dipped my toes into r/politics for about three months.
Every day, I would make about ~five comments arguing against whatever nonsense was the flavor of the day.
I’ve been on the chan’s for years, and i’ve never seen the amount of vitriol that I got from r/politics. I never felt dirty or stained from being on /pol or here.
I felt dirty every time i stepped into that cesspool. There is so much hate being thrown around, people that absolutely refuse to step outside that bubble, they actively look for reasons to avoid articles that would challenge their world view.
That being said, I’m fairly certain that on any random day about 90% of the posters are paid to be there, to post articles and karma farm, or they are just bots designed to create that mass perception - group think.
In three months, I had comments altered with words i didn’t write, i was quickly shuffled into the 10 min between replies, i would randomly find my comments shadowbanned. I was banned for a day 3 times, banned for three days once, and finally permanently banned for calling out a poster for saying some incredibly racist things against black trump supporters.
Nothing I said was vitriolic, hateful or violated the rules of the sub. I strove to keep neutral terms in my replies specifically to avoid the ban hammer.
Yet, I was perm banned for that, the racist was not. When i questioned why I was banned and the account that said the racist things was not, the mods replied back that they would take into account any reports i made prior to my ban.
I knew what i was getting into with this. Looking at the amount of lies, spin, ignoring of publicly available information, and the plain hate spewing from there, I realize that it’s just one tiny corner of the internet.
Then I think about how Trump has to deal with this insanity on such a larger scale. Abuse from every media outlet, lies and smears on every platform.
It’s honestly amazing that he has remained so cool through it all.
So thank you President Trump. I appreciate everything that you do, and I hope you recognize that we see what you are going through. I doubt he’ll ever see this, but that’s ok. We have your back. Trump 2020!