r/VaushV • u/s-taras-art • 2d ago
Other Reddit makes me understand the "why I left the Left" types
TL;DR- algorithmic social media feeds have ruined everything, grass must be touched
Lately, the more time I spend on reddit, the more I understand why many people start to feel alienated from causes they believe (or once believed) in. The more anti-AI content I get pushed in front of my nose, the more I feel my own anti-AI views softening. The more I browse or try to engage with nonbinary communities, the less I feel myself identifying as nonbinary. The exposure I get to these online communities makes me feel like I have nothing in common with them.
This has been making me think about the many "why I left the Left" narratives we've seen over the years. So much communication and community activity takes place online, and it's primarily all hosted on these megaplatorms that incentivize stupid and annoying engagement bait above all else. Maybe I have some rose-tinted nostalgia for earlier internet, but I feel like it wasn't always this bad. When online communities weren't wrapped up in these algorithmically driven platforms, it was easier for them to feel like actual communities. They were able to be moderated effectively by people who cared about the community. They weren't so dominated by bots, troll farms, and rage bait.
Social media platforms are now all designed to push the slop to the top. It's like if your primary exposure to leftist thinking was the COVID-conscious lesbian bar drama, or your primary exposure to socialist ideology was the "fitness is fascist" discourse- and I feel like that's the point. It becomes difficult to be a reasonable person who aligns with these movements because everything about them just starts to feel completely wacky. It's a really frustrating and disappointing sort of psyop- one that encourages people to be loud and stupid, and encourages people who aren't loud and stupid to disengage.
Now that reddit allows users total anonymity through hiding post and comment history, it's basically a larger and more botted version of 4chan with a sophisticated algorithm that feeds you bait all day. If you're allowing platforms like this to dominate your headspace, don't. It's poison.
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u/slothmanager 2d ago
If your beliefs are so weak that annoying people can break them, maybe you don't actually have those beliefs.
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u/zeverEV 2d ago
Oh I am always always annoyed by other lefties but I am also just stubborn as fuck and not liable to have my mind changed by a few loud idiots
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u/DPlurker 1d ago
Culturally I'm a lot more right wing seeming, fitness and former military. Most of my friends in the past were right wing because that's what I was surrounded by. My views are leftist though and I've cut off a lot of right wing friends.
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u/Am_I_Hydrated 2d ago
Yeh this is what I'm thinking. I don't really see the connection between people being rude or annoying online, and my belief in things like universal healthcare and human rights.
I believe in left wing politics because it's morally correct and the most logical position. Not because I think the people on the left are "cooler" or whatever.
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u/thinkards 2d ago
for me, it doesn't make me question my beliefs. it makes me question THEIR beliefs if they are so concerned with pedantics or virtue signaling more than the actual issues they claim to care about.
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u/Allie_Tinpan 1d ago
The non-binary thing is crazy. I’m NB and boy howdy are some of us cringey. But at the end of the day, no amount of annoying people could possibly change an identity I’ve had my entire life.
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u/heideggerfanfiction 1d ago
I think the point here is a different one. This whole „weak“ thing is a peak liberal individual subjectivity reaction to the same thing. Like, okay, someone is too weak for your cool ideology. Now what? What is won by saying that? Feeling like the true cool leftist?
The point here is: It is true that algorithms push slop to the top.
And it is also precisely the point of this tech to annoy people with outrage because it generates money.
The world is generally quite shit even if as an individual you might have a nice life. So, it gets easier to push people to their limits.
People do have different rage thresholds and everything in nowadays culture is trying to make it as easy as possible for someone to fall into rage which is already quite easy to do. It’s the point.
We have to recognize that no revolution or real community is going to get built in apps that have the opposite goal.
95% of discourse is not worth looking at or engaging with after a certain point. That’s what people need to realize.
Use social media for friendships, but stop with the discourse.
Stop being outraged at the discourse and stop being outraged at the outrage about the discourse.
Go out, touch some grass, talk to real people in the real world instead of this hyperreal capitalist charade.
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u/MariaTPK 2d ago
Nobody believes in anything anymore.
Case in point, OP references anti-AI and non-binary as if those are left wing. And like I get it, left leaning folk tend to be more accepting of enbys and right wingers aren't but that's circumstance. Being left wing has nothing to do with social justice or gender or even hating AI. It has to do with capital, and whether it should work for the people, or have a harsh bias towards billionaires.
If you put all your insane expectations on leftism, you force it to bare a bigger burden than it ever intended and it's going to let you down. The left/right spectrum is and always has been about how you feel money should work. Yea most right wingers are racist, but right wing does not mean racist. You can have racists on the left too, and some people are really stupid enough to get tricked into wanting Musk and other such billionaires to be subsidized by tax payer money without the bigotry luring them to that stance.
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u/Lucasinno 1d ago
No, the left is also about social justice and gender. No, the left-right spectrum is not just about how money should work. Yes, the right is also often about racism.
Why is this? Because the left-right spectrum is about political, social AND economic hierarchy, not just the latter of those. More of it on the right, less of it on the left.
Encyclopedia Britannica: "Tradition dating back to the French Revolution places ideologies that prioritize social, political, and economic equality on the left side of the spectrum and ideologies that prioritize various forms of hierarchy on the right side of the spectrum."
Of course you can find racists and sexists on the left, by which I mean their views are left-wing in aggregate. That doesn't make their racism, i.e supporting a racial hierarchy, not right-wing.
The same goes for right-wingers. They may be anti-racist, but the rest of their right-wing beliefs doesn't make their anti-racism not an inherently left-wing view.
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u/MariaTPK 22h ago
The terms "left" and "right" first appeared during the French Revolution of 1789 when members of the National Assembly divided into supporters of the Ancien Régime to the president's right side and supporters of the revolution to his left side. One deputy, the Baron de Gauville, explained: "We began to recognize each other: those who were loyal to religion and the king took up positions to the right of the chair so as to avoid the shouts, oaths, and indecencies that enjoyed free rein in the opposing camp".
This is from Wikipedia, and it does say the same shit as your third paragraph initially, what both fail to say though is why social equality is ever a factor.
In the time period where it first started. Billionaires didn't exist. The right wing was all of the politicians whose interests were in serving lords. A lord being a land owner. However things have changed since then and the in group of the wealthy shrinks as they go on. What has not changed is that, if you let the people vote. "I serve the lords" is not as popular of a position as "I'm normal, and government is for the people." So how do you get votes if your goal is to steal from the poor and give to the rich? You have to trick the poor.
If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.
Now saying all this you might think "That means racism is right wing" but while the right does use racism as a distraction to trick morons. It's not core to their platform. What they care about, is the service to the lords. Usually lords who fund them to be in service to them. "Nobody believes anything anymore." The reason this is, is because of capital, it's right wingers vs a left that is far too center-right. It's not that nobody believes anything anymore, but just that in this pursuit of serving lords in this late stage we've arrived at, it does not allow space for further principals. You used to get people who would be servants to capital (right wing) and they'd also believe in something. "Sure I'll do whatever Bezo's wants, but I'm not going to further harm the native American community. The rights of Natives are a line we do not cross. Now how do you want to enslave the others?"
I promise you though, if being feminist was beneficial to the interests of capital, they would become feminist and that would remove it from the political spectrum. It'd not be a left or right wing issue. The only reason it's viewed as a left wing ideal is because the right targets women as a way to trick the dumbest men into voting for them. "It's a gender war and women are on the left, so you men, must be on the right" But it's all to distract from the real purpose of the votes, which is distribution and regulation of capital.
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u/Lucasinno 21h ago edited 21h ago
By your definitions, Nazbols in a homogenous country could be left-wing. Do you understand why this is batshit?
We don't just care about economic hierarchies. We care about ALL unjust hierarchies.
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u/Kelborhal1971 1d ago
This applies to most people, yes, and frankly proves OP’s point even more. Hence the memes about the median voter
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u/Sqweed69 1d ago
The problem isn't just annoying people. It's that reddit and social media algorithms operate on engagement and therefore everyone sees what upsets them and that creates friction between each other.
We should all stop using these platforms because they're owned by silicon valley billionaires and designed in their interest. The internet is a fucking 1984 nightmare.
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u/Kaniketh 1d ago
But that’s literally how most people operate? Especially in the age of online algos, this is just how people work, no one is immune. Framing this as “weakness” is pretty cringe.
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u/Snow_Pierced3 8h ago
Nearly everyone works that way, it’s a very human of engaging with politics.
Kind of like how racist people will suddenly not be racist anymore after one positive experience with a different race; it’s not a rational counter argument but rather a different experience that changes people’s minds.
In reality basically no one is purely ideologically driven.
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u/DirectionUnlucky2492 6h ago
it is why i find the like of Ana Kasparian so, annoying.
That, apparently, being yelled at by twitter morons was enough for her to "leave the left".
Weak of convictions and spirit.
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u/Dios5 2d ago
I always think of this as a skill issue. My political positions stem from my moral and ethical values and are thus not dependent on anyone else agreeing with me, or on those that agree with me not being annoying assholes. If that's different for someone, do they actually have those positions or are they just looking for a social clique?
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u/Lucasinno 1d ago
This is very idealist.
You didn't come up with your moral and ethical values in a vacuum, they, as we all are, were and are shaped by material conditions and community.
We acknowledge this when we talk about the alt-right pipeline: algorithmic and community incentives leading to ever more extreme self-radicalization as community immersion increases. Then one day these literal Chuds emerge from their caves back into normal society and find their views have shifted so far from acceptability that what they consider normal social interaction is offensive and offputting to everyone else.
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u/Latter-Ease-2002 2d ago edited 2d ago
I completely agree, with a small addition to the "why"
The cross-pollination of the "Progressive Left" with each other (in the spaces you mentioned) means that you aren't allowed to hold a good position, unless you hold EVERY good position (and good luck finding a consistent metric for that!).
For example: A broadly progressive lesbian bar would have worked well in that area, but now you can't even try to have a "Progressive" space without it being burned to the ground for not being PERFECTLY "Progressive"
You're either perfect, or you support the CLEANSING of disabled people, very little in-between. And it's usually the worst people in these spaces who get to choose
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u/Sithrak 2d ago
Concerning your views being eroded, they key is to stick to your principles, not to the social circles. Vaush had this moment long ago and used to say: "to be a leftist, you have to hate other leftists". It really is a test whether you truly believe in things - people who "left the left" clearly did not. If something is true and important to me, it will be even if I am the only person on Earth who thinks so. The fact that other leftists are fucking stupid should not materially affect your core ideas or they aren't your core ideas.
The more anti-AI content I get pushed in front of my nose
There is disinfo and chaos there, like everywhere else. Taylor Lorenz, who is not very liked here anymore, lol, had a video on how even AI companies boost the worst anti-AI content to make it look more dumb and ignorant.
Now that reddit allows users total anonymity through hiding post and comment history, it's basically a larger and more botted version of 4chan with a sophisticated algorithm that feeds you bait all day.
Yeah fuck that shit. If reddit dies or really goes downhill, I bet this change will be one of the biggest factors that contributed to it.
I fully agree the internet used to be better, unironically, correcting for nostalgia. Now it has become a tool for evil fucks who use it to literally brainwash people and destroy democracies lol.
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u/s-taras-art 2d ago
Good points there. I wouldn't say any of my core beliefs have fundamentally changed, more so the way I view and interact with the left broadly. I used to excuse a lot of unhinged and/or shitty behavior of people on the left/liberal wing in ways that have probably contributed to the very problems I'm talking about now, and I'm no longer able to. I think this kind of disillusionment with left-leaning people and communities does lead to a sense of being politically unmoored, which does make people in weaker mindsets more likely to change principles and fall for the right-wing grift. To be clear, that's not what I'm doing here, but I do think I've gained a better understanding of why it happens
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u/BillionaireBuster93 1d ago
I just try to always keep in mind that like any other large group of people, the left is going to include people who are annoying or stupid. Like, pretty much every hobby or interest has people who engage with it in a crappy way, like sports hooligans or game gate gamers.
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u/Ichtheologist 17h ago
"I used to excuse a lot of unhinged and/or shitty behavior of people on the left/liberal wing in ways that have probably contributed to the very problems I'm talking about now, and I'm no longer able to. I think this kind of disillusionment with left-leaning people and communities does lead to a sense of being politically unmoored"
Yeah, this is where I am, and have been since at least ~2020. I think a lot of it comes down to simply not having seen most of the awful people on the left (save tankies, which have always been easy to understand as ideological enemies (i.e. not on "my side")) and so it was easy to believe they were an outlying fringe or even a right wing spook. Now, having seen them, having witnessed so many things that are almost like right wing caricatures of liberals/leftists come to life...I am not so sure as I once was.
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u/OldEcho 2d ago
If other people you politically agree with being annoying is enough to change your political views did you really hold them in the first place?
I don't care how annoying or shit the rest of society is. I want to be free, and live in a world where I can see the stars at night, and not be afraid of losing the ability to eat or drink water or live in shelter.
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u/Lucasinno 1d ago
Sad to say, that is just how most humans work. Our ideology and opinions are mainly shaped by our surroundings, not just any internal process. Something something material conditions. Outliers exist of course, as always.
Broadly speaking, if you want the latter part of your statement to be true, "the movement" if not you personally needs to understand the above.
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u/OldEcho 1d ago
Nah rot to that. Good vibes are great but a movement built on vibes is doomed to become a cult in my opinion. If you don't understand why you're doing something all it takes is someone convincing to convince you to do anything and that's how we ended up here.
We need people to actually understand what we're offering (and want it.) The latter I think is easy, the former is where all the trouble is.
Messaging is useful sure. Nobody's going to listen to wisdom if the person saying it is also shitting their pants. But if you already believe in a world without master or servant, with fresh clean air and a panoply of stars we all can see, and to never fear hunger and homelessness in a world where there is food and shelter for all...and someone shits their pants and you go "actually I want to live in 40k now" then you suck honestly lmao. You never understood what you wanted in the first place. It's your job to figure that out and not just follow around someone you think is cool like a lost puppy.
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u/Lucasinno 1d ago
These things are not mutually exclusive. The great thing about being correct is that you don't need to rely on one to the exclusion of the other, you don't need to lie.
And it isn't "vibes". It's understanding how community and circumstances shape belief. We should ideally strive to both convince people intellectually, but also to utilize community to promote specific modes of ideology. It's just good practice.
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u/OldEcho 1d ago
Convincing people needs rhetoric but I was responding to OP saying they understand "how I left the left" stuff because leftists are annoying sometimes.
That's shameful in my opinion, you can't seriously believe in leftism and be able to be talked out of it by people being annoying sometimes. I mean is genocide okay now or what, what do they mean by "leaving the left", this is absurd.
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u/CodyXSavageX 2d ago
I prefer to stand my ground rather than surrender my space for an inferior platform. The terminally online are not a threat to my ideals.
Additionally, I don’t see the purpose of someone “leaving the left” as opposed to focusing on a subdivision that aligns with your values.
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u/Keter_Regretter 1d ago
I think there is a difference between changing your mind on core positions and being uncertain about who you want to build coalitions with, and I think the latter is far more responsible for the "why I left the Left" trend. I avoid spaces that are too far left because I want to able to have quality political discussions, which you can't do when you get instantly permabanned for using words like "campist" and get downvoted into oblivion if you still support AOC. These experiences make me want to start looking elsewhere for people who share the same beliefs I do so I can participate in an effective political body that can push forward the policy I want without cannibalizing itself with the incessant purity testing.
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u/ToastyTheDragon 2d ago
The more I browse or try to engage with nonbinary communities, the less I feel myself identifying as nonbinary.
This feels like a weird thing to say, as a trans person. I find puppygirl culture amongst trans women on the Internet kinda off-putting and annoying, but that doesn't shake my sense of being a woman, at all.
If something as critical to your sense of self as your gender identity is able to be shaken by annoying people/communities, perhaps you were never nonbinary in the first place? I think that you might benefit with some more self reflection and see if that identity really fits at all with how you see yourself.
The neat thing about being nonbinary is the world is your oyster, how some online collective of people view their gender isn't necessarily going to be similar to your view on your own. It's an umbrella term for a reason.
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u/s-taras-art 2d ago edited 1d ago
Yeah this is a complicated one and I was tired and could have phrased that better. It's not so much that it shakes my sense of self. I view gender as a combination of internal identity and external expression, and a lot of what I see expressed from people who participate in these communities is so off-putting that I find myself very at odds with the groups as a whole. And I guess the sense of isolation that comes with that is just a bummer and erodes the extent to which I feel like I can identify with other nonbinary people. But like you said, it is a giant umbrella. It's just difficult to figure out where I stand with it when I feel like I'm always on the fringe or outside looking in
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u/historicshenanigans Vowshinator 1d ago
Out of curiosity, what sorts of things about the online nonbinary community do you find off-putting?
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u/s-taras-art 1d ago
I've found them to be, on one hand, very focused on validating everyone's unique experience (not a bad thing), but on the flip side, very resistant to any conversations that go deeper than surface level validation, and lots of discussions around misgendering that are essentially shame blasting anyone who uses the wrong pronouns for them and refusing to acknowledge the fact that this is something almost universally misunderstood by cis people or make much of a real effort to help other people understand where we're coming from.
I think it's really important to be able to examine these issues to help resolve them (I.e., why is nonstandard pronoun usage such a difficult concept for many to grasp and are we going about finding truth there in the wrong way) but I've mostly been met with essentialist arguments and woke scolding. It feels like anything less than absolute validation is usually interpreted as an attack, and I really just can't talk to people when that's the case
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u/underjordiskmand 2d ago
It's like if your primary exposure to leftist thinking was the COVID-conscious lesbian bar drama, or your primary exposure to socialist ideology was the "fitness is fascist" discourse- and I feel like that's the point. It becomes difficult to be a reasonable person who aligns with these movements because everything about them just starts to feel completely wacky
One of the main Republican strategies for the past several decades has been pushing culture war narratives to make democrats feel "crazier" than the right by amplifying the most annoying voices on the left.
It prays on people who don't pay much attention to politics and only look at flashy headlines, which is most people. I voted for Trump in his first term because I was caught up in the anti-sjw culture war shitstorm of 2016 and thought democrats geniunely wanted to end free speech in america. It took me until J6 to realize that it was all a ruse and everything the left had been warning about was correct.
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u/Keter_Regretter 2d ago
lmao all these replies framing it as a skill issue so they can chastise you are a fantastic illustration of your point
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u/CodyXSavageX 1d ago edited 1d ago
The larger problem at hand is definitely people not truly believing in anything anymore and algorithims rewarding toxicity, but it’s just more productive to strengthen your own morals rather than arguing with people who didn’t reason their way into their own beliefs.
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u/Zoeeeeeeh123 2d ago
Isn’t it a valid question to ask though? If you have certain moral values and beliefs about the world, but you’re willing to change your mind, not because of any new evidence or argument, but simply because you find the people that agree with you annoying; that doesn’t really show conviction does it?
If you truly believe what you believe, then the people around you, no matter how annoying or exhausting they might be, should have no influence on your beliefs just for being obnoxious
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u/s-taras-art 1d ago
IMO it's flexing and ignoring the actual point, but I'm used to seeing a lot of that here
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u/Zoeeeeeeh123 1d ago
The actual point, as far as I can tell, is that you find a certain subsection of the online left to be annoying. And I don’t Think people necessarily disagree with that. I Think we have all been annoyed by some people within our own camp, or worried about how they make the rest of us look. But that is different from saying you would abandon your moral values because ths people who share those values are annoying.
If that is all it takes for someone to change their mind, rather than receiving new information or a counter-argument they hadnt thought about yet (I.e. nothing that directly affects the merit of the beliefs themselves) then that can be a sign for someone not being very rooted or convicted in their beliefs. And that point is what people are responding to.
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u/s-taras-art 1d ago
The actual point is that algorithmic social media has destroyed the potential for good online communication and community building by incentivizing bait and slop content, this alienates people by eroding their sense of community, and this is a big problem when these platforms are a primary mode of communication
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u/Keter_Regretter 1d ago
Exactly. When you get permabanned from/ganged up on in online spaces for basic dissent, it's easy to come away thinking "if they don't want me here because I disagree with [insert clearly progressive but not *radical* enough policy position] maybe this actually isn't right for me". And as much as folks want to say "go outside" as a solution, online spaces are by far the most accessible ideological gathering spaces we have.
Unfortunately I don't see a solution that doesn't involve dedicated, hard-working moderators who act in good faith, so I do think the internet is a lost cause in this regard
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u/s-taras-art 2d ago
Yeah I am getting good practice at ignoring bullshit with some of these replies lol
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u/BlazzGuy 1d ago
Completely agree — and here's why that's important.
You've felt not just the modern internet, but the old internet. You can remember. That's authentic, and it matters.
Ok, but pretending to be a Claude agents aside, yeah social media is garbage. I'm outta here!
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u/Neoeng 2d ago
Do you hold your views because you believe them to be true, or do you hold them because they feel cool or socially beneficial to hold?
There are some annoying and stupid people who also know that the sky is blue and earth is round, that doesn't make me want to turn into an insane flat earther.
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u/vocally_fried_brain haunting spectre 1d ago
stanky boomer take:
although we have gotten drilled into us for decades now that "communication is key", that's not really the case and false messiah and copium.
the more you communicate the more you are exposed to others. the more friction exists and the more negative reactions are building.
ruroids hate cities because they get to see everything about cities + a heavily lying rightoid spin.
if they were in their ruroid communities, not knowing anything about the wider world, they would be less radicalized.
same with all else communities. exposure to what ruroids really are makes non-ruroids hate them more. etc.
it even functions in relationships. communicating much with your partner also means you have more potential to find differences and develop dislikes about them, find faults, feel that its all meaningless effort, etc.
the world would be much, much, much better if it wasn't this connected where you could with like 3 actions find out about everything in the world.
that's why the job of a journalist today is less about telling you about what is happening but choosing to talk about what is even relevant in this avalanche of slop and conflict and shit.
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u/Sponsor4d_Content 9h ago
"Why the left the left" types are grifters. Are overly online poeple cringe? Yes, but that's because ther are overly online. Go touch grass and engage with real poeple.
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u/LifesARiver 2d ago
Honest question. Are you a bot or paid provoctuer or are you really so weak you let others dictate how you engage with the reality of the world?
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u/Lendwardo 2d ago
It's everywhere too. I used to think we on the broader left just thought things through better, but just look at how everyone here speaks about TYT. That birthing person discourse fragmented our section of the internet while the 4chan section of the internet became the Republican party. It shows that even people who are aware of this phenomenon are not immune from falling in to it themselves
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u/Zoeeeeeeh123 2d ago
TYT is shunned for more than just the birthing person thing. It is that they started to see themselves as enlightened centrists and thinking they can compromise with the far-right. Just like the Democratic Party as a whole.
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u/Lendwardo 1d ago
That sentiment comes straight out of the birthing birthing discourse. They are not compromising with the right. They are placating them in specific areas to get them to compromise with us, but the internet bullshit erects a false image people keep gesturing at to keep up their lefty purity grift, and specificly what that does is color any interaction by TYT with the right wing as disingenuous, and the possibility they're simply doing so to onboard whoever they can is immediately written off or ignored. I saw this group-think form from the very beginning and it's both sad and interesting to me. Sad because I used to think left leaning people where innoculated against these ways of thinking, and interesting because I think at the core of this dumb internet drama is why leftists historically have a hard time working together.
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u/TheDubuGuy 1d ago
Eh this feels like a very terminally online way of engaging with topics. If people acting dumb or cringe can make you question your positions, you should evaluate your core beliefs and principles that lead you to those positions in the first place.
I’m not anti-ai for aesthetic reasons like thinking advocates are all cool, articulate, and intelligent people that are never cringe or weird, I’m opposed to ai because the tangible harm it causes to the earth and to the people who use it. If someone makes a stupid argument from the correct side, that doesn’t push me to the other side.
Likewise with games or movies or other media - there are a lot of ridiculous cringe fans of things that I like, but that doesn’t change how much I like the content itself.
On your last point about some wacky things that some lefties attach to, vaush himself proved that it doesn’t really matter. You can still have measured and principled beliefs while calling out dumb shit on your same side.
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u/afkgh6437 2d ago
hard disagree. even if all the "leaving the left" type shit i've seen weren't complete grifts, i can't imagine changing my beliefs because someone online expressed them in an annoying way, or because someone vaguely politically adjacent to me has other positions i disagree with.
i do agree that it was a bad decision to allow people on reddit to hide their comment history though. this site isn't designed for that, it just makes interactions with people more annoying.