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Is Debate Politics a good and fair representation of society overall?

Is Debate Politics a good and fair representation of society overall?

  • Yes

    Votes: 5 7.9%

  • No

    Votes: 58 92.1%
  • Total voters
    63
radcen

radcen

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Is Debate Politics a good and fair representation of society overall?

Yes?
No?

I'm going to purposely leave out a "Maybe" option. For this question I think people should be able to make a choice one way or another.

In some ways it would seem so. We have the whole gamut of ideologies, genders, orientations, ethnicities, and so on. But, I would say 'no' for the simple reason that the vast majority of people here are here because they care deeply about social and/or political issues. Deeply enough to actually discuss them. The majority of average society does not care that deeply, and is seemingly perfectly fine with hiding their collective heads in the sand and willfully ignoring issues that affect them directly. They are fine with letting others make critical decisions for them.

I believe that we here at DP are in the minority.
 
radcen said:
Is Debate Politics a good and fair representation of society overall?

Yes?
No?

I'm going to purposely leave out a "Maybe" option. For this question I think people should be able to make a choice one way or another.

In some ways it would seem so. We have the whole gamut of ideologies, genders, orientations, ethnicities, and so on. But, I would say 'no' for the simple reason that the vast majority of people here are here because they care deeply about social and/or political issues. Deeply enough to actually discuss them. The majority of average society does not care that deeply, and is seemingly perfectly fine with hiding their collective heads in the sand and willfully ignoring issues that affect them directly. They are fine with letting others make critical decisions for them.

I believe that we here at DP are in the minority.
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You make a good point about why you believe DP is not a fair cross-section of society as a whole. My thoughts are the same but for a different reason: Most people don't post on internet forums. Those who do probably fall into one of just a few categories: unemployed; retired; in school. Very few posters (I don't THINK) are working stiffs.
 
My guess is not even close. The people who frequent these types of forums are more read on politics and current events. Most people go through life with blinders on just trying to get to the next day.
 
Absolutely not.

Since it actively protects every nut job conspiracy theorist, knuckle dragging bigot and pieces of human filth from the sort of derision they would face were they to spew their idiocy in public, it tends to attract more than its share of nut jobs, bigots and human filth. Of the rest of us, this is still a sampling non-reflective of society at large because we are more zealous about politics to begin with. THis isn't a random sampling, but a sampling based upon degree of interest.
 
radcen said:
Is Debate Politics a good and fair representation of society overall?
Click to expand...
Click to expand...

Yes?
No?

I'm going to purposely leave out a "Maybe" option. For this question I think people should be able to make a choice one way or another.

In some ways it would seem so. We have the whole gamut of ideologies, genders, orientations, ethnicities, and so on. But, I would say 'no' for the simple reason that the vast majority of people here are here because they care deeply about social and/or political issues. Deeply enough to actually discuss them. The majority of average society does not care that deeply, and is seemingly perfectly fine with hiding their collective heads in the sand and willfully ignoring issues that affect them directly. They are fine with letting others make critical decisions for them.

I believe that we here at DP are in the minority.
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I'm going with NO.

And I'm going to say that I believe that the USA would be a better place if I could say yes.

OTOH, I do believe that the USA is headed in the right direction, but it might take a while for it to get there.
 
MaggieD said:
You make a good point about why you believe DP is not a fair cross-section of society as a whole. My thoughts are the same but for a different reason: Most people don't post on internet forums. Those who do probably fall into one of just a few categories: unemployed; retired; in school. Very few posters (I don't THINK) are working stiffs.
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I dunno Maggie. I'm semi retired now but I was a politics chat room junkie when I was working 70 hrs a week. I'd do it at night and on weekends but I was hooked.
 
Not to me, in my experience most socialists will never admit it in person.
 
Sort of.

Working customer service you see that there are all kinds of whacky people out there.

But for the most part I think most people are good, and thats the case here.

Most DPers are standup folk who try to do whats right.

But like everyone... we most certainly have our nuts.
 
Gardener said:
Absolutely not.

Since it actively protects every nut job conspiracy theorist, knuckle dragging bigot and pieces of human filth from the sort of derision they would face were they to spew their idiocy in public, it tends to attract more than its share of nut jobs, bigots and human filth. Of the rest of us, this is still a sampling non-reflective of society at large because we are more zealous about politics to begin with. THis isn't a random sampling, but a sampling based upon degree of interest.
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I am just going to say that from my experience, overall the people who post on the Debate Politics forum are pretty good people.

There are far fewer wackos here than you find on other sites.

That's my impression, and I've spent a fair amount of time on other web-sites.
 
radcen said:
Is Debate Politics a good and fair representation of society overall?

Yes?
No?

I'm going to purposely leave out a "Maybe" option. For this question I think people should be able to make a choice one way or another.

In some ways it would seem so. We have the whole gamut of ideologies, genders, orientations, ethnicities, and so on. But, I would say 'no' for the simple reason that the vast majority of people here are here because they care deeply about social and/or political issues. Deeply enough to actually discuss them. The majority of average society does not care that deeply, and is seemingly perfectly fine with hiding their collective heads in the sand and willfully ignoring issues that affect them directly. They are fine with letting others make critical decisions for them.

I believe that we here at DP are in the minority.
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Click to expand...




Unfortunately, I have to agree with you.

My life experience is that most people on this planet are good people who would rather help other people than hurt them.

But there is a sizable minority that doesn't think that way and they make a lot of problems for the good people.
 
I dont think "most" people have any idea what is going on around them.
 
I agree, we're a minority here. Most people are not interested in political debate, and are clueless. However, its possible we have some sort of ideological representation here. I dont know if a certaing ideology is more predisposed to public debate on the internet though.
 
I voted yes; while not a 'representation of our society' (meaning what exactly? US/west? this is an international board);
it is still the most diverse message board I've been on; and I've been on quite a few.

By default it is the most representative (diverse), so i'll just go with that.
 
shrubnose said:
I am just going to say that from my experience, overall the people who post on the Debate Politics forum are pretty good people.

There are far fewer wackos here than you find on other sites.

That's my impression, and I've spent a fair amount of time on other web-sites.
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I agree, it's a much better forum of civility, than other places on the Net.

But it's also a fair representation of the politically active, not the general population. The masses, as a whole, aren't overly knowledgeable or interested in how things get done. I would say the majority are "swing" or in the middle about most issues.
 
radcen said:
Is Debate Politics a good and fair representation of society overall?

Yes?
No?

I'm going to purposely leave out a "Maybe" option. For this question I think people should be able to make a choice one way or another.

In some ways it would seem so. We have the whole gamut of ideologies, genders, orientations, ethnicities, and so on. But, I would say 'no' for the simple reason that the vast majority of people here are here because they care deeply about social and/or political issues. Deeply enough to actually discuss them. The majority of average society does not care that deeply, and is seemingly perfectly fine with hiding their collective heads in the sand and willfully ignoring issues that affect them directly. They are fine with letting others make critical decisions for them.

I believe that we here at DP are in the minority.
Click to expand...

My gut reaction is "God, I hope not."

I don't think it is, I think you're right in much of what you said. For some reason, the crazies come here. It's one thing to be partisan one way or the other, but between the truthers, the birthers and the hardcore "libertarians"....
 
Yes, it is a good representation of society overall; there are lots of idiots and a minority of intelligent people.
 
We even have a neo nazi.
 
I didn't answer the poll because there needed to be a "Yes and No" option. "Yes" because we all do populate the society out there in the world that everybody inhabits, so it is no different in here on the board. "No" in the sense that these boards are often inhabited by 'seminar' posters--those who are assigned the duty to keep the assigned talking points alive, to make sure that no reasoned discussion of serious topics takes place if there are those who don't want those topics discussed--who don't want the general population educated in them.

Admittedly, DP seems to be moderated well so that it is more difficult for the seminar posters to get as much traction here as they can on many other boards, but they still do it with non sequitur, straw men, red herrings, and other techniques to derail or sidetrack a discussion. And of course the brainwashed numbnuts exist in real life too, but they are less likely to demonstrate that in real life as they are here. But we all are probably more outspoken on our views here than we would feel appropriate to do in most everyday discussions.
 
radcen said:
Is Debate Politics a good and fair representation of society overall?

Yes?
No?

I'm going to purposely leave out a "Maybe" option. For this question I think people should be able to make a choice one way or another.

In some ways it would seem so. We have the whole gamut of ideologies, genders, orientations, ethnicities, and so on. But, I would say 'no' for the simple reason that the vast majority of people here are here because they care deeply about social and/or political issues. Deeply enough to actually discuss them. The majority of average society does not care that deeply, and is seemingly perfectly fine with hiding their collective heads in the sand and willfully ignoring issues that affect them directly. They are fine with letting others make critical decisions for them.

I believe that we here at DP are in the minority.
Click to expand...


The results of the poll say it all.
 
MaggieD said:
You make a good point about why you believe DP is not a fair cross-section of society as a whole. My thoughts are the same but for a different reason: Most people don't post on internet forums. Those who do probably fall into one of just a few categories: unemployed; retired; in school. Very few posters (I don't THINK) are working stiffs.
Click to expand...

I've always posted on Internet forums, even when I was a working stiff. Granted, you can probably make a case that most people who post on forums have a much higher daily access to the Internet from work, which is my case, than people who do physical labor/customer service/ etc. and can only post from home during non-work hours. Since the majority of people have access to the Internet, I don't think you can generalize that they're all unemployed.
 
Cephus said:
I've always posted on Internet forums, even when I was a working stiff. Granted, you can probably make a case that most people who post on forums have a much higher daily access to the Internet from work, which is my case, than people who do physical labor/customer service/ etc. and can only post from home during non-work hours. Since the majority of people have access to the Internet, I don't think you can generalize that they're all unemployed.
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Exactly. The internet was my 'coffee break' time when I was working, even when I was on the road a lot of the time. And I was participating in chat rooms and, as they developed, on message boards from my very first old Presario Compaq 486 computer. AOL, and now pretty much everybody else, gave us internet access pretty much wherever we were, and the laptop computer and then all the other mobile devices makes it easy to access the internet wherever we are. I would guess most folks posting on message boards are or have recently been employed.
 
azgreg said:
My guess is not even close. The people who frequent these types of forums are more read on politics and current events. Most people go through life with blinders on just trying to get to the next day.
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I'll second that. Try to engage most people in a conversation about any of the topics discussed here and you'll get a blank stare.
 
Libertarians cannot even get 1% in the national vote for president every four years. But here, they are over represented by numbers that must be twenty times that. So in that regard, there is not way that DP is any sort of representative sample of opinion.
 
No, because conspiracy theorists, in the real world represent a tiny fraction of less than one percent. Also, libertarians...they can never get up to 1% for one of their presidential candidates.
 
Gardener said:
Absolutely not.

Since it actively protects every nut job conspiracy theorist, knuckle dragging bigot and pieces of human filth from the sort of derision they would face were they to spew their idiocy in public, it tends to attract more than its share of nut jobs, bigots and human filth. Of the rest of us, this is still a sampling non-reflective of society at large because we are more zealous about politics to begin with. THis isn't a random sampling, but a sampling based upon degree of interest.
Click to expand...

Deprived of the ability to stop discussions by calling people racist, sexist, bigoted, homophobic, etc., left wingers are at a loss for how to proceed here. They seem to resent free speech from their political opponents quite a bit, so you get all sorts of false and irrational characterizations.

Conservatives and libertarians have learned to keep quiet in certain groups else they get their cars keyed or their tires slashed.
 
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