It’s not about “dem echo chambers” to me it’s about echo chambers in general. The problems I think they cause are more devision, less ability to reflect on held beliefs, and make it difficult to have conversations or debates with those who old different beliefs. Again this is specific to echo chambers in general.
My brain has stopped functioning since this AM 🤣 but that’s fair re: “echo chambers in general” - just the “both sides” rhetoric and the specific questions about “dem echo chambers” had me wondering what specific problematic issues were stemming from that. I was gonna be specific but I can no longer find/follow the convo - Oy old age ig - thank for taking the time to answer.
You have fallen into one of the liberal echo chamber traps. I like to think these traps were born of genuinely good intent and have simply been overused. An issue that liberal echo chambers can have is bad faith actors trolling the various forums and social media. For example, an unabashedly “pro-life” conservative wading into the topic of abortion calling themselves “pro-choice”. Then they start Just Asking Questions and ultimately reveal they think the choice should be to not have sex. And once someone is pregnant, they’ve made a choice and now must live with the consequences.
So liberals have these “traps” that started as somewhat of a defense mechanism. Rather than waste time attempting to truly flesh out a position with someone acting in bad faith, they will begin the process by sort of vetting the person. If you ask the “wrong questions” or provide the “wrong answers”, you’ll be effectively labeled a bad faith person. This will be evident initially by a flurry of downvotes on a few comments. Once the avalanche has started, it’s hard to avoid. People will barely peruse your comments and follow the judgement that you are acting in bad faith.
It makes it impossible to play devil’s advocate or really dig deep on topics that have tons of nuance and layers. Once a comment chain gets long enough maybe 1 or 2 other people will still follow it. If you’ve been judged earlier on, any valid points or questions you proffer will be ignored and/or downvoted.
FWIW I’ve come to describe myself as “horrifically liberal”. Even given that, I have been downvoted to oblivion on topics where I didn’t pass whatever purity test the first few viewers required.
Edit: as you can see, I’ve already been downvoted. Basically proving exactly what I said in my post.
and ultimately reveal they think the choice should be to not have sex. And once someone is pregnant, they’ve made a choice and now must live with the consequences.
This is unironically the most common view on men and reproduction.
One of the voices contrary to it was the fourth national president of the National Organization for Women, Karen De Crow. She had a bunch views that are still considered controversial today, like that cases of contested child custody should start from a position that shared custody is best for the child unless there’s a reason it should be otherwise (this is actually law in two states now) or that “If a woman makes a unilateral decision to bring pregnancy to term, and the biological father does not, and cannot, share in this decision, he should not be liable for 21 years of support… autonomous women making independent decisions about their lives should not expect men to finance their choice.” That quote is from a case where she represented a man who was trying to get his child support order vacated because the mother had lied to him about her contraceptive use.
Speaking of contraceptives, if a form of male contraceptive ever reaches market whose use is not visibly apparent to his partner (say vasalgel), I fully expect to see lots of talk online from feminist spaces about how a man not being honest about whether or not he is using said contraceptive is sexual assault in exactly the way it isn’t for a woman to do the same thing with the options available to her.
