I like that I can socialize (being an online forum is not ideal but not bad) with people who I know are coming from the same ideological starting point as me. Like I don’t need to give mountains of background info on “human nature being irredeemably bad is just a propaganda narrative” I can just dive into the topic at hand. That means you can get right to the meat of the discussion.
It is also been a great place online for me to not feel like I have to be on the defensive at all times, I can make a claim based partially on data and partially my gut feeling and not be torn to shreds, i.e. the critique is in good faith. It can be tiring to only engage in discussions where it feels like you are trying to convince the other person the whole time and they always request you “consider the other side” even when the other side is reactionary, riddled with conflicts of interest, provides no evidence, and is totally without merit🤢
It is a decent source of news but primarily a place for me to learn about how other people who have the same mindset as me but different lived experiences and who have read different things can see the same data that I see. Two heads are better than one.
In particular I really feel like my understanding of how gender and sexuality are tied to oppression has exploded from my time on here.
It’s a breath of fresh air from talking to the libs I’m surrounded with in daily life.
Mentioned off hand that there were a couple of cases of covid at work today (in HK) and my friend replies “All this oppression and still cases.”
If they weren’t otherwise good friends I would burn my bridges with them for how often they take any little excuse to wail on the government (while taking a small fucking fortune in government subsidised salary from one of the best work:pay ratio jobs available to expats here).
Like, the fuck do they want? Less ‘oppression’ and more cases? Or more ‘oppression’ and fewer cases? And who the fuck are you to criticize government handling of the situation like they should trust the population to handle it themselves when you wilfully undermine the system at every opportunity?
I swear to god she calls the CPC ‘fascists’ because she hates communism because they ‘oppressed’ her Nazi grandparents by forcing them to flee their home country after the war. Liberal standards for what is and isn’t ‘oppression’ are so fucking cooked.
But hey. I get to vent here. And that makes it more enjoyable to dwell in this capitalist hellhole that is Xianggang and quietly enjoy watching the capitalists and their liberal lapdogs cope and seethe on the road to 2047.