If I were to call every online place that I didn’t fit into, or that didn’t suit me, an echo chamber, there would be a lot of them. Not every place has to be a place for everyone, and this site is usable without ever getting involved in the front page discussions.
Farmboy was actively seeking heat at every possible moment, making the fire bigger and then complaining when he got burned. He used religion to argue things that had nothing to do with religion and he talked down to people he did not know in an environment he was still new to. I remember BMO discussing something with him page by page and he wouldn’t let up at a certain point, he just went on and on. It was 90% about him having difficulty breaking into a tight-knit online community and 10% about his political opinions. He could have started out talking about games in a low-key way, like most people do that are new, and worked his way up to a point where having a controversial opinion would be accepted because people know “he’s all right”. He did not try that or know how to do that. He just jumped into the fire and expected the fire to burn everyone but him.
Yes, this is a left-wing place. Nothing wrong with that. If you want to see what a real echo chamber looks like, I can show you some. Express the slightest left-wing opinion and you will not only be called out, you will be crucified, spat on, followed by death threats and moderators will actively hinder discussion about controversies to come up in the first place. THAT’s an echo chamber.
This is more of a: “Do you really like a song that repeats “city is violent hell, village is heaven” (totally not exactly what some politicians say in their speeches every day) and “don’t take away my gun or my friends will shoot you” (by a guy who was on stage when 60 people were shot in Los Angeles in 2017, the deadliest mass shooting by a gunman in American history), accompanied by a video of a BLM protest shown on a building - a courthouse in Maury County, where a black man was lynched by a white mob and hanged from the courthouse window in 1927? Because I think that might tell me that you are racist”. - kind of place. And I haven’ talked yet about the dogwhistle Sucker punch somebody on a sidewalk, Carjack an old lady at a red light, Pull a gun on the owner of a liquor store, Ya think it’s cool, well, act a fool if ya like
I don’t think it’s fair to call Grouvee an echo chamber for this and lump it in with extremely bad online places. And I especially do not take such an accusation from someone like farmboy, who has just arrived here and has actively sought every opportunity to join or start a heated discussion.
Yes, he didn’t use slurs. He said some of the things he said very nicely. It didn’t mean that what he said was nice. I think this was the wrong place for him for political discussion, he could have engaged in everything else just fine, but he rather decided to make an accusation to the whole site and then leave and frankly I am fine with him being gone.