# Is the SDMB an echo chamber? **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [November 9, 2016, 1:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-sdmb-an-echo-chamber/771190 "2016-11-09T13:40:24Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![CarnalK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnalk/32/486_2.png) [@CarnalK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CarnalK)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2016, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-sdmb-an-echo-chamber/771190/81 "2016-11-09T23:43:52Z")
> [@Quartz](#): > > It was a correct summation of the Wiki page at the time. Oh bull fucking shit. She was a lawyer, Senator, and Secretary of State. Also, she’s got a pile of money and a cadre of incredibly loyal soldiers. “Failure” isn’t remotely an honest summary. ---
**Author:** ![sleestak](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/919ad9/32.png) [@sleestak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sleestak)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2016, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-sdmb-an-echo-chamber/771190/82 "2016-11-09T23:51:42Z")
> [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](#): > > Please, by all means, tell me - whose expert opinion should we have weighted heavier? Who got it right, and why should we have listened to them? I made no predictions for the election. I thought that Trump would do much better than the polls indicated. Didn’t think he’d win, but thought it would be much tighter than predicted. I am not terribly surprised Trump won, a bit but not much. Note, you dismiss the polls _that actually got the election right_ as: > [@](#): > > unrepresentative outliers that use a very different methodology. Yet those polls were right. Why did you not accept them as valid? I suspect that the methodology and sample had nothing to do with it. You ceded your judgement to ‘experts’ that agreed with what you wanted because that is what most 'Dopers do. However, experts are often wrong yet that is rarely acknowledged. > [@](#): > > The polls were also largely accurate in the past few elections, to the point where it would have been unreasonable to jettison them completely. After the fact, sure, they were wrong. But there wasn’t good reason to believe that beforehand. Or was there? Please, by all means, let’s hear it. But don’t act like we were all pretending Trump was bound to lose because we thought people were smarter. We thought Trump was bound to lose because that is what _every indication offered us at the time_. Yet, from the very start, this election wasn’t anything at all like the last elections. Trump came out of nowhere, killed the Republicans in the primaries. That wasn’t predicted. That should have been a giant sign that things weren’t the same this time around which is a good reason to question the polling methodologies based on previous elections. > [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](#): > > You’d make your case better if it weren’t for how obvious and pathetic these strawman arguments were. They aren’t straw man arguments. These are thing people on the SDMB _actually_ post. Here is an example: > [@](#): > > How come conservatives are against abortion?Because they hate women, and wish to oppress and torment them. Forbidding abortion is just a useful club for them to beat on women with. Sez Der Trihs Not to be outdone, Jonathan Chance chimes in with: > [@](#): > > Because they hate women, and wish to oppress and torment them. Forbidding abortion is just a useful club for them to beat on women with. [Link](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=723009). Note, I am agnostic on abortion, it isn’t a big issue as far as I am concerned and have no desire to change any laws. Yet the point I was making is that for certain subjects on the SDMB, if you disagree it is because you have some major personality flaw. And those who disagree get called all sorts of nasty things. This lasts for a bit, then the dissenters leave. The end result is an echo chamber where everyone agrees with everyone else and talks about how smart they are because they all agree. Slee ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2016, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-sdmb-an-echo-chamber/771190/83 "2016-11-10T14:57:06Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > Let’s observe the lack of a right-wing voice on this board by noting the complete lack of right-wing threads: > “Great things about a Trump presidency.” > “Trump is not a bad person, make an effort to like him.” > “Just how bad a Politician is Hillary?” > " Rank how likely the liberal freak out item for a Trump presidency is… " > “I actually feel bad for Hillary” > And that’s just some of the front of the Elections Forum. How many of those are liberal post-mortem threads vs right-wing gloating? All the ones I read were either ways to roll the turd in glitter by liberals/moderates or ways to try and dissect the corpse to see what went wrong. I still have yet to see a serious conservative celebratory thread on here so far. ---
**Author:** ![Spice\_Weasel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spice_weasel/32/5435_2.png) [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2016, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-sdmb-an-echo-chamber/771190/84 "2016-11-10T15:33:55Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > I would very much like to dip this post in bronze and preserve it like baby shoes. > > Thanks for the kind words. FWIW, I just threw you a bone in the Pit too. It’s actually attitudes toward people like you that make me feel this place is an echo chamber. There are some Grade-A conservative assholes on this board, but you ain’t one of 'em. That said, it’s not like all liberals on this board treat conservatives that way, the issue is just that a handful of them are so rude their 2 cents stand out more than anyone else being civil. The same things happens with the sexists, and the racists. I have a problem with sexism on this board and sometimes it does feel ‘pervasive’ – but if I sat down and thought about it, I could probably narrow the brunt of my frustration down to about ten posters. ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2016, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-sdmb-an-echo-chamber/771190/85 "2016-11-10T15:36:13Z")
The bubble chamber many liberals live in is a feature not a bug. As a younger person I had a friend who use to play basketball with the teenagers in his neighborhood. He won most of the games he played and became convinced he was good. He then played in a league that had good players and was one of the worst players. That is the same thing with liberals, they only encounter conservative arguments as strawmen on the Daily Show and so they think they have the best arguments. Then they come into this forum or one like it and encounter real conservatives and are exposed as having poor arguments. Since the media is so liberal conservatives encounter actual liberal arguments all the time and so are prepared to refute them. To me that is one of the reason the SDMB is so great, I don’t think of conservatives as being outnumbered, I think of it as a target rich environment. ---
**Author:** ![TBG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c89c15/32.png) [@TBG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TBG)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2016, 4:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-sdmb-an-echo-chamber/771190/86 "2016-11-10T16:09:57Z")
> [@](#): > > Originally Posted by billfish678 View Post > Stuff like this is almost why I hope Trump wins… > [@](#): > > Originally posted by Colibri > > Moderator Warning > > On reading through this again, this is blatant trolling. This is an official warning. Do not troll in ATMB (or anywhere else on the board). > > Colibro That’s “blatant trolling” worthy of an official warning for daring to post such a thing in ATMB but in a thread started to question that judgement… > [@So being a Republican on this board is now "trolling"?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-being-a-republican-on-this-board-is-now-trolling/768250/24): > > They let Republicans register here now? I thought the ban filter had the Republican box checked? The next thing you know they’ll let moon landing deniers loose in GD. comparing republicans to moon landing deniers, isn’t even worthy of a comment that it’s not the appropriate forum. I do think most of the mods usually try to be fair, but sometimes they absolutely do fail at it, and when they do, it’s almost always on one particular side of the “chamber”. ---
**Author:** ![raspberry\_hunter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b19c9b/32.png) [@raspberry\_hunter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/raspberry_hunter)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2016, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-sdmb-an-echo-chamber/771190/87 "2016-11-10T16:50:08Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > I would very much like to dip this post in bronze and preserve it like baby shoes. > > Thanks for the kind words. You are very welcome. Thank you for all your posts over the years. > [@Spice\_Weasel](#): > > That said, it’s not like all liberals on this board treat conservatives that way, the issue is just that a handful of them are so rude their 2 cents stand out more than anyone else being civil. The same things happens with the sexists, and the racists. I have a problem with sexism on this board and sometimes it does feel ‘pervasive’ – but if I sat down and thought about it, I could probably narrow the brunt of my frustration down to about ten posters. **Spice Weasel** , you have a good point here, and thank you for making it. I do think though that even when it may just be a handful of people being overtly rude, it gives rise to a certain culture where dismissing those kinds of comments/people (that is, conservative ones) is thought of as acceptable, if that makes any sense? (I think this about sexism on this board, too, now that you bring it up, although there are also many more women on this board who will push back on the most overtly sexist statements than there are conservatives.) ---
**Author:** ![drewder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/57b2e6/32.png) [@drewder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drewder)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2016, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-sdmb-an-echo-chamber/771190/88 "2016-11-10T17:05:37Z")
> [@CarnalK](#): > > Oh bull fucking shit. She was a lawyer, Senator, and Secretary of State. Also, she’s got a pile of money and a cadre of incredibly loyal soldiers. “Failure” isn’t remotely an honest summary. Sure it is. She’s had so much gifted to her and she sucked at each of them. She was a lawyer who wanted to deny Nixon the right to legal representation. She was a senator who voted for the Iraq War and very little else. Her number one accomplishment as secretary of state was getting a lot of frequent flyer miles, which as has been pointed out is an activity, not an accomplishment. She also failed to get a status of forces agreement in Iraq, leading to American pullout and in large part allowed ISIS to form in Iraq. I and a large chunk of the American people think she got that “pile of money” largely through corrupt methods. The mob also has “a cadre of incredibly loyal soldiers” it is hardly a sign of success in and of itself. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2016, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-sdmb-an-echo-chamber/771190/89 "2016-11-10T17:28:00Z")
> [@drewder](#): > > Sure it is. She’s had so much gifted to her and she sucked at each of them. She was a lawyer who wanted to deny Nixon the right to legal representation. She was a senator who voted for the Iraq War and very little else. > > Her number one accomplishment as secretary of state was getting a lot of frequent flyer miles, which as has been pointed out is an activity, not an accomplishment. She also failed to get a status of forces agreement in Iraq, leading to American pullout and in large part allowed ISIS to form in Iraq. > > I and a large chunk of the American people think she got that “pile of money” largely through corrupt methods. The mob also has “a cadre of incredibly loyal soldiers” it is hardly a sign of success in and of itself. Exactly! The Left is prone to hyperbole and exaggeration, but not so the Right! Every word there is the unembellished truth, and you can look it up if you don’t believe me!! Frequent flier miles, that’s all she did. And Iraq War. Or maybe… and I know this is crazy talk, but bear with me… maybe she had a couple of other minor successes? Nothing dramatic, but something? ---
**Author:** ![DigitalC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ebca7d/32.png) [@DigitalC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DigitalC)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2016, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-sdmb-an-echo-chamber/771190/90 "2016-11-10T17:31:44Z")
Even most Republican strategists were shocked by the result. Whether the SDMB is an echo chamber or not has nothing to do with being surprised by an absolutely shocking result that almost no one expected. ---
**Author:** ![CarnalK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnalk/32/486_2.png) [@CarnalK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CarnalK)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2016, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-sdmb-an-echo-chamber/771190/91 "2016-11-10T17:53:33Z")
> [@drewder](#): > > Sure it is. She’s had so much gifted to her and she sucked at each of them. She was a lawyer who wanted to deny Nixon the right to legal representation. She was a senator who voted for the Iraq War and very little else. I don’t understand how you can not realize how ridiculous you sound. You don’t get “gifted” a Senate seat or the Sec State job unless you’ve put yourself into a certain level of influence. I am not trying to get you to like her but it’s irrational to say a two time Senator, former Secretary of State and millionaire is a failure. She didn’t inherit any of that stuff by simply being born. ---
**Author:** ![octopus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/octopus/32/3716_2.png) [@octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/octopus)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2016, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-sdmb-an-echo-chamber/771190/92 "2016-11-10T17:56:57Z")
> [@snowthx](#): > > As many of us are surprised by the election result, it got me thinking “why” we are so surprised. Sure, the pollsters got it wrong, and the media certainly made it seem like it was closer than it ended-up being. Sure, some here suggested the unthinkable, but in the end we were collectively wrong - we missed something in all the logic and data and citations. > > What about our beloved SDMB? Have we chased-off all the dissenting voices such that we have a pure echo chamber here? Mostly yes. ---
**Author:** ![octopus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/octopus/32/3716_2.png) [@octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/octopus)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2016, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-sdmb-an-echo-chamber/771190/93 "2016-11-10T17:58:58Z")
> [@ZonexandScout](#): > > Yes, it is. > > And while I voted Dem Party all the way, I must admit that I have never seen comments on any conservative message board that reached the vitriolic level of the personal attacks on a candidate that have appeared on the SDMB. > > The remedy for bad speech is good speech, not ad hominem attack. > > Group think is a dangerous thing. It becomes even more dangerous as participants become more convinced that their opinions are absolutely correct. Uh-oh you failed a purity test! ---
**Author:** ![octopus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/octopus/32/3716_2.png) [@octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/octopus)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2016, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-sdmb-an-echo-chamber/771190/94 "2016-11-10T18:10:03Z")
> [@Duke\_of\_Rat](#): > > I once had the audacity to question Hillary’s health and was set upon as a Trump supporter, even though I had expressed several times how incredibly stupid he is and that I would never cast a vote in his favor. > > And you’ve never seen the [Republican party referred to as “Repug”?](https://www.google.com/#q=repugs+straight+dope+site:boards.straightdope.com) And that’s another real problem on this board. Jumping to unjustified conclusions and then attacking someone over them. It’s a pretty shady tactic actually. ---
**Author:** ![octopus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/octopus/32/3716_2.png) [@octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/octopus)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2016, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-sdmb-an-echo-chamber/771190/95 "2016-11-10T18:19:37Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Look at the sudden gravitas secession has on this MB (there’s a whole thread on it in this forum), but when it was TX wanting to secede they were laughed at as ignoramuses or even branded as traitors. Oh, the famous liberal hypocrisy? And the motivations and language used to justify it are hypocritical as well. ---
**Author:** ![joyfool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/df788c/32.png) [@joyfool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/joyfool)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2016, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-sdmb-an-echo-chamber/771190/96 "2016-11-10T19:29:07Z")
> [@Spice\_Weasel](#): > > That said, it’s not like all liberals on this board treat conservatives that way, the issue is just that a handful of them are so rude their 2 cents stand out more than anyone else being civil. The same things happens with the sexists, and the racists. I have a problem with sexism on this board and sometimes it does feel ‘pervasive’ – but if I sat down and thought about it, I could probably narrow the brunt of my frustration down to about ten posters. I 100% totally co-sign this. You are so very, very right. And although I do think the SDMB has its share of blinders on to a ridiculous agree, I think it’s the sound and fury brought about by a smaller subset that causes most of the larger problems. Well said. > [@puddleglum](#): > > The bubble chamber many liberals live in is a feature not a bug. > As a younger person I had a friend who use to play basketball with the teenagers in his neighborhood. He won most of the games he played and became convinced he was good. He then played in a league that had good players and was one of the worst players. > That is the same thing with liberals, they only encounter conservative arguments as strawmen on the Daily Show and so they think they have the best arguments. Then they come into this forum or one like it and encounter real conservatives and are exposed as having poor arguments. Since the media is so liberal conservatives encounter actual liberal arguments all the time and so are prepared to refute them. To me that is one of the reason the SDMB is so great, I don’t think of conservatives as being outnumbered, I think of it as a target rich environment. Sadly, I think this is true all over. Going by my Facebook and everyone I know who watched Fox News exclusively, echo chambers are the norm these days. We, as a people, have a tendency to fall into only wanting to hear what we like and the ‘other side’ and their views are the enemy. It’s endemic. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2016, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-sdmb-an-echo-chamber/771190/97 "2016-11-10T19:35:56Z")
> [@snowthx](#): > > As many of us are surprised by the election result, it got me thinking “why” we are so surprised. Sure, the pollsters got it wrong, and the media certainly made it seem like it was closer than it ended-up being. Sure, some here suggested the unthinkable, but in the end we were collectively wrong - we missed something in all the logic and data and citations. > > What about our beloved SDMB? Have we chased-off all the dissenting voices such that we have a pure echo chamber here? Yes. When the folks on this board think I am a conservative, its no longer close to being a balanced board. But that’s not why we got it wrong. We got it wrong because all the polls got it wrong. ---
**Author:** ![scabpicker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scabpicker/32/8268_2.png) [@scabpicker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scabpicker)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2016, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-sdmb-an-echo-chamber/771190/98 "2016-11-10T19:36:43Z")
To anyone who thinks that following the conventional wisdom on poll aggregation is evidence of the SDMB being an echo chamber: Nate Silver, who still seems to have the shine his name implies, points out that the result was [within the margin of error.](http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-a-difference-2-percentage-points-makes/) And I’ll be on record to be able to shoot at Californians for unilaterally seceding much more easily than I’d shoot Texans. I have relatives there, but they’re not my neighbors, and I’d shoot at my neighbors over such business. I don’t have anything more eloquent to say about the SDMB than: it’s more of a boxing match than an echo chamber. I’ve taken the minority view on the board more than once. Sometimes I have the stamina to go 20 pages for the cause, and sometimes I don’t. Occasionally, someone drops in at page 35 or so with a cite that transforms the discussion from a matter of interpreting disparate facts and opinion as the truth to trying to mold their (or your) previous version of the truth to the new facts that are now obviously central to the discussion. I view myself as a moderate (as don’t we all). It generally seems that my side gets its ass kicked around here in feats of logic (which the pit need not apply for) as often as it isn’t. The fact that it’s a boxing match (with formal rules subject to interpretation) instead of a free-for-all is probably what keeps it tolerable for the conservatives that stick around. ---
**Author:** ![Monocracy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monocracy/32/4493_2.png) [@Monocracy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monocracy)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2016, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-sdmb-an-echo-chamber/771190/99 "2016-11-10T19:57:09Z")
The betting markets had Clinton favored the day before the election. PredictIt, which takes American bets, was 80/20. Most people thought Clinton was going to win. And it’s not like Clinton got trounced by Trump, as the narrative after the election seems to suggest. More people voted for Hillary, she just didn’t win the electoral math. ---
**Author:** ![Jack\_Batty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jack_batty/32/3201_2.png) [@Jack\_Batty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jack_Batty)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2016, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-sdmb-an-echo-chamber/771190/100 "2016-11-10T20:06:18Z")
She didn’t get trounced; she got Gored. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-sdmb-an-echo-chamber/771190.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-sdmb-an-echo-chamber/771190.md?page=6)