Poll: Outlier Opinions and their Role in Discussions

[MrCatchTwenty2]

Something that I have noticed in many political and social debates is the hypocrisy of people's consideration of extremists in the opposition compared to the ones in support of their opinion. For example, I saw an argument happening on a forum in which a feminist(she identified herself as such) was arguing with a gamer(same). In this argument they both seem to speak often of the extremists of each group and their general statements followed the idea of:

"Well the extremists on my side aren't relevant and they don't represent us as a whole. They don't matter, just ignore them. But YOUR extremists, oh boy, they are the worst thing on the Earth. They are the entirety of your movement and you need to do something about them."

Feminists talking about hackers and people sending rape/death threats and how it represents misogyny in gaming as a whole, while brushing off the supporters of feminism that claim sex is always rape and that men should be exterminated i.e. "They're not /breal/b feminists."

Gamers talking about feminists wanting to take away male protagonists and being just hateful to gaming in general, meanwhile they say that the people sending death threats and hacking people aren't a big deal i.e. "They're just trolls, ignore them."

I don't want to share my opinion on the actual topics but would like to find out what people think about the hypocrisy when it comes to extremists and their opinion on the extremists period.

 

[CymbaIine]

I think they are generally irrelevant.

However "Gamer" isn't a political movement, religion or anything like that so I am not sure how you can say that it is a group that has extremists. Gaming is a hobby.

Reminds me of this -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AtQLkpTGsA

 

[Twintix]

Oh, the reason for that happening is simple.

People love to generalize. Not so much being generalized.

That's all there is to it, really. It irritates me to no end, but on the other hand, I can't really do anything about it.

 

[MrCatchTwenty2]

"Gamer" isn't a political movement, religion or anything like that so I am not sure how you can say that it is a group that has extremists. Gaming is a hobby.

Agreed, gamer and gaming in itself aren't any form of movement but gaming has its own culture and extreme people and movements exist even if they are small or simply an attempt to maintain the current status. Where there is opinion, there are extremists. Take the gamergate people, a bunch of "gamers" that created a movement to promote what they thought is best for the games industry. They don't represent the industry and culture, but its what they identify as and they are certainly a part of it as a movement contained solely inside of it.

 

[murrow]

Straight off, let me say that I never saw a cause smart enough not to attract idiots. Whatever it is that you defend, you're going to have people making a mess of it, sometimes loudly.

As for the 'extremists' vs. 'moderates', this only becomes an issue the moment people attribute more value to labels than to the ideas behind them. Political qualifiers are polysemic because there's no "entrance requirement". Anyone can call him/herself anything, and the older the word gets, the more meanings (and more extremists) get attached to it. Blaming people for actions they are not guilty of, merely because a third party appropriated a label they themselves use is unfair. But equally useless in most discussions is the "not all [...] are" argument, because it ends up being more focused in defending a label's reputation than its tenets.

Generally, I believe that pointing at extremists is a form of evasion, which therefore makes for bad discussion. To use your example: feminism. The term has been around for a while, and its proponents worldwide have so far defended things are varied as universal suffrage, affirmative action, regulation of the media, language and legal reforms and even prohibition of pornography. Attacking/defending the umbrella term leads nowhere; scrutinizing the ideas that make a person adhere by the term will prompt a good discussion. And you'll find that sometimes people that stick to different labels might nevertheless be in agreement.