13% of population, dominates social media, hates Britain

[FiF]

Interesting read.

https://t.co/xjy2RZ7KTQ

Essentially it splits the nation down into types, tribes if you like, eg Progressive Activists, Civic Pragmatists, Disengaged Battlers, Established Liberals, Loyal Nationals, Disengaged Traditionalists, Backbone Conservatives.

Progressive Activists, 13% of population, utterly dominant on social media, as Goodwin summarises on Twitter

Matt Goodwin said:

Fascinating look at Britain's "progressive left"

13% of population
middle-aged & well-off
Guardian + Channel 4
prioritise inequality & climate
anti-Brexit
focused on historic injustice
most likely to shout on social media
least proud of being British

Plenty more food for thought in the download, all 268 pages of it. amongst other things it really does demonstrate why Twitter etc is just not representative of society as a whole.

[FiF]

Vanden Saab said:

catweasle said:

B'stard Child said:

Murph7355 said:

Dog Star said:

...
On FB I have lefty friends and they post incredible amounts of political stuff - some of it is simply raving and raging - some profiles seem to exist to just post fifty links a day to Guardian articles, oh-so-funny anti-Tory memes.
...

Can't you just defriend Unknown User?

Oh my days!

[FiF]

Lord Marylebone said:

Matt Goodwin said:

Fascinating look at Britain's "progressive left"

13% of population
middle-aged & well-off
Guardian + Channel 4
prioritise inequality & climate
anti-Brexit
focused on historic injustice
most likely to shout on social media
least proud of being British

Interesting thread.

I sort of fit those categories above, apart from 'shouting on social media'. I rarely post on Facebook/Instagram and never is it anything political. As for Twitter, I only read stuff on there occasionally, never post. I save any political discussion for PH.

Barely any of my friends on Facebook post anything political. But when they do, it generally seems to be split 50:50 in terms of either being right-wing or left-wing depending who it is, but as I said, it's fairly rare.

I suppose thats the point really, social media is what you make it. You will only see the stuff posted by friends, and if all you follow is left wing/right wing (delete as appropriate) people then that is all you will see.

If someone regularly posted political stuff on Instagram and Facebook I would unfollow/unfriend them anyway.

Must admit I expected folks to pick up on some of the other categories as balance.

Eg Loyal Nationalists
Mail and Sun
Pro Brexit
Proud of Britain and history
Lean left on economics
Moved to vote Conservative recently
Worried about wokeness.

[FiF]

Timberwolf said:

The big difference with Pistonheads is it's a special interest forum and by and large if I stay out of NP&E and don't spend too long in any threads with the word "cyclist" in the title I can end up none the wiser what anyone believes politically. Whereas modern social media bases everything on the person rather than the topic, so you can't follow someone's interesting bearding about E39 tyre pressure monitoring systems without also being along for the ride around their views on local councils, incandescent lightbulbs and cafés putting the beans in a separate porcelain pot so you don't get bean juice all over your breakfast.

A subtle distinction I think people are missing from this is it's not that social media is dominated by progressive activists, it's that the political content is. It's not that (say) your civic pragmatists aren't participating at all, it's that they'll check up on family and post a few photos of the driveway cake sale without half a dozen angry political memes. It's made worse by the algorithms, which show you this stuff disproportionately because people can't help wading in to defend their point of view and constantly revisiting the same post/thread/etc. for lots of lovely engagement.

(Again, PH doesn't suffer so from this due to the special interest nature: it doesn't want to advertise me political parties and opinionated newspapers while I'm all riled up and angry at people, it wants to sell me an old Mercedes and the number of several specialist motor factors while I'm browsing the bargain barge thread.)

One thing I have found to make a massive improvement to Twitter in particular is the moment someone starts doing that irritating thing of reposting things to go "look what they're saying now!" then just unfollow them. I don't mind too much reading people's views (left or right) when they're reasonably put and logically follow from knowledge and experience, but that habit of endlessly quoting things which have been created purely to be controversial winds me up no end - more in fact than the controversial statements themselves.

This is a very reasonable post I feel. Particularly like the comment about avoiding any thread with cyclist in the subject, plus there are others one could mention. As for NP&E numerous threads that just are not worth the engagement in the first place, and the ones that are you quickly learn the contributors to be avoided.

As for Twitter, best tactic is not to Tweet, yes it's keeping head below parapet, but it avoids the pile on from a certain element. Agree on the tactic of unfollowing people, though with the way SM works you sometimes see stuff from folks not followed and the only way then is to block or mute the asshats. It usually helps if they have a lot of stuff after their Twitter handle, #FBPE is usually a starting indicator, but I accept that's just my bias.

What's interesting is that SM output can flag up certain people that previously thought to gave their head screwed on the right way, suddenly you find they can be a moron in some areas, viz James Delingpole, unfollowed and muted. Accepted that goes against the premise that you should read stuff, eg papers and books, that are contrary to personal views in the interest of balance and avoiding echo chambers, but some stuff is just beyond the pale.