r/The_Donald helped radicalize users into far-right identities and discourse – Active users on r/The_Donald increasingly used white nationalist vocabularies in their comments within three months.
I know most people that were on reddit at the time are fully aware of this and won't be surprised but don't dismiss the findings out of hand. It's important that studies are being conducted and the fact that the finding match our lived experience is still noteworthy.
Any and I do mean, any conservative based subreddit all now function the same. r/conservatives have turned into a shithole. Hell, even TrueUnpopularOpinion has turned into it's own shithole because it's just a foundation for right-wingers to express their radicalized thought processes for all to see.
Yeah, I've always described r/Conservative as The_Donald dressed up in their dad's suit and tie. But once The_Donald was finally banned (after they already left for their own website - thanks for nothing spez) r/Conservative dropped all pretenses.
R/republican was a right wing echo bunker, too. I got banned for pointing out that the letter in the "article" that someone posted that claimed that the DOJ had found massive voter fraud in Georgia and asking the state to reject Biden's win was actually written by a Trumpist shill and contradicted the Republican AG, the DOJ, the Republican Governor, the Republican Secretary of State, and Republican election officials.
I asked them a couple of times when major events in the prosecution of John Eastman occurred if they would reconsider. They blocked me for 30 days each time. When he was finally disbarred I asked again and they told me that if I didn't stop asking they would report me to the admins.
r/unpopularopinion was a shithole. Any sub called "realXYZ" "QRS2" or "TrueABC" is just the "free speech" version started by someone pissed that they got banned for using slurs, so I'm not surprised r/TrueUnpopularOpinion went to shit. I'm surprised you think it was decent at any point tbh.
There were a couple "trues" that actually had a purpose and were actively less shitty than the original one. The games and gaming subs were mostly memes and fan boys being assholes, but truegaming was for longer form discussion and memes weren't allowed.
I remember TrueGaming having such a stingy requirement, like they wouldn't have allowed you to post for a month. It was dumb but I understood. It's no longer there.
Yeah r/gaming is a shitfest, you can't have an honest engaging conversation about games. It's always about sensationalist takes, cosplayer females dressing sexually to appeal to the lonely losers who frequent there, rage porn for like 2 weeks, unfunny memes and junk posts like "REMAKE THIS ONE GAME ONLY I REMEMBURH! COME ON, I PRETEND TO UNDERSTAND BUSINESS! THIS WILL RAKE IN SO MUCH MONEY!"
And the same person will pull a two-face and condemn the industry for practicing what they think is bad business, while simultaneously STILL PAYING FOR THE SHIT THEY THINK IS THE PROBLEM!
Hypocritical pieces of shit are what that community is.