re: This board and leaning "conservative"

This board has leaned heavily conservative since I first joined years ago. In fact, a good number of conservatives have acknowledged that as fact.

the Trump mania among the right has made it weird, frankly. It's almost idolatry.

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obamabots

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There aren't even a handful of people who actually liked Obama on the Political Board. So:

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Trumpkins trolling the obamabots.

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That's pretty much what it is

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just isn't really true, and I've seen this in multiple occurrences in my Southern Baptist church on a weekly basis, it really is a majority of:

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almost idolatry

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A group of people at my church, while at church on a Sunday morning ended up having a Trump pep rally... instead of singing during worship. It's very much borderline idolatry to some.

The main reason I'm here is to try to learn about the issues. I spent most of my life not caring, but in the past couple of years I've kind of woke up.

I lean right, but realize the importance of respectfully listening to all sides of an issue.
There are posters here who are knowledgeable that I respect.
There are trolls on both sides. I groan everytime I see a new topic introduced whose sole purpose is to illicit a "melt", or start back and forth insults and putdowns.

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Trumpkins trolling the obamabots. That's pretty much what it is

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The support for Obama didn't approach the crazy moonbeam level of Trump support.

Some posters on this board may think differently, but they can't viewthings realistically.

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The day almost all threads that are explicitly partisan get equal up and down votes is the day I think you can say this board is breaking even

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I certainly don't think it's even

My general point is first that there is more diversity on this board that is given credit for.

Second that I've been on quite a few political board on the internet and almost all of them are far more one-sided.

Conservative and liberal. I can't think of a single other board I've bumped into that has more opposition then this one

Of course it could be better but I've been out on the internet political Wasteland.

Imagine the most moderate person on this board and I'll argue that that person probably couldn't survive 99% of the other boards without being banned one way or the other

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I certainly don't think it's even

My general point is first that there is more diversity on this board that is given credit for.

Second that I've been on quite a few political board on the internet and almost all of them are far more one-sided.

Conservative and liberal. I can't think of a single other board I've bumped into that has more opposition then this one

Of course it could be better but I've been out on the internet political Wasteland.

Imagine the most moderate person on this board and I'll argue that that person probably couldn't survive 99% of the other boards without being banned one way or the other

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I certainly don’t quite see the diversity you do.

This is a pretty far right board populated almost exclusively by older white males with a small minority of high post white male moderates and an even smaller batch of left leaning posters or female/minority posters.

With an occasional influx of low post visitors or topic specific posters that show up occasionally.

There is a whole littany of discussion topics that aren’t even worth having here because the viewpoint demographics are so incredibly skewed to one viewpoint and it’s impossible to not get overwhelmed having that discussion. For instance try making a thread in defense of players kneeling or gun control. One poster tried with kneeling and he was dog piled and his thread anchored to the second page to die. You could find a ton of people that follow Hannity, Bannon, and Rush. I doubt a single person(myself included) listens to Chapo Trap House or even is familiar with it. There is entire viewpoints that have pretty much no representation here. Frankly I think it is so overwhelming to one side that I think people like yourself see cracks of moderate and left of center posters as evidence of some emerging centrality, when it’s more just evidence of just how overwhelmingly right-leaning this place had been.

I think the thing is, message boards in general are more often than not eventually going to become echo chambers. As an example I would say 5-7 years ago or so Saints Report was very evenly distributed(if not slightly right-leaning) while TD has leaned strongly in one direction but was a bit more moderate and libertarian. Today TD is heavily right of center toward the Trump wing, I’d say 85% of the board. Saints Report has become overwhelmingly centrist and slightly left leaning. I don’t really think PT dropping from maybe 90-95% to 75-85% depending on the day is all that indicative of centrality.

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Why would they try to "engage"?

Anytime anyone posts something that is not lined up perfectly right behind Trump (and/or conservatism in general), even if the post includes a link with some factual basis, 99% per cent of the time the poster is going to get replies that:

1- call him a dumb arse (or worse)

2- say that the link is a lie posted by a Soros bot

3- say that the poster is a libtard or communist/socialist who hates America and should be rounded up and put in a camp

4- immediately jumps into a whatabout discussion of how Obama did something worse which (for some reason) the poster believe automatically justifies a position against the OP, even if he doesn't even address any of the facts in the OP

5- tell the poster that liberalism is a disease

This was just a quick sample off the top of my head of what I have observed. I didn't do any research. I'm sure there a lot of other tried and true non-responses that I missed.

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I think this is also a relevent point.

Most of the time any viewpoint diversity is impossible to express without warding off at least one troll, partisan attack dog, or disingenuous derailing tactic like whataboutisms or personal attacks. We have at least one weekly thread of posters that basically organize around attacking their most hated handful of wrong-thinkers or worse follow them around to troll and harass. And anytime too many perceived lefties show up there are at least a handful of wagon circling threads to try and rally the troops and mobilize against them.

It makes attempting most conversations pretty pointless. I can honestly count on one hand the amount of times I havent had an attempt at a in-depth conversation go the route you outlined.

I mean it is what it is, but it’s also why the lefties and centrists that stick around tend to just stick to trolling, one liners, counter-shitposts, and surface level comments. Because everything else seems pointless most the time.

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This board is overwhelmingly conservative.

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AND overwhelmingly correct.