#(<- this tag is an example of accidental conservatism)

[simonjadis]

When it comes to centrist who tried to "Both Sides" the whole political divide blindly, these chuckleheads always lean anti-left. They're not "right wingers" by any real stretch yet always call out leftist "agendas" in media and try to deride any discussions of diversity as a "slipperly slope towards tokenism." They never realize that they're tools for the Right Wingers to exploit with how they rally against the left.

This is true, and it’s exactly what you get from radicalization engines. From YouTube algorithms to 4ch*n and the always worse 8ch*n, there are places out there eager to catch someone and drive them into:

-cynicism (fighting for change and having ideals is foolish) -reactionism (I haven’t heard of this issue before, therefore it is bad or silly) -accidental conservatism (I’m not like those guys, my ideas just conveniently line up with them in every way that doesn’t inconvenience me)

A lot of the time, this happens when someone has a group of “buddies” who tell a toxic joke. They could be in college or they could be 40 or they could be in middle school. One of them repeats it elsewhere, and people respond with hostility but the joke-teller doesn’t understand why.

When you’re told that something that you did is bad but have not been told why, you can:

1) Find out why it’s bad, make a good faith determination of if that’s true, and resolve to either change the behavior or, if it wasn’t bad, amend your behavior for the comfort of others

2) Get defensive and surround yourself with resources and people that will never scold you for anything, which will lead to group polarization -- your own behavior will escalate.

An example would be something as simple as a racist or misogynistic joke, but for this example let’s make it a homophobic one since I’m gay.

So a 13-year-old hears a joke where the punchline is at the expense of a gay person. Maybe he reads it online or maybe someone says it over voicechat while they’re playing . . . do the kids still play forknife? While they’re playing whatever. He repeats it to someone on the bus and is shamed. He’s embarrassed and a little shocked at the reaction, since it went over so well over voicechat when he heard it. Maybe nothing comes of it ... or maybe he finds himself on forums and sites that assure him that he did nothing wrong, that the world is “too PC” or another variant of the usual BS. Others in these groups then exchange more jokes -- and enjoy the 13-year-old’s. Life is uncomplicated in these spaces, which makes the rest of the world seem hostile or even “wrong.”

In some cases, such a kid grows up to be a mass shooter or a darling of the political right. But in other cases, they’re just political moderates who seem like normal people except that they gripe about “woman with blue hair” or “pronouns in bio” or other things that are just . . . normal parts of existence . . . because they spend their time spelunking in internet spaces and social groups where everyone will nod and sagely agree that ���blue hair woman bad” and that someone listing their pronouns is some sort of signal that they are “other” or part of the perceived “problem.”

I am reminded a bit of “New Atheists,” not as in brand new atheists but as in the groups of white-dominated atheist spaces who decry, for example, queer rights movements as “ideology” that they compare to churches, and feel similarly about things like feminism and racial equality. These are people who vocally eschew the traditional political right, but who have a lot of anger . . . and, as if by coincidence, a lot of socially conservative views because their distance from the political right is not based upon altruism but selfishness. These dudes don’t want to be part of the political right because they want to smoke pot and say swears and have sex with a lot of women, but if a right-wing ideology doesn’t negatively impact them and might even cater to them, they gobble it up. The Orange Man appeals to many of these people.

Tangent Time

But, for a counterexample, not every time that people get told something is “bad” is, you know, true. Let’s say that someone shared a fandom ship that doesn’t go over well. I’ll pick one that has personally repulsed me since I first saw it -- shipping Harry Potter with Snape. Someone who shares a “sn*rry” fic, say, here on Tumblr gets a hostile response. They look into it and realize that in addition to squicking some people, there are also people who have survived csa and don’t want to see fic/fanart/gifsets depicting a minor and his abuser in a relationship. They COULD completely disavow all further shipping of that, which is their choice, but they could also simply go “okay, I’m not going to post any of this here, but will continue to write it on AO3 where it’s properly tagged and labeled so that no one simply scrolls across it.” That is a reasonable response. For me, that is simply a squick, not a trigger, but I’d still be happy to be able to easily avoid seeing it.

Another sort of counterpoint is when people argue that any group with so much as a single inside joke can be an “echo chamber.” Tumblr may feel like a screaming match of endless nonsense or like a collaborative art experience, depending upon whom you follow, but to outsiders, it can sound like one singular hivemind.

But . . . while I’m not questioning that there are echo chambers on Tumblr, it is so important to note that disenfranchised minorities having friends who are similarly marginalized and friends who are simply allies is NOT the same thing. In this case, the sounds bouncing around in the echo chamber are pleasant music, not a mixtape of slurs.

Tumblr’s probably not the best example because there are, you know, nazis and terfs and similar trash monsters here. But a “safe space” for marginalized people to gather and discuss, and groups of friends online or in the flesh, are not the same as echo chambers because marginalized/disenfranchised people NEED these spaces because the world was not designed to cater to them.

In contrast, the “bad” echo chambers tend to be occupied by straight white men who feel threatened by equality -- or, in their eyes, by the suggestion that the world is not currently “equal” for various marginalized groups. They want to claim to be oppressed yet have no idea what that would look or feel like, so every inconvenience in their minds is a blow against the bedrock of humankind.