crosspost from r/AskSocialScience/: Why did youth-populated internet communities like 4chan (or reddit) switch their politics from being staunchly liberal (until around the Obama administration) to very conservative, often reactionary a few years later?

Then sometime in my mid to late 20s, I realized all those things would be terrible for society.

Sounds like you are living for society now, and you were living for yourself when you used to advocate for radical social change. This is because you define maturity as conformity and have fooled yourself into thinking that this is universal for everyone. This enables you to chastise the users of 4chan for wallowing in their immaturity when it's really healthy to to do that every once in a while. It's healthy to vent. When you vent we can begin to examine what's in the air you've vented away. When you encourage people to not post on 4chan because "it's a nasty place where the immature subversives go. you don't want to be unpopular do you neck-beard?" you cause your own problem.

No, in fact, there are an entire group of people who are following all of the rules, the way they were taught to do it and yet it still isn't good enough for global capital. They are the ones who conform in their daily lives. Stay at homes in their nice perfect cozy environments specifically designed for them to do ostensibly "worthless" things like shitpost online and yet capital at every turn threatens to rip all of their happiness from them. Why? What is it that they have done wrong? What ills have they caused?

Your problem is that they just haven't gotten a job yet. You know once they feel the hard fist of capital in their chest they'll know what it's like to have your self taken from you and used for some fucking machinery to make money for someone else. Then they'll know what "maturity" really means.

I started to understand why "the system" was the way it is. It's not perfect, far, far from it. But it's better than the alternatives by orders of magnitude. Most adults realize this and have grown to understand and accept it.

Accept what? That liberal democracy is perfect? What you are actually describing is the depoliticization caused by the fall of the Soviet Union. This argument is not over. Calling people "immature" for fighting for their livelihoods is plain cruel.

No you grow up.

/r/TheoryOfReddit Thread Parent