They argue in bad faith, they are rude and generally unpleasant.
I saw a few brave souls having civil discussions even if they weren’t profitable. You’re better men than I am.
Not that I want to be rude. But when the conversation leaves the realm of ideas and becomes tactics and maneuvering to win points, then I am done.
I really don’t argue in bad faith for starters. I’m sure I am unpleasant to people who think that anyone who disagrees with them is unpleasant. I tend to disagree with many people.
I can’t help what other people do. Yes I laugh at a lot of memes that are at the left’s expense, but I never have and never will call them stupid.
I think I am starting to understand the lefts position so it is not totally bewildering to me, but the left and the right operate in two completely different paradigms. That is why communication is next to impossible.
IDK, you’re welcome to stay. I hope you do.
You as an individual human being maybe don’t. But online, that’s irrelevant. People don’t see you as a human individual, for better or worse, people see you as part of a group/community. And by most people on lemmy, the community on this server is seen as rude and unpleasant.
And not only “the left” places individuals into groups, everyone does that… You do it in this post when you say “They argue in bad faith, they are rude and generally unpleasant.”.
It is possible when people actually try, but in order to reach a point where people want to try to understand the other side, you need a tiny portion of faith that the other side is willing to engage in good faith and make a step towards the other side to signal that they are actually interested in good faith.
One big reason (from the leftist perspective) why many online leftists have completely abandoned any hope to engage in good faith with right wingers is because online right wingers seem to go out of their way to be obnoxious, provocative, unapologetic, uncompromising and disrespectful in every possible way towards “the left” and seem to have the main objective to “trigger the left”. And even when they themselves don’t engage in this way, they tend to protect and defend those actions. At the same time, they also claim that “the left does not want a good faith argument” or “we just want rational debate” or “we just exercising our free speech”.
As a leftie who has tried to engage in good faith with right wingers online in various forums, I have experienced a lot of hypocricy where people will say “this is a free speech zone, all views are welcome”, but after a while, the admin would just have some bullshit excuse to ban me for simply voicing my opinion.
But as I mentioned, there are many reasons, it’s not just all “the right’s fault”. Online people of all sides, instead of arguing and discussing with people they disagree with, tend to just kinda argue with themselves by essentially imagining the position of the opponents and then arguing against them.
The obvious problem with that is that due to the lack of interaction and the obvious bias, the view that one side has of the other does not represent reality or at least differs a lot from the view one side has of itself.