Downvotes are, very roughly, an indication that people think you’re lowering the quality of discussion
I disagree. I think that downvotes are an expression of how close a comment lies to the center of acceptable LW discourse as determined by the LW ingroup.
if you’ve picked up a downvote from someone, it’s very likely that you really have made that person less likely to engage with you productively.
But why? Is it because I’m “irrational,” or because I’m a feminist? Either one predicts the same behavior. At this point, I’m almost certainly getting downvoted because I’ve been downvoted before, not because anyone is making objective decisions regarding the discussion quality of my comments.
You might say this is “uncharitable,” but I think that it’s really just humanly realistic. The treatment of politics on LW, namely, “ignore politics,” invariably results in politics that are “unknown knowns” or tacit assumptions being massively preferred, and everything else getting downvoted. Politics isn’t socially taboo like people think, but rather restricted to the typical.
I happen to like arguing about feminism on the Internet—it’s an easy boost of fuzzies, and sometimes I might even learn something, as I consider myself to have done in this thread. But I know that if I do so on LW, it’ll cost me karma, and since I don’t really care about karma, I’m okay with that.
This isn’t about feminism, though—this is just about the shitty culture on LW, so I plan on cutting off this exchange here.
I disagree. I think that downvotes are an expression of how close a comment lies to the center of acceptable LW discourse as determined by the LW ingroup.
But why? Is it because I’m “irrational,” or because I’m a feminist? Either one predicts the same behavior. At this point, I’m almost certainly getting downvoted because I’ve been downvoted before, not because anyone is making objective decisions regarding the discussion quality of my comments.
You might say this is “uncharitable,” but I think that it’s really just humanly realistic. The treatment of politics on LW, namely, “ignore politics,” invariably results in politics that are “unknown knowns” or tacit assumptions being massively preferred, and everything else getting downvoted. Politics isn’t socially taboo like people think, but rather restricted to the typical.
I happen to like arguing about feminism on the Internet—it’s an easy boost of fuzzies, and sometimes I might even learn something, as I consider myself to have done in this thread. But I know that if I do so on LW, it’ll cost me karma, and since I don’t really care about karma, I’m okay with that.
This isn’t about feminism, though—this is just about the shitty culture on LW, so I plan on cutting off this exchange here.