well be r/antitrump or r/antiwork or r/farleft, evne something like r/news or r/pics is like that.
Also nuance, I know I lean right but there’s never any inches to give some people. You get dogpiled and downvoted and ridiculed very easily.
I lean right but in Pennsylvania we get candidates like Dr. Oz for Senate. Creationists are fairly common lately. I find it harder to vote for republican candidates (speaking about PA). If it’s between a Creationist and someone else I’m picking someone else every time.
That’s why OP sees so many right leaning political comments on political posts on this sub, it’s because we’re all banned from talking politics on any other sub. I was even banned from the PokemonGo subreddit because I’m subbed to a conservative subreddit lol. Reddit as a whole just seems to be extremely left leaning but in reality it’s probably closer to 60/40 leaning a bit more left.
My dad is a conservative and got banned from /r/conservative in 2016 for expressing negativity toward Trump. The echo chamber has been cultivated on both ends for years.
But r/politics shouldn't be just leftist politics or else it would be called r/liberalpolitics, that's the problem.
>OP Contrary to popular belief there are just as many conservatives as there are liberal(I lm neither because i think political parties are the what is killing the world… vote for people not parties) in our generation. That's just false. Gallup polls have consistently shown that more Millennials identify as liberal than conservative. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennial_politics#:~:text=Gallup%20found%20little%20variations%20by,%2C%20and%2026%25%20as%20conservatives. The fact that false comments like yours are getting so many upvotes on this sub without pushback is proof of OP's point.
I mean..when people mature, they generally turn more conservative. Been this way forever.
Troll farms probably
There seems to be a lot of posts aimed at undermining people wanting to vote.
That's a very reddit take ie if someone doesn't agree with me they must be a bot or a Russian.
It’s more a timing thing? Like you expect a lot of troll farms in the lead up to a national election, and for a fairly leftist generation/sub to go right in the six months leading up to an election is suspect.
https://www.reddit.com/r/walkaway/s/FjEZO1tEPM
Regardless of your views on the actual underlying issues, a certain coalition of protesters is very loud in their frankly scary anti-American sentiment, which is just handing Trump his updated MAGA platform on a silver platter. And when tiktok is full of gen Z-ers saying that Bin Laden had a point, millennials who have living memories of 9/11 are going to get pushed to the center.
There could also be a shift- I know as a liberal millennial I’m starting to get more centered. Still a liberal compared to my parents generation but not sure I count when looking at young gen z’s.
Bro RFK was a democrat and the dems literally denied him an opportunity to go up against Biden. That’s why he became an independent.
RFK isn’t that whacky if you actually listen to the dude
Lol, what millennial are genuinely campaigning for Biden? I have yet to hear anyone say they are excited to get to vote for Biden in November. So it will always seem like more rightwingers cause left has nothing really to brag about.
We’ve all gotten a few more months older, it’s time for us to spontaneously become conservative. You’ve heard the saying.
I suggest listening to RFKJ directly on other topics the mainstream media doesn't cover, beyond vaccines.. I have yet to hear another candidate speak in bipartisan terms about a realistic solution that could solve a number of problems at once, for ex: https://youtu.be/XQNm8sPif_U?feature=shared We have one candidate with 88 felony charges that stoked a attempted coup and another who will be 86 at the end of his second term who has nowhere near the capabilities - cognitives or phsyical he had when first elected, and RFKJ is 'wacky shit'?
It’s comical to consider trump an authoraterian
Right wing = deep state! Police and military and Jesus all are Right wing tools! How am they only sane person in America
JFK is still better than trump or biden… this simulation is wack
The world has been in decline for nearly sixty years and since the pandemic that decline has accelerated. The US has experienced more than it's share of decline. The thing you have to understand is, is that it is deliberate and the people who are causing it don't give a flying fuck about right or left except that it divides. Division is their favorite tool, while we split hairs over things, they remain invisible. All of our problems are not left v right, right v left. That's all subterfuge to take our eye off the ball of whats really happening. America is not doing well in case you haven't noticed and it's because this administration is not serving America, not serving us. This isn't a D or an R thing. It's about a self serving cabal in the White House that is deliberately dismantling the America we all, left or right, love. If you listen to the main stream media everything is fine. This inflation is pounding the middle class and another four years of this and the middle class will disappear. It's time for all Americans to make an honest appraisal of the situation.
And, if so, what's wrong with diversity of opinion? Isn't that the point of discussion forums?
The extreme left is taking this country in an unsustainable direction. I think people in society are leaning more right because of it. No hard evidence to back it, but it’s just the general observation I make, attempting to not be bias, but my bias would naturally lean right anyways. I also think that people on the right, for a while, have kinda just kept their mouth shut on certain issues, but are waking up to believing they can no longer stay silent.
RFK is right wing? LOL are you insane or are you so radically left wing that even a moderate left person like RFK is right wing lol
RFK is right wing? The other day he advocated slashing military spending my half, and stated (correctly) that in doing so we could provide daycare for every family, protect the border, and fund community college programs and trade schools for everyone who seeks those job skills.
Millennials are a "left leaning generation?" That hasn't been my experience. Plus, as people age they become more conservative.
Still way too many wack ass Marxists whining about how hard an 8 hour work day is. I think you're still safe on here. It seems the same
Well a lot of people at the very least disagree with Biden and the Democrats and the job they are doing, and want a change in the direction the government is heading.
The Reddit Hive Mind is shocked to see other opinions
It’s not just this subreddit it’s the whole world has become more right. The leftist hypocrisy has gone on too far and too long. Everyone is tired of being used and lied to. We can’t trust or rely on leftist government representatives to do what they say they are going to. They just make us look like 🐑, oh wait they treat us like 🐑 too… New York Times describes this in the video below: https://youtu.be/hNDgcjVGHIw?si=QFLhAZ7glcOiDuL1
To be fair in this sub anything to right of like mao is “far right”
That’s basically all of Reddit. I’m left leaning but when I tell people they shouldn’t just be handed money and they should probably work harder I’m suddenly ultra conservative.
You fascist
Ok ok cool it there adolf
Nein
I think there is intentional Russian propaganda, but no. Pessimism is great for convincing people to not vote.
RFK is right wing? Thats news to me.
"comments are weirdly right wing" lol God forbid reddit is a left-wing cesspool all the time.
Are you kidding? Almost the entirety of reddit is leftist doom and gloom. People just trying to spew forth hate at every turn. If someone says anything remotely on the right they are down voted and attacked personally
Ikr, and it’s so freaking funny seeing all these comments in here about bots and astroturfing. Like nope, I’m a real human conservative who is voting for Trump. Just because I don’t fall in line, doesn’t make me a bot, but that’s just them coping hard. Of course there’s bots, but those bots aren’t only one sided. Conservatives are all over Reddit, but because it’s so left leaning, they don’t comment on anything political due to the hate. We’re just flies on the wall at this point, and we definitely exist in bigger numbers than the leftist Reddit hive mind likes to believe 🤣
I get you. I try not to post, but the hate gets to me sometimes. In many subs they devolve into practically beasts. Saying they want to kill all conservatives. Even seem a string of posts how they would just breed us out... which made me laugh
Exactly we are so persecuted by them... the hardest thing to be in this country is a straight white male now but people dont understand
Reddit is far left. But there are more people who are fed up with how the political left are running things than ever before. Naturally, if you are a drooling sub 80 IQ commietard like most Reddit users are, everyone right of Stalin is going to be a conservative. The reality is this: Progressivism has failed and people are awake to it now. Leftists know this, which is explains the concern and panic with respect to regular people invading traditionally leftist spaces to antagonize. Everyone everywhere is rejecting progressivism. It is a failed ideology and a bastion for the biggest losers and perennial underachievers of society
Is it wacky to you that it isn't like the rest of Reddit and might have differing opinions?
I don’t think Millenials are actually that left leaning. We definitely tend to vote Dem, but Rs are so insane right now that many moderate or center right people still vote Dem. Myself among them.
You'd think this post would be a honeypot for all the right-wing Russian bots... so where are they then?
the funny part about this is the assertion that right wing comments are "weird". why would the political views of arguably half the country be weird? if it is true that millennials are "left leaning" and that reddit as a platform is also "left leaning", wouldn't that logically suggest that an upspring of right wing perspectives is organic in nature? also, last time I checked, isnt RFK a democrat? so why would talk about RFK be considered right wing?
Were tribes and you have to agree with 100% of what one party says, RFK despite being 90% left leaning or democrat is "antivax" and doesn't support big pharma so he's a far right nationalist according to redditors, he's also into conspiracy theories.
I hate the right but I REALLY hate the left
I don’t think so. I think we’ve become increasingly polarized. For the leftist everyone to the right of AOC is a fascist, while to the troglodytes of MAGAstan, everyone to the left of Tucker Carlson is a Commie. As a moderate liberal, I have more I common with moderate conservatives than with the Antifa/DEI/Capitalism is Patriarchy crowd
Moderate liberal and moderate conservative are basically the same thing - centrists.
Maybe. Just maybe. People Have been doing their own research, and realizing RFK is the most legit candidate we have had for president in our life time. It's time to break this stupid 2 party system, of choosing the lesser evil. Wake up people.
I don't know, but you sound weirdly left-wing to me. Kind of weird to stake a claim on the views of an entire generation. Even weirder to suggest that Trump and RFK are the "weird and wacky" of US politics, as if the entire thing isn't a circus, which is the actual view that you will see most often on this sub. Are you seriously complaining about finding some mildly dissenting views from your own far-left position, on a site that has already purged 99% of dissenters from all other subs? Most posts on this sub, if they're political at all, have always been centrist liberal, not leftist in any modern meaning of the term. Congrats on being a redditor for 4 months though.
A left leaning generation? Do you think maybe you’re confusing *all of us” with people you surround yourself with? My friends are not left leaning, the people I work with aren’t left leaning. I don’t personally care either way but the left is super annoying
Millennials are growing up and becoming more conservative. It naturally happens.
Huh this sub is as liberal as it gets. Do conservatives exist? Sure. Then there are people like me that think both sides are crazy. Welcome to the melting pot
Quite honestly, I would never vote democratic, for a ton of reasons. I don't think I would vote for Trump either but there's a 0% chance I would ever vote for Biden again. Both sides are just stealing from you one side wants you to eat bugs and control your life
I think a lot of Redditors are completely clueless about reality. Our generation is quite liberal. The problem is that liberal and left aren't the same. The left has shifted so far left that anyone that was an average left of center before is viewed as right leaning or far right to most on Reddit. I see centrists demonized pretty regularly now. Even in that cringe ass celebrity video recently they demonized the center. It's no wonder people are jumping ship. I think the current left is like PETA. They could have a lot of allies by realizing that most people want the same thing as them but to different degrees. Instead they're extremist lunatics so people don't help them.
I’m a millennial and I’d say 75% of my fellow millennial are conservative. You surround yourself with those who have the same values. I’m conservative so I mostly hang out with conservative millennials. You’re liberal so you hang out with more liberal millennials. It’s all perception.
Good . We need more people who are actually AWAKE and not WOKE
I'm a right leaning millennial and have been on Reddit for a while so...maybe there's just more than you think.
Being gutted by inflation and realizing the people doing it are the same ones telling you to suck it up while they give themselves raises tends to make you lean in a direction opposite of the direction they put you in. Just saying.
actually, all of reddit skews wildly to the left. Moderators are mile gestapo. If you see some comments that are more conservative, they probably stand out against the constant barrage of liberal views.
Have you seen the current president and state of the country?? Never mind, that terrorist are being welcomed at the southern border and asked where they would like to be flown
So what's the problem with differing opinions than yours? Or do you just prefer to live in an echo chamber? FYI I guess you also missed the posts asking for conservatives to give their opinions here.
Who the fuck says we’re a left leaning generation? Maybe you just need to meet more people?
“My echo chamber is dissolving” oh no The older the generation gets the more conservative they’ll become
RFK is running on raising the minimum wage, pro-union stuff, and some generous policies for small farmers and native Americans. It's nothing radical but it's also nothing right-wing in the American sense. Arguably he is running to the left of Biden on nominal terms. He's about the same ideology as an average Democratic state legislator, who is also typically to the left of Biden. Meaning, if you already in a blue state and somehow RFK was elected and all his promises kept, nothing would change much for a blue state resident.
Maybe your contemporaries are smartening up.
Right wing is no weirder than left wing.
Perhaps, people are waking up and no longer feel obligated to agree with a specific party based on their birth year.
Russians destabilizing societies. Happens everywhere in the world. Follow the money trail.
Yeah this
i think it's China
If you aren’t liberal when you’re young, you’ve got no heart. If you aren’t conservative when you’re old, you’ve got no brain.
Yup people forget millennials are approaching 40…
Turns out, it’s actually more that you have no money.
Definitely a part of it. Definitely not the only reason.
I have a heart and a brain. More importantly I don’t insult people with opposing view points.
RFK is a lifelong liberal and was a lawyer for the EPA. If you think it’s “wacky” that he has a HUGE problem with the for-profit, publicly traded pharmaceutical industry, then I just recommend you spent a few moments of your life remembering Purdue pharma and the bullshit they pulled during the opioid epidemic. Anyone who still believes these companies are good and driven by science are the real whack jobs as far as I’m concerned. Fuck Trump and Fuck Biden. That doesn’t leave us many more options, sadly.
I wish I had written this. It says exactly what I wanted to say. (Well, except for the fuck Trump and fuck Biden part.)
you can be anti big Pharma without being anti vaccine.
He wants regulations and testing on vaccine manufacturers. Please explain to me how that’s a bad thing
Call me crazy but just observations: it’s not just here. I noticed a big uptick in the last two months in half a dozen subreddits I frequent. It’s documented historically how political/corporate campaigns have used astroturfing methods on social media to push a campaign narrative. That’s what I think is going on. I think a lot of money and effort is starting up the machine again. The giveaway, IMO, is how you see catchphrases and verbiage’s suddenly erupt overnight. Similar sounding posts everywhere. It’s different than honest to god real opinions. There are lots of millennials that are right leaning. Which is great: we are in a democracy after all. It’s not that. That tempo is far different and not actually organic/natural as it should be. Sources: [European Consortium for Political Research](https://ecpr.eu/Events/Event/PaperDetails/41595) [PubMed journal article](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10166499/) [Sci Rep journal article](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8930979/) [American Economic Association](https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.31.2.211) [CISA on Disinformation Campaigns](https://www.cisa.gov/sites/default/files/publications/tactics-of-disinformation_508.pdf)
Not long ago I read something about how conservatism has historically been the popular political ideology, and it was sort of edgy or niche to be involved in political ideologies that a liberal left party would concern itself with. The early part of this 21st century had a big swing in folks moving to the left, largely thanks to Bush, Iraq, and the divisive measures by republicans to shun climate change. Right now, this may be a course correction. It's just unfortunate that social media is giving a bullhorn to the crazies. 80% of people are chill and don't care for the extreme ends of either side of the political spectrum. The pro Trump folks I know often don't understand what he's all about, they're just hating in line with the puffed up hysteria that they see on their pocket rectangles. Same could be said for the loudest on the left. Conservatism isn't an atrocity, but the wedge issues that get eyeball-time are, and we exaggerate our views accordingly. This is all my experience and point of view, I don't study the stuff, I just try to understand it when I see it.
You're noticing something that has been happening for some time. Calling RFK wacky is a good example of why people are leaving the democrat party. Another thing I've seen is that the Californians that moved to Texas are being changed by Texas faster than they are changing Texas. I guess moving to a state without oppressive gun laws and seeing how much safer it is will do that to a guy.
RFK is a classical liberal, and many of the “whacky” things he’s accused of are issues he’s litigated and won in court.
If you're a millenial that is thinking of voting in big orange boomer because you think that will somehow help your existential dread then I have a bridge to sell you
Won't fix the dread but at least he didn't get us involved in 2 foreign wars
HaHaHaHaHaHa Dude or Dudette, rest assured, outside subs referencing ‘conservative…’ or ‘Trump…’, you are among your wacky leftist peers on Reddit
Lots of right wing bots and probably trolls from the conservative leaning subs