Why is fluther so heavily weighted with liberals and codgers?

Wow.

I’ve been tempted to ask the same for quite a while.

GA.

Elitist? I suppose I am, but Fluther itself doesn’t feed that mentality for me.

We do tend to be a bit persnickety about spelling, guess that makes us eititists.

I take it a “codger” is the opposite of a liberal? As a group, I think fluther is populated with people willing to voice an opinion, which puts them towards each end of the spectrum.

^ Codger is not the opposite of Liberal.

Codger: Old, out of touch person.

My wife’s LIberal codger friends bore me to tears sometimes.

What’s a codger?

^ Someone that doesn’t know how to ask Siri to define a word.

According to the dictionary, a codger is “an elderly man, especially one who is old-fashioned or eccentric.”

That would make a codger conservative.

I stand by my original response.

^ The experience I related above still stands.

Also. It’s entirely possible for a concept to be both conservative and new.

@zenvelo As you can see, there will be sharp opposition to the notion that liberal and codger are equivalent.

We use words that are too long for conservatives.

Liberal codger.

Bernie Sanders.

/thread.

I think codger is more about being old and grumpy. Funny, I hadn’t considered the male aspect to be relevant, but rolling it around in my head, it almost certainly is the men here who grump loudest and most dependably.

Add desperately sad cunts who you’d genuinely cross the road to avoid & the non speaking cast of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest…

@SecondHandStoke Siri continuously disconnects after I ask her a question. Either she doesn’t know the answer, or she doesn’t understand southern drawl.

I prefer to ask people what words mean to them. Not Siri.

Once a certain demographic or ideology predominates in a group, their dominance becomes self-enforcing, because newcomers of a different stripe look around and see that most members aren’t like them. They despair of ever feeling included, so they’re unlikely to stick around (unless they enjoy playing the role of outsider). It’s a web version of natural selection.

Fluther had a liberal cast from the beginning, because that was the vibe of the founders and of their family and friends (who made up a sizeable chunk of the original membership).

As for the codger aspect, I suspect that by social media standards Fluther is more slow-paced and exacting than many young people are willing to tolerate. As a mod, I’ve seen lots of newcomers who just can’t accept having to capitalize “I” and spell out “you”, and I feel safe assuming that they’re non-codgers. That kind of stuff seems perfectly reasonable to codgers.

Are we “elitist”? There’s some of that, yeah, in the measure that someone with conservative views or poor language skills or “sloppy” thinking is probably going to be treated with condescension by established members.

“Cause we ain’t got nuttin’ better to do than to sit around the house all day and respond to all you young whippersnappers. (Dang-gum it! Muh teeth fell out agin…)

I’m no codger.

But I am a retro-grouch.

You need a pretty thick skin to be a conservative on a liberal site. Responses are quite often ridicule rather than than honest. It’s easy to see how many would be conservatives would simply move on. I assume the same situation would occur on a conservative site and liberals would simply move on. We have gotten so far out on the ends of the political spectrum that any dissent is simply not tolerated. It’s easier to respond with ridicule than to actually think through your position. After all, you can’t possibly be wrong.

I’m generally conservative. People here don’t actually know what your average run of the mill conservative next door is like. Some of the language directed to conservatives certainly does not project an image of intelligence.

I’m certainly not a codger , nor a cunt nice @UCME, can always count on you to make insulting blanket statements.
If I had to define my views I would say I am a socially liberal, fiscally conservative, apolitical. I have never voted and never will short of the 2nd coming of Christ, and we all know how likely that is. lol
I am very opposed to defining others totality by their political views.

Basically I don’t give a flying fuck about politics and rarely engage in political discussion.
Waste of precious moments.

I think @thorninmud nailed the primary explanation, but the other thing we have to keep in mind is that there is a certain amount of self-censorship going on as well. Not everyone who comes here is willing to participate in political discussions, so all we can really conclude is that a large portion of the jellies who are willing to express their political opinions are liberals. I happen to know that there are more than a few conservative jellies who just plain prefer to stand clear of political questions (and often religious questions, too). Some just don’t like to talk about politics. Others don’t want to talk about politics here specifically.

In any case, it’s always important to remember that we only get to see the dimensions of people that they show us. A lot of jellies are really quite mysterious to us, even if our prejudices have filled in the details for us. And plenty of jellies get swept into one category or another due to a single position they’ve taken regardless of anything else they’ve argued for. (I usually get swept in with the liberals for instance, even though I’m a libertarian. Another libertarian jelly often gets swept in with the conservatives. Granted, I’m more of a left-libertarian and he’s more of a right-libertarian—a distinction many people neither understand nor recognize—but it remains the case that neither of us is a liberal or a conservative.)

As for whether or not we’re elitists, I think we’re better characterized as pedants.

I am amazed at how the so called liberals on this site view Bernie Sanders supporters. They use words that used to be used for the conservatives of this site to describe us. I can’t believe I’ve become one of the more progressives here. It’s fascinating to observe.

Children behave.

Hey kids – it’s my lawn. Now, get off of it!

Yep, get your ass of my AstroTurf!

Politically, Fluther seems to be lacking in diversity. The election seemed to reveal the lack of left-leaning people here. And we know that conservatives have expressed some loneliness here as well. It appears that “centrist” or corporate Democrat might be more appropriate a description, rather than expressing some kind of wde ideological spectrum.

Are you kidding? This place is further left than the sociology dept at a liberal arts university.

@ARE_you_kidding_me – There is nothing objectively “left” about the majority of users here. Recall the recent Democratic election and all of the discussions we had related to that. It could be where I’m geographically located (MA), but the population here is far more conservative then the people who are physically located around me.

Because they can come here and pat each other on the back and feel justified, happy and sated being liberals.

What is it that attracts you to Liberaland?

It was not as leftist of a place when i showed up, or if it was, it was hid very well.

The place IS about a bit more than left or right.

People say elitist like it is a bad thing…

Anyone who cannot clearly see that Fluther skews left is simply biased by their own political orientation.

@Seek that is because it is a bad thing.

I disagree. I have to spend all day with the crowd of average people every day. I like having a place I can come to talk to intelligent folk without wading through too much inanity.

@SecondHandStoke: “Anyone who cannot clearly see that Fluther skews left is simply biased by their own political orientation.”

There are a few of us, but we’re far outnumbered. Part of the confusion might be in the inadequate terms we use. While flawed, I still think The Political Compass is useful in bringing up the concept of a multi-axis model (left/right, libertarian/authoritarian). For example, it’s helpful to see where some of the 2016 presidential candidates fall. Hillary Clinton, a long-time enemy of the left, is quite popular here on fluther.

If I may be pedantic for a moment, there’s a big difference between being a leftist and being less far to the right than Republican Party. In the US, the terms “left” and “liberal” typically get applied to the Democratic Party. But from a political science perspective, the Democrats are currently a center-right party with solid centrist and center-left wings.

So if we’re just talking about American politics and limiting ourselves to the country’s Overton window, then Fluther absolutely skews left (where “left” means nothing more than “relative to the center of American politics). But if we’re taking a broader perspective, Fluther users—and American “liberals” in general—are not leftists at all. They are centrists.

^ Interesting you mentioned..so left in US might be right UK / other countries and vice versa?

@Seek I’m around other engineers, PHD’s and earth scientists all day so I suppose I see your point. I feel rather average during the day but I don’t see fluther as elitist, you have to go over to Quora for that.

That depends on your Quora topics, I guess. The experience Quora forced me into was a lot of Middle Eastern people whining about atheists not reading the Koran enough.

I do consider “elitist” to be derogatory. Truly intelligent people see things from many different perspectives, draw from their own experience and ideas but will listen to others objectively and refine their position when presented with new, superior information. People I consider elitist simply feel like their perspective, belief system etc is correct and only others with this perspective should be allowed in the discussion, lead or have access to specific resources. They unknowingly refuse to learn out of sheer stubbornness. They often hold others back when in positions of power instead of enabling them.

That appears to be a completely personal, made-up definition. And you’re welcome to it.

This is the Internet. There are myriad private clubs all over the ‘Net that cater to all kinds of niche interests. We happen to prefer intelligent people here.

Snobby? Perhaps. Negative? Nope.

Well, not exactly made up
Simply having a preference for intelligent people may border on that but I would not consider it elitist. We tolerate all forms of idiocy here but many simply will not let it slide. We don’t outright ban people for not following the Fluther status quo. Big difference.

That definition mentions snobbishness, yes, but not the detailed derision laid out in your post.

@imrainmaker In general, what is often referred to as leftist in American politics is considered centrist in European nations. The short explanation is that the political center in the US is further to the right than elsewhere (though there has been something of a global shift to the right in the past few decades, which obscures matters a bit).

I wouldn’t agree with the “vice versa,” however, since that would imply that what other countries consider rightist might be considered leftist in the US. That doesn’t happen because we’re generally good about recognizing relative left and right (i.e., we know that the Democrats are further to the left than the Republicans even if we don’t realize that they are centrists rather than actual leftists).

@Seek I think a lot of people would see snobbishness as negative on its own. But also, @ARE_you_kidding_me‘s usage of the term “elitist” (with its strong negative connotations and implications of derisiveness) is fairly common among conservative politicians and pundits. So I think the two of you probably just have different experiences with regard to which use of the term is more dominant.

@SavoirFaire For someone who usually doesn’t give a f——k, I am really enjoying your contributions to this thread. :-)

@SavoirFaire valid observation but the negative connotation is commonplace where I live, not just with pundits.

@ARE_you_kidding_me Sure. It’s common where I live, too. But @Seek‘s usage is more common where I grew up. I wasn’t trying to exclude non-pundits (the line about having different experiences with the word was a poor attempt at broadening the scope of my comment). It’s just that media is one of the ways certain usages spread to particular populations. In any case, I agree that it is worth clarifying.

Not only is it worth clarifying, it’s also worth asking how or why it is that the notion is so conveniently proliferated. Or put simply, who is it that stands to benefit from the widespread perception?

I would not really say any general group benefits from usage this way except it’s convenient in the sense that it has become a compact and easy way to communicate a certain point. Generally I see it used in a very derogatory way.

@Seek Why is it necessary that “elitist” be viewed as pejorative? And the bungling of the word in the details is beyond simple misspelling. Apologies.

@ARE_you_kidding_me Think about it. Who is it that would prefer that centrists be viewed as craven leftists in league with Trotsky?

“Elitist” is used in a derogatory way by friends who are the most left commies here to.

Yes, but the very fact that you are required to remind us of this is an indicator of the dominant employment of the word as well as just who it is that is being subjected to noisy derision.

@ARE_you_kidding_me “Elitist” is used pejoratively by the right-wing hoi polloi to attack educated people who have though through policies and arrived at a liberal conclusion.

Bill O’Reilly considers thinking people like George Will as elitist.

Probably not it really could be just a regional thing, like soda or pop. This is literally the first time I have heard anyone use it positively. I still have a hard time grasping how something that describes exclusion and subversion could possibly be viewed in a positive light. O’reilly can spew that all he wants, does not mean I’ll listen or care about what he says. He can call Clinton a raging commie but that does not make it true.

@zenvelo EXACTLY.

@ARE_you_kidding_me No this isn’t about a regional thing like “pop”. And to get my drift, try to recall anyone ever describing Trump or Cruz as elitists.

I think it probably is because I have and more than once. Recently too.

My point is that elitist has been deflected from its actual meaning to serve as a stand in for “intellectual” or “snobby intellectual”. An example of this its sitting right there in the details to this question. What we really should be talking about is why it should be necessary to heap scorn on intellectuals (and by implication, on intellect). Why the need to regard “thinking” people with contempt?

I don’t view “elitist” as perjorative at all. I’ve been personally battling the rise in contempt toward intellectuals my entire life, to no avail.

And people wonder why Snooki and Kim Kardashian are famous.

See,that’s what it’s about. Not only is it a handy way of stomping on the thoughtful idea, The word is now used to contradict ideas formerly regarded as common sense.

I have honestly never seen it that way. “Intellectual” has always come off as neutral/positive but “elitist” has always come off as rather negative/brash/arrogant and does not always carry the intellectual connotations that some give it.

That’s why I’m particularly interested in responses regarding Trump and Cruz who are loudly denounced with those very modifiers.

I agree with @jiffysquid in that the Fluther community feels more conservative than the people around me where I live. But then, this is an American site, so I expect even the liberals to be conservative. That’s how America rolls.

@ARE_you_kidding_me “I still have a hard time grasping how something that describes exclusion and subversion could possibly be viewed in a positive light.”

Because the people who use it positively aren’t using it to describe exclusion and subversion. That’s the thing about different usages: they typically have different denotations as well as different connotations.

I don’t disagree but I just never see it used that way.

Here is a common article on Elite Fighting Forces

Here is one on Elite Athletes

One summer as a Boy Scout, I earned my place in the Elite Patrol on a 16 day 200 mile backpacking trip.

Being elite is a good thing, unless you are an underachieving redneck who thinks he is entitled to his place in the world over minorities and women who work for their place in the world. I was damn proud of the work I did to get there.

“Weighted” suggests deliberate bias, which is isn’t. It just is what it is. We’re not a political group so we don’t try to be balanced. Fluther is just a place where people can express their opinions and criticise and be criticised. Also it isn’t true that the place is infested with old codgers; almost everyone here is younger than me.

Elite and “elitist” should not be confused.

Right. One is a noun, and the other is an adjective.

Here we go again with elitist grammar lessons. Back to your ivory tower.

Thanks, @stanleybmanly. I take your compliment!

Not elitists. Authoritarians. The authoritarian middle – which is what Fluther is – is no better than the authoritarian left or the authoritarian right. People whose opinions are sufficiently different enough to cause widespread anger get censored. Fluther has an unstated rule that any posting which generates sufficient outrage will be censored regardless of merit or validity. This kind of crass populism exists irrespective of the left/right spectrum and results in an ever smaller and ever more aggressive and intolerant echo chamber which pats itself on the back for its “open-mindedness” in putting up with very slightly divergent views.

And of course, there’s also an element on Fluther which gets its way by not having a bottom line. There is no limit to how low they are prepared to go, even to the extent of threatening to report someone to the secret police and ruin their life and the lives of their families to silence them.

Where’ve you been?

The Sheriff’s Secret Police?

All hail the glow cloud!

@Pachy I’m confused. As far as I can see, this post of yours is your only appearance on this thread. When did I compliment you? Is it the question itself you take personally?

Ahh, I’ve missed @SmashTheState‘s “once every few months stopping by to bash Fluther” visits.

How wonderful it is that people are willing to risk their lives and the lives of their families to answer a question on Fluther.

@stanleybmanly Going to and fro in the earth, and walking up and down in it.

Hmmm, let’s see… I’m a white, educated, gay-friendly, artist/writer/professor, with diverse family and friends, living in Boston…Massachusetts.

Fluther seems like home to me.

^^ You elitist cookie eating old codger!

@janbb: It’s high time I change my Fluther profile to say just that.

Exclusively for the purpose of providing @SmashTheState a group to disdain.

And we do such a damned fine job of it, too!

@canidmajor Right, because you know, we are nothing but bourgeoisie sheeple, every-single-last-one-of-us.

Because the Republicans have jobs and are working. ~

Because this site is so fucked up and going down hill and we’re all idiots and yet @SmashTheState can’t quit us.

I’m always happy to see @Smash.

LOOK AT the 4s in your louvre!

^ Oh wow…haha, it’s an omen, of…what? lol

There are (at last count) approximately a bazillion places on the Internet to express varying and diverse views. I come here for a certain kind of interaction, I go to other sites for other kinds of interaction. Some of these users act like Fluther is their only option, and are annoyed that it is a certain way.
Wake up, kids, the Internet is a multiverse!

Whoever is resurrecting these ancient posts, I am somehow grateful, though apparently I’m being picked on. Isn’t it amazing, how many of our stalwarts have drifted away?