For 12 years I have had the misfortune of listening to the left insufferably gloat about how they united the natural majority and then proceed to condescendingly berate the minority right for not being able to do the same thing, just chalking it up to "effort" and "skill".
If effort and skill were what made the difference here, then LfromNJ wouldn't have given up, after pushing literally every single potential line to its furthest end and still coming up substantially short.
After pointing out these obvious realities, unquestionable math and undeniable conclusions, I was treated with Trumpist levels of denial of facts, insults and condescension, which I refuse to take lying down.
1. This site is overwhelmingly left leaning. I threw out 80%, Pericles objected. Even if it is 75% or 70%, the same dynamic is at work and by the way, this line of argument originated from a very prominent Laborite, who is famous for making the numbers work and that number was just about what he said.
2. The right distrusts the mod team, is frustrated with the perceived slant of this forum and more and more of them are deciding to pull up shop and move to other sites, to discord, to twitter and so on.
3. We have a smaller pool to recruit from thus.
4. Conservatives are far more willing to say no, even to just being a zombie voter then people on the left, because we draw from a smaller pool, this is more acute in its effects.
5. We have the added handicap of having basically recruited a substantial percentage of the high profile members of the other side thanks to ideological evolution of young conservatives into 20 somethings socialists, and there is nothing even approaching this on the other side that compensates for the mathematical effect of this. It also like we are small business competing against a large business and we have to pay the full tax rate, while the big business gets out of it with loopholes. The end effect is the same.
6. We have greater conflicting diversity and the insatiable desire on the right to identify and eliminate undesirable elements, and it becomes necessary to ween people off of this mindset for the simple fact that the demographics in this game are basically like that of New York IRL.
7. I contacted 10 people last week, one has joined.
I like to state the facts of a situation as it is and then if someone takes issues with these that can be addressed. But I refused to tolerate someone writing off legitimate perceived observations made in good faith by me, or drawn literally from other fing Laborites statements and be treated with the response of "excuses". I don't tolerate that from my clinically narcissistic relative, I pine daily for the removal of that behavior from the WH IRL, I sure as well won't tolerate that on here from anyone.
Finally, I hate discord because it is impossible to list of all these concerns in such a concise manner, the important stuff gets lost and the flow of the chat basically induces fighting and reductionist approaches with people missing the important takeaways (listed numerically above).
Well there is a lot to unpack here.
Re: Lfromnj, I will say that he probably burned out too fast (the brightest stars burn out the fastest I guess). However, he still managed to come within single digits in the most unfriendly region for the right during a time when the average election probably looked 60-40 nationwide and probably more like 67-33 in Lincoln.
If lfromnj-style efforts could have been kept indefinitely, I am sure elections would have been a lot more competitive for the past year and a half. Indeed August would have been a landslide defeat for us instead of a narrow one; and Feb 19 would have been super close (though probably still a win for us, but the South definitely flips).
Then again what lfromnj did was almost a miracle and I imagine cannot be done sustainably. As for lfromnj himself tbh I would like for him to come back here but I guess he is burnt out.
Re: Forum moderation and Atlas leaning heavily left, I actually agree with that critique and Atlas being so slanted to the left as well as the mod team being "perceived" as biased is something I've been somewhat worried for a while now.
I did a poll not too long ago actually (in June) and found out that roughly 70-75% of the site plans to vote for Joe Biden this November, with Trump getting like 15% of the vote. This is far from a perfect metric as there are certainly several Federalists who will vote for him; as well as people on both sides who will not vote due to age or not being Americans in the first place but it is a good measure. If Atlas was 100% representative of the US population you'd expect it to be closer to a 52-48 split.
However, it is what it is and I don't think we can do anything about it? Especially not from within Atlasia. If anything this
might be an issue for you to discuss how to "fix it" on Conservacord or the mod cave; but can we really do anything in Atlasia?
If I had a solution for the "lack of ideological diversity" I'd actually say it but I don't. The best I can think of is more lenient moderation, which itself has its own set of problems. This is an issue better discussed on the FC board though (and actually one I've discussed there sometimes)
Re: Demographics; I actually argued once that, purely based on demographics, Atlas should be more right wing than it actually is (still leaning left but more on the scale of 60-40 than 75-25). Let's look at some of Atlas' demographic characteristics:
Almost uniformly male (lean right)
Young (lean left)
Heavily LGBT (lean left)
Heavily White (lean right)
That is exactly 2 left and 2 right. I guess you could add college education ot the mix which would tilt things to the left again; but it should be a smaller advantage, and countered by Atlas being wealthier than the average American.
For the record: Atlasia's party registration is actually not too far from the RL party registration of states like Vermont or Maryland. Now, which party holds the governorship in those 2 states?
(granted Atlasia is probably extremely inelastic too)
Re: Party Unity this is a point where I disagree quite a lot. Conservatives have voted like an ethnic minority since what, 2008? So I don't really think that it is more disunited.
If anything you could easily argue that it is the left that is more disunited; there are literally 0 unironic blue avatars in Labor; while there are lots of lime green and red avatars on the Federalists, and even more on the DA
Re: People changing sides honestly I've always found that very weird; if anything the old saying is that "you become more conservative with age".
I guess you just got unlucky in that while many former Fed leaders moved left; no one really on Labor's leadership ever moved right other than fhtagn.
Why do people on Atlas move left instead of right?
Tbh I can't really relate to moving to either side as I've had basically the same politics I have now since I was like 17.
