Is "Atlas Brain" due to neurodivergence?

[GAinDC]

I hope this doesn't offend anyone...

But I was thinking recently that maybe a lot of the quirks here on Atlas -- epic freakouts over one poll, catastrophizing unnecessarily, obsessing over things (like the insistence by some on here that a recession is imminent....) -- are because a lot of us are neurodivergent.

Has anybody else thought that? At first, I thought that we were just more passionate about politics than others and maybe more naive, but seeing all of the examples listed above, as well as routine advice on here for candidates and campaigns that's frankly laughable, makes me wonder.

What do you think?

[Chicken Is Meant To Be Boneless]

It could play a role in some cases but I wouldn't say it's the sole cause.  Maps & stats are both attractive features to neurodivergent individuals and this site has both.

[VBM]

You’re the first person to have ever had this thought.

[GeneralMacArthur]

I talk about politics with people in real life too and they also obsess over these small political subjects.  I think it's because a lot of people just have two or three well-developed political arguments, and want to harp on those incessantly instead of talking about anything else where they don't have strong opinions, or aren't well-informed, or at least their opinions don't diverge from their favorite talk show enough to be interesting to discuss.

[Santander]

The only reason I log on to Atlas anymore is to feel better about my own issues.

[J.D. Vance’s Burner Account]

Atlas is mental illness: the website. Normal people usually have better things to do with their time than arguing about whether Elliott County (pop 7000) will trend R, or arguing with BRTD about whether Peter Griffin-themed grindcore is good music or not.

[PSOL]

Atlas posters by and large are entirely superficial about their knowledge besides a few people who have successfully fooled people to know everything. There are caveats like when someone has experiences from business or civic activities on a given topic but by and large most things posted on atlas are trash.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Atlas often gets some things wrong that normie people have no problem, for example it's the one place on the Internet where people honestly thought that Mastriano was favored for PA-GOV.

[Hindsight was 2020]

Atlas is mental illness: the website. Normal people usually have better things to do with their time than arguing about whether Elliott County (pop 7000) will trend R, or arguing with BRTD about whether Peter Griffin-themed grindcore is good music or not.

Better things to do? Both of those things sound better than sex man

[Bardella ciao!]

That's an underdetermined explanation. Plenty of people are neurodivergent without being Atlas-brained.

[quesaisje]

I think it's more relevant that this forum skews very young. It's important for anyone posting here past their early twenties or so to remember that. We even have posters who aren't old enough to have many firsthand memories from elections prior to 2016.

Politics is an increasingly volatile topic in the United States. Partisanship is a defining personal trait in a way that it wasn't thirty years ago. This site's historical ties to Dave Leip's Atlas have always made it relatively sedate compared to other online spaces for political discussion.

But we're not the Andaman Islands. Posters are increasingly likely to arrive at this site having been socialized into the norms of political discussion on corporate social media platforms - where toxic behaviors and poor emotional regulation, including the patterns described here as "Atlas brained," are prevalent.

[emailking]

If you mean are most people here autistic, I doubt the rate of autism here is much different from the overall population.

If you mean are most people here socially awkward, I similarly doubt it differs much from the overall population.

If you mean is everybody here weird, sure I would agree with that, because I think everybody is weird in their own ways.

🤷