this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2025
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It's also in large part the media. They focused on that shit
Right and we are social media. The left are supposedly a much bigger population. Just by city alone. Did you see how many people drive across the country to stand in streets?
So what is stopping is from surpassing the media and online presence to overwhelm it with a message like they do when Biden blinks weird?
What the fuck are they doing that we can't figure out.
Why does it seem like nobody else is pissed off at the left for not being able to do what they do?
Is the strategy at this point to wait until the public gets tired of watching the left get their shit kicked in by bullies?
I've opened Lemmy today to see if anyone is posting Marc Maron because I fucking know they're not. I'm here to verify why we can't engage the public. We're lazy. All these people posting how they'll punch a Nazi. But there's a lot of other places they can intervene before then. But so many on the left are just talk like that while the right are actually about action. It's maddening.
Easy to influence the news if you own them.
Yea since journalists are notoriously right wing and everyone listens to traditional news.
I just am so tired of the ideas when it makes no sense in a modern digital age. They might have funding and marketing but supposedly we have numbers. At one point we had a large presence online. We fucking handed it over while whispering 'I'll punch a Nazi if I need to' but we gave Nazis access to every corner of social media.
There's no anger on the left directed at the left for failing. There's no anger after one of the biggest fucking failures it has ever seen. Everyone assumes they did good and the reason the right is winning is because X,Y,Z. The left have lost everything because of inherent traits among the left. Without ownership and awareness, there's so much more to lose.
Just look at Washington. What do you think would happen if Biden did the same in Texas?
Here's the weird thing. Journalist's tend to lean left, but the people that sit in front of a camera and spout "news" for almost every major media organization? They don't lean left, they lean money and/or influence. If they lean too left they end up unemployed, or at least drop several rungs. People like Medhi Hasan that won't tow the line lose their shows.
What's left is constant criticism of every Democrat that farts in a restroom and uncertainty about whether or not full blown authoritarianism and fascism is really a big deal. Everything seems fine from their desks.
Traditional media hasn't been relevant in a while. Everybody gets their news from social media. A space that the left abandoned and refuses to use.
So when I look around at all the leftist angry about the Republicans winning I get angry. I get angry at all these leftist so loud about punching a Nazi but can't bother to do some basic maintenance. As if they're going to muster up the energy to punch anything when they didn't have the energy to do the most basic form of engagement from the comfort of their own bedroom
Agree to disagree. I think It's generational. Every boomer I know, even the liberals, absolutely watches the news on their TV. The more right wing people usually listen to talk radio. Traditional media is less relevant among the younger generations but the younger generations still lean left.
Wait wait wait. Are you saying that average people dropped the ball on using social media to spread leftist values?
I'm not active outside this place and you couldn't get me to touch Facebook. Their algorithms, representing their interests, are what fucked social media. I deleted my account a while ago because Meta isn't getting my engagement or my ad revenue.
It sounds like you want us to fund fascist enablers and engage right wing rabbit holes in order to reach a minority of younger right wingers that have been sectioned off into their own echo chambers. Yeah, not fucking happening. That's some energy vampire shit and abso-fucking-lutely not "the most basic form of engagement".
The left’s retreating from social media is one of the biggest self owns. This retreat is one of the largest contributors to why the right is winning. Every time progressives “take the high road” by disengaging, they hand votes and power the right.
Joe Rogan isn’t massive just because he’s Joe Rogan he’s massive because the right knew how to turn manipulate the left into attacking him and turn that into a recruitment drive. Outrage didn’t end his reach it supercharged it.
Compare that to Brendan Schaub or Opie & Anthony on Reddit: they were turned into lolcows, and no amount of right-wing backup could save them. That’s what should’ve happened with Rogan.
Instead, the retreat handed Trump a propaganda channel, which paved the way for others like Theo and Tony to push right-wing framing on COVID, vaccines, and more. Acting like we’re “too virtuous” to engage isn’t a moral victory it’s a fucking disaster. We need to own it otherwise it'll keep occurring.
This isn’t an isolated case it’s the same playbook, over and over. For years, bot accounts pushed “don’t wrestle with pigs” to convince the left to stop engaging, and people fell for it.
It’s like watching someone play Risk by giving up every territory except one, then wondering why they’re losing but hey, at least they still have the moral high ground, right?
You aren't addressing my points, you are repeating your own points.
You're talking about "alternative media" and not social media.
Who is it that you are blaming? The leftist population, democratic leadership, left leaning influencers?
Are you expecting people to dig into the right wing rabbit hole of social media just to combat it's effectiveness? What are you actually suggesting?
I agree that some folks like Rogan & Theo should have representatives from the left engaging with them. Unfortunately, there aren't many public faces on the left. I also can't pretend to know who those guys are willing to even have on. They had some Democrats, Bernie and I think Pete (corporate Democrat but at least willing to consider some leftist policies), maybe others - I don't watch their shows.
Can you differentiate "attacking him" and turning him into a "lolcow"?
Joe Rogan is massive because he's a well known MMA personality with comic friends that is fantastic at chilling will famous people and shooting the shit without any actual deep thought. He's leaned right because, again, it's where the money is.
Please respond to my previous points, and consider these things:
What would engaging look like?
Again, what does not disengaging look like?
You said yourself 'there aren't many voices on the left' and what pisses me off is that it is as if you stop short there.
Why are there no voices on the left?
Why are there more voices on the right?
This lack of reflection is what bothers me so much because my opinion is when we reflect we all have no choice but to be fucking pissed off at the answer. The answer is the people who identify as leftist are fucking useless. It's all hot air. It's all platitudes and performance.
Attacking someone is different. People didn't attack Schaub. The goal wasn't to hurt them directly. The community goal was to have a laugh at the expense of these lolcows. That community grew to the point that it had so much reach and engagement that people were seeing schuabism pop off everywhere. It wasn't about coming online to say "fuck Schaub he's such a piece of shit asshole". Instead it was about laughing at Schaub because people were digging and finding clips and content of him pissing in sinks, cam footage from clubs of him cheating on his wife, going bankrupt.
It's what frustrates me so much about the left in general. They tend to think the attack is all that matters, call em a Nazi and upvote. But reality is that need to change. They need the approach like the o&a community had or fighter and the kid. It's what keeps people watching and when people watch they get more content. That content can be used to grow communities which create engagement and capture. It's what should be done with all this man sphere right wing comedy bullshit. It's crazy to think of all the material there is to make fun of these idiots. And when that happens you hobble their ability to use them because nobody wants you listen to a fucking lolcow no matter what they say.
There are not many voices on the left because we lack engagement. We don't have networks. We don't share information the way the right does. It's about capture. We don't direct our attention towards voices and therefore there's no money in it. If there's no voices there's no chance of winning anything in the near future. The only way to win would be for the right to fuck up. Which isn't a win.
I'll challenge this to you. There's clips of Marc Maron shitting on Rogan. Where do I post that here on Lemmy?
Not having a good place to post something like that is a serious problem.
The right has literal millionaire and billionaires funding it's alternative media. Daily Wire
The right also has foreign actors trying to destabilize the US with more astroturfing.
Other "stars" of right wing alternative media literally made a fortune on TV or talk radio and funded their own alternative media companies, like Alex Jones, Glenn Beck, Tucker Carlson. Literally we'll paid conservative TV personalities transitioning to web-based alternative media.
There are fewer people from the left doing the same and they tend to have smaller audiences that right wing counterparts - that is disappointing. I watch many of them but I have no idea how to fix that audience issue.
The left isn't easily led. Herding cats, as they say. Personally, I suspect there is an aspect of conservatism that caters to authoritarianism. I think right wingers like the simplicity of being told what to think and what to do, as long as it makes them feel good. I don't believe the left is motivated the same way. It makes it hard to propagandize if everyone isn't on the same page.
Seriously? If you can't find a place it's because you aren't looking. Will it become viral or wildly successful? I couldn't tell you.
Money in social media is used to replicate what we do naturally. We do it for free everyday. We also have the ability to make the money they spend exponentially increase. The "money" you're talking about goes to buying views, bots to pollute comment sections, reach and engagement. Every comment section or piece of media that produced costs money. If we drown that out, they have to pay more. We can blow up their costs with minimal effort, but we have to be aware of it. Same way we all were on the same page with "dont wrestle with pigs" a message that weirdly propagated among the left.
That money is used to replicate what we all do for free which is my point. Our attention is money. We all can beat money if we actually sat and thought about it for half a second. Money isn't the reason they're winning. They're winning because what that money buys gives them an advantage.
The left are just as easily led. The problem is they don't have awareness. Something I'm coming to realize is the right might actually have a lot more self awareness. They are in it to win. That's why they don't care about Trump and what he says or does.
Nope. Hard disagree. We're not talking about the same thing and we have way different views about how much time and energy it would take to drown out the efforts of billionaires and foreign states. If we focused our energy on that we'd achieve a drop in the ocean. Hell, I feel like I'm wasting my time arguing with a bot right now and I've achieved jack fuck.
It's not about getting dirty now when it comes to this, it's about effectiveness. You are ignoring my points, moving goal posts, and instigating responses. Good luck with whatever. I'm out.
Crazy how you can argue that a single entity regardless of how much money they have could ever out pace the efforts of a mass of people. But this is why the left isn't winning while they are.
You can't ever convince me that we can mobilize people to step out into the street for every damn issue like the woman's March, George Floyd, anti King protest, Anti ice. That you somehow have reasoned that you can see the streets filled with enough people to do something through that action but you can't ever imagine those people being expected to create content or share or network or just leave 5-10 comments online when they see a shit as right wing take.
The output by any billionaire trying to output views online is no match for a motivated people. But this is the problem. The left have become Luddites while the right seizes every digital space.
Every left wing spaces I'm in now becomes a hateful place towards any new technology or social media.
The potential is there. The apathy is manufactured. People could, but they can't. You have to lift them up a bit before they can.
My opinion is we're passed that point. Most people on the left think they have done everything perfect and the reason the right gained so much is because they're just big and rich. They're not aware how they were manipulated in any way. You can't get through to these people with positive praise. Need to call it like it is. We all fucked up and this decade should be studied as the failure it is and continues to be. It's one for the history books. It'll be something that in 10 years it'll be more obvious to people how they shit the bed.
Whom would people believe if they said that we all fucked up?