I don’t agree that that’s an “of course.” There should be discussion of specific local races in a general politics community. Like I said, presidential votes only matter in a handful of states. If you add up the populations of swing states, I’m sure it’s higher than any individual state, but there are still some pretty big states where millions of people live that that aren’t included in that. And yeah, everyone is affected by the presidential race, but everyone is affected by congressional races too. If you want to say, let’s say 90% of the content should be on the race that’s relevant to people living in Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin, and maybe North Carolina that’s fine, but if the rest of us have to see their content all the time, then they shouldn’t mind if they have to see like 10% of the content relevant to the people who live in some of the other 44 states.
And to be clear, this isn’t something I’m saying about Lemmy in particular. Go anywhere in America, from the deepest red state to the deepest blue state, and ask about the latest story-of-the-week about the presidential race, and people will know about it and have an opinion on it and care about it. Ask them about local races, and they’ll be far less knowledgeable far less invested, and will probably try to fit it into a framework based on the one race they actually care about, even if they can’t affect it in any way.
There would be so much more potential to cut through battle lines if people would go like, “OK, fine, you don’t like either candidate, you don’t have to vote for them. But do you mind if I ask what state you live in? Maybe there’s someone running for congress or governor who’s more to your tastes. I’d be happy to look into who’s running and discuss them with you.”
But nobody wants that shit. We want the battle lines, we want the group identity, the team sports. We don’t want to do research about boring shit nobody cares about, we want a constant stream of engaging news stories and hot takes that we can all experience together, as a culture.
I don’t agree that that’s an “of course.” There should be discussion of specific local races in a general politics community. Like I said, presidential votes only matter in a handful of states. If you add up the populations of swing states, I’m sure it’s higher than any individual state, but there are still some pretty big states where millions of people live that that aren’t included in that. And yeah, everyone is affected by the presidential race, but everyone is affected by congressional races too. If you want to say, let’s say 90% of the content should be on the race that’s relevant to people living in Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin, and maybe North Carolina that’s fine, but if the rest of us have to see their content all the time, then they shouldn’t mind if they have to see like 10% of the content relevant to the people who live in some of the other 44 states.
And to be clear, this isn’t something I’m saying about Lemmy in particular. Go anywhere in America, from the deepest red state to the deepest blue state, and ask about the latest story-of-the-week about the presidential race, and people will know about it and have an opinion on it and care about it. Ask them about local races, and they’ll be far less knowledgeable far less invested, and will probably try to fit it into a framework based on the one race they actually care about, even if they can’t affect it in any way.
There would be so much more potential to cut through battle lines if people would go like, “OK, fine, you don’t like either candidate, you don’t have to vote for them. But do you mind if I ask what state you live in? Maybe there’s someone running for congress or governor who’s more to your tastes. I’d be happy to look into who’s running and discuss them with you.”
But nobody wants that shit. We want the battle lines, we want the group identity, the team sports. We don’t want to do research about boring shit nobody cares about, we want a constant stream of engaging news stories and hot takes that we can all experience together, as a culture.