I can respect that

I blocked Edy months ago but he still logs out & stalks me

Living rent free in his head B-)

Big same, but I started earlier.

Basically, I lost a lot of arguments online for several years.

The more I learned, the farther left I went.

Jefferson was well known as a critic of Christian dogma, and his famous "Jefferson Bible" strips out all references to the supernatural. The guy definitely would not have liked how deeply religious the modern US is.

I can look back at my older ranty posts and feel detached from the person I was those years ago. I'm unmistakably leftist but since I spent an unhealthy amount of time on 4chan I've got a more... colorful vocabulary and more tolerance/patience for poli discourse than most people, so I would be mistaken for a right-leaning apologist or something. I don't go on 4chan much anymore. Sometimes I'll scrape the art boards for reference images, but the hobby boards are beyond salvage.

During the height of GamerGate was when I'd claim to be more politically aware, but back then I was really only concerned about politics in my hobbies. While I don't have animosity directed towards anybody like I did ~6 yrs ago, I still see Anita Sarkeesian, Zoe Quinn, etc as bad faith actors who were just prodding the hornet's nest for easy content. There are genuine issues within the game industry and the gaming community, but what Anita had to say just amounted to a Catholic mother whining that Mortal Kombat is going to turn kids into murders (and I hate that I fell for it. Lmfao).

I think around 2018 was the time when I realized that something's not right. At this point the anti-sjws were getting tilted at any game featuring women or minorities, and the pro-sjws were just milking the shocking revelation that angry internet hermits are angry.

I gained and lost friends over stupid political discussion and it came to a head during Chaz leading up to the Jan 6 riot. One bizarre debate where someone accused me of being a fascist after I spent the thread praising the rise of small communes and wanting to examine where Chaz failed to improve communes moving forward was my breaking point with political discussion. Why waste time trying to explain my point of view when someone's going to interpret what I said as the exact fucking opposite? What I'm saying here is that if you're looking for a debate then you'll have to lick my taint clean first.

Anyways, I spent the next few years just culling my friend group, culling my social media, culling anything that I don't feel improves my experience online. If my political views haven't significantly changed, one thing I know for sure is that I'm way less bitter now.

He can still read your posts, even if you pretend he doesn’t exist.

I think you think to highly of yourself. No on cares about you that much to do that, despite you thinking otherwise. If you don't want me responding back to you then stop saying so many incredibly stupid things in the political section.

idk I'd say I've grown harder and less forgiving overall, while I consider myself a social democrat more or less I've leaned more right/conservative on certain issues, mostly from experience. I'm not American though, here we have more parties and the dynamics are fairly different.

How do American politics look from afar?

No. I feel essentially the same as I did in elementary school. In kindergarten, we had a mock vote with the election coming up so kids could experience a ballot and learn about the voting process, and I voted Clinton. I was 14 when Bush was elected and hated the piece of shit. I got in trouble in school and with family at Buccaneers games in middle school for refusing to stand for the pledge and national anthem.

Stark raving bonkers.

Yes they have. Originally I was more of a centrist person when it came to everything overall. Somethings I had a liberal view over, while other I had a conservative view over now. Now however while I still have some liberal views on some things my views on quite a few things I used to have different views on took a shift to the right.

Very black-and-white, dogmatic, almost hysteric. But they seem to be able to make decisions faster too, since it's less compromise based.

One of the aspects I love the most about life is that everything is transitional. What's feared by the old is embraced by the new. A single piece of information can change your whole perspective. Your world can be shattered in five seconds. Opinions change faster than light. A single minor event in your routine can destroy someone else's whole year. What's cringe now will be funny tomorrow, and so the cycle continues. Nothing is really for certain. That's why I think politics are worthless. Attaching yourself to a second-handed opinion is useless; months from now you'll look back in great shame from the things you said. And it keeps going on forever.

If you define yourself politically you've already lost yourself.

It is natural to shift into conflicting beliefs now and then even if only to test your convictions, that is how science (of all things) works to begin with.

There were times I believed in guvernomentis and a necessity to police for instance, thinking a nation was the pinnacle of societal structure and order.. But I am disillusioned with that today, seeing it for what it is.. but had I never believed in it first, I wouldn't have understood it for what it is either.

communist -> ancap -> go horse

My views changed due to shit like this:

I wasn't vocally anti-SJW until 2014.

I had to look up what a “tucutes” was. I have the same attitude to when I looked up what “cishet” was: social media has developed an obnoxious jargon.

I wonder how many people are influenced both positively and negatively by tripe like this, because I doubt it’s conseqeuntial to how most people live their everyday lives.