Showing posts with label Echo Chambers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Echo Chambers. Show all posts

Monday, 8 May 2017

Are you a politically deranged junkie?


Despite its title you clicked this article didn't you.

That means there's a cowardly hate-filled anti-Corbyn Labour Party politician out there who considers you to be "politically deranged" and an abnormal person who feeds off my writing like a "junkie".


This MP was venting their impotent political fury to a Buzzfeed journalist in their article about the rise of left-wing independent media sites. They were so hot-headed with rage that they decided that it's fine to insult literally millions of people who have ever read or shared my work, or the work of other independent sites (like Johnny Void, Tom Pride, Vox Political, The Canary, Evolve Politics, Novara Media, Political Scrapbook or The Skwawkbox).



According to this cowardly politician who hid behind anonymity to spread their smears, independent media sites like Another Angry Voice are "propaganda and ideological purity dressed up as news and views and beamed on the internet direct to the politically deranged".

They described you as a "junkie" for reading my work and they were also keen to draw a strong distinction between you (an independent media reader) and "normal, sensible people".


In my view "propaganda and ideological purity dressed up as news and views" is actually a very much better description of right-wing hate comics like the Daily Mail than it is of independent pages like mine.

Would the Daily Mail ever publish articles advising its readers to be sceptical of everything, even the Daily Mail? Of course they wouldn't, but the importance of critical thinking and political scepticism are some of the most important recurring themes in my work.


It's interesting that this right-leaning Labour MP would never ever dream of insulting a Daily Mail, Express or S*n reader (who they see as potential voters) as an abnormal and "politically deranged" person who is too stupid to understand that they're hooked on biased political propaganda, but they see no problem in hurling abuse at you (who they see as disgusting vermin) for being the kind of person who is reading this article.

In this person's opinion someone who obtains all of their political information from a single right-wing billionaire owned daily newspaper and from what they see on the TV news is the broad-minded "normal and sensible" person the Labour Party should be interested in appealing to, and for having read this article you're an outrageously abnormal person who is the kind of vermin the Labour Party should be driving away from the party in a hail of insults and abuse!


Amazingly this Labour politician also accuses you of existing in an echo chamber.

It's always amusing when people have such a terrible lack of self-awareness that their insults clearly apply a lot more strongly to themselves than they do to the people they are abusing.

By abusing the huge numbers of people who engage with independent media these days, this cowardly abuse-slinging Labour politician is demonstrating that they're the one who is intent on existing in an insulated bubble of delusion.

They somehow imagine that things can be put back the way they were before the social media era through the tactic of slinging a load of abuse at independent media sites and anyone who engages with them.



They're clearly the one who is intent on maintaining their echo chamber by crudely dismissing the ever growing independent media scene, and slinging insults and abuse at anyone who ever engages with it.

This Labour politician is bound to suffer more fits of impotent rage over the coming years because things can never go back to the way they were.

People will never go back to relying on a single newspaper for their written news. The only people who behave like that now are the ever shrinking pool of people who don't do the Internet.


Political parties will never again be able to manipulate and control the entire news agenda like Tony Blair and Alistair Campbell did so effectively in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Nowadays more and more people are turning to a diverse range of different sites for their written political news, not just one of a dozen or so national newspapers that all push more or less the same crude political propaganda tropes and the same lazily churnalised political press releases.


This insult-slinging Labour MP is intent on maintaining a worldview where people who only read corporate media are the "normal" ones that Labour needs to appeal to, and people who sometimes read independent media too are disgusting vermin who need to be insulted abused and driven away from the Labour Party in order to maintain its "ideological purity", which is ironic because they're the one accusing me of peddling ideological purity to you.
They think that they can force you back into the closed ideological echo chambers of the corporate media by insulting and delegitimising you for daring to engage with independent media as you're doing here.

The sooner this furious reality-denying Labour politician accepts that social media has completely changed the political game, the better it will be for their mental wellbeing, because outbursts of such uncontrolled hateful rage really can't be good for them.

This furious MP was too cowardly to put a name to their insults using the cry-bully tactic of seeking pity for having been criticised whilst slinging a load of abuse and slurs at me and you. They're the poor innocent victim who needs to hide behind anonymity, and we're detestable scum that they can insult as "nutters" and "politically deranged junkies".

Interestingly this hate-spewing Labour MP didn't actually attempt to disprove a single assertion I've ever made in any of my articles. Instead of engaging in even a shred of good faith political analysis to criticise my work, or the work of other independent media sites, they chose to sling insults and abuse at all us from behind a wall of anonymity.

This cowardly anonymous insult-slinging is problematic for the Labour Party because we now know for sure that there's a hate-filled and quite frankly delusional Labour Party politician out there who detests and insults you for reading this, but because they're too much of a coward to put a name to their insults we don't know who they are - it could be any one of dozens of anti-Corbyn MPs.

What this abusive coward has done is to give us yet another reason to not vote for Labour.

The worst thing is that when their divisive coup-plotting and outrageous insult-lobbing hands the election to Theresa May, they'll be far too self-righteous and delusional to accept that their wrecking behaviour had anything to do with it.

They will try to pin all the blame on Jeremy Corbyn and political "junkies" like you, and it's highly likely that the mainstream media will try to spin the same narrative (that their proven anti-Corbyn bias had nothing to do with the result, and people should turn their backs on Jeremy Corbyn and independent media).


In my view this cowardly Labour politician should come out and admit who they are so that we can see which one of them is insistent on abusing and insulting literally millions of potential Labour voters right in the middle of a bloody election campaign!

Has there ever been a political party with politicians who are intent on actively working to ensure their party loses an election, crudely insulting their potential voters during an election campaign, and deliberately driving people away from their party in order to maintain its ideological purity?

With abusive and quite frankly delusional politicians like this in the Labour fold Jeremy Corbyn will be an absolute miracle worker to steer the Labour Party away from a slump into the 5% fringe party range like other once mighty socialist parties like PASOK in Greece and the Dutch Labour Party.


 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.




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Sunday, 9 April 2017

A letter to ostentatious unfollowers


Dear ostentatious unfollower,

I know from my Facebook statistics that on average several dozen people unfollow my Facebook page per day. With almost 300,000 followers this kind of churn is to be expected. 


The vast majority of people who unfollow my page do so without making a big song and dance about it, but then every so often there's one like you who feels the need to ostentatiously announce that you're unfollowing my page with a temper tantrum and a hail of insults.

I know what motivates you to flounce off like this, but I haven't got a clue what you think this kind of "I'm flouncing off now" announcement is actually going to achieve.

Your motivation for stropping off however is beyond obvious. You're the kind of person who is so insecure that you can't tolerate things that challenge your pre-existing biases.


Presumably you began following my page because you mistakenly believed it was the kind of page that would massage your ego by confirming your pre-existing opinions, but now I've posted something that you don't agree with. Rather than just think something like "I didn't agree with that one, I hope he returns to writing content I agree with soon" you feel the need to not only remove my page from your social media feed, but also publicly announce that you're running away too.

The problem is that you want your social media feed to be a pure echo chamber that never challenges your opinions. You want to like in a closed ideological bubble because you hate the feeling of cognitive dissonance, and rather than deal with it like an adult (by thinking about the seemingly contradictory ideas to either disprove one of them, or to find a way of reconciling them) you're running away like a coward.

The thing that baffles me about people like you is not that you're running away. I don't expect anyone to agree with everything I write and nobody is obligated to follow my page. The thing I can't figure out is what you think you are achieving by having such a tantrum about it instead of just quietly leaving like the vast majority of unfollowers do.

What's the actual purpose?


If you think that flouncing off in a tide of insults is going to make me change my opinions and offer content that is more suited to your worldview, you couldn't be more wrong. I have the editorial freedom to write what I want, when I want. I don't tailor my content to suck up to any particular group of people, and especially not people who have just flounced off from my page and slung a load of insults at me in the process.


If you think anyone else cares that you're announcing your intention to create yourself a pure social media echo chamber where you never see anything that challenges your worldview, you're also wrong. You're just making a fool of yourself in public by having a public tantrum about an action (unfollowing a social media page) that almost everyone else is capable of doing on a regular basis without feeling the need to make such a pathetic spectacle of themselves in the process.

My best guess is that you think that flouncing off in a hail of insults and abuse is an inspirational thing to do. You're imagining yourself as some kind of glorious revolutionary hero who is taking a brave stand against the tyranny of facts, information and analysis that you don't like aren't you?

You're imagining that by publicly announcing that you're unfollowing my page, you're going to inspire hundreds, or thousands, or tens of thousands of others to follow your lead.

You're imagining that by publicly announcing that you're stropping off you're somehow punishing me for daring to present facts or analyses that you don't like by inspiring loads of other people to follow your inspirational lead by quitting my page too.

The problem for you is that you're doing nothing of the sort. For every one person who does a public flounce like you, hundreds of others begin following my page.

You're not hurting me, and even if you do inspire a few others to flounce off too, you're actually doing me a favour. My page doesn't exist just to massage people's egos by confirming their pre-existing opinions. If people are such fragile little buttercups that they can't tolerate opinions that don't match their own, they're no use to me (or to themselves for that matter). They're bound to eventually run away from something I say, so by inspiring them to leave early you're doing me a favour.

In conclusion I'm glad you've gone. I don't actually want to be part of your social media echo chamber. I don't exist just to confirm your pre-existing biases. In fact it makes me feel a bit sick that I ever was part of your pathetic little ideological bubble in the first place.

There never really was any point in you following my page at all if you're not open to new facts and ideas, if you're incapable of critical thinking, and if you're afraid of considering opinions that don't match your own. 


You were never going to learn anything new from it anyway, so there never really was no point in you following it.

So good luck purifying your social media echo chamber. I hope you one day achieve your ambition of never being confronted by facts and opinions that don't match your own so that you can live in a gloriously pure ideological bubble.

Goodbye (and please stick to your word and actually leave instead of coming back again and again to try to have the last word like so many of your flouncy predecessors have)

Tom (Another Angry Voice)


 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.




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