Political beliefs you no longer have

[Chicken Drummer]

I would say

Believing Obama should still be president.

[Nastard]

I used to believe all politicians should be shot out of a cannon towards the nearest body of water. I've since matured my opinion as I've grown older.

A trebuchet would be more fun.

[s_bushido]

I mean...I used to parrot a lot of the anti-feminist garbage from a few years ago. Before all those morons pivoted from "stop calling me sexist for enjoying sexy characters in video games" to "this is why you should vote for Trump."

But my political outlook hasn't really changed all that much.

-edit- Thinking about it some more, I used to believe that the death penalty was acceptable in some situations. I no longer do.

[Shadowferal]

Mother onced explained the difference between democrat and republican was the former are for the people, and the latter are for businesses.
Dems used to believe that "eye for an eye" was wrong, and I once believed that most did indeed believe that.

[Raeph]

I used to be more fiscally "libertarian", as in that they government should do as little as possible, and be as small as possible, and that by default it was a hindrance to the life of the citizenry.

I'm more of a glass-steagall kind of person now. The government should aggressively regulate away destructive behavior in the private sector but should maintain an "overseer" position in the economy and should be a minimal participant in the economy, to the limit that is possible.

Cronyism, both the lefts version and the rights version, needs to die a swift death.

That and I'm pretty open to the idea of a basic income.

[Hammerfest]

The War On Drugs.

[Mihalik]

I mean...I used to parrot a lot of the anti-feminist garbage from a few years ago. Before all those morons pivoted from "stop calling me sexist for enjoying sexy characters in video games" to "this is why you should vote for Trump."

But my political outlook hasn't really changed all that much.

I'm pretty much in the feminist camp now, always been mostly sympathetic even tho a bit clueless, regardless even to this day I think Saarkesian/Feminist Frequency were and are cringe worthy nonsense/a scam.

In hindsight while their influence on feminist thought or politics was MARGINAL AND PERIPHERAL AT BEST the whole Gamergate shitshow that was born out of the opposition was massively more impactful and had a whole lot to do with the rise of movements like the Alt Right, which in turn had a significant impact on mainstreaming extreme right wing politics.

There's a direct and important chain of events that started at Sarkeesian bashing and ended in the Alt Right, Proud Boys, Bogaloos, Sargon, Breitbart, Trump, Brexit, Incels and more and the strange alliance between these.

Like who would have thought that making fun of a gender theory hyperbole about tits in Hitman would contribute so much to the rise of Fascism in the 21st Century?

- - - Updated - - -

I would say

Believing Obama should still be president.

How many fucking threads can you start which have a word count of 10 or less words in the original post?

Have you ever formulated a thought in your life that would have filled a tweet if expressed?

[Stelio Kontos]

I was slipping down the slipper slope of anarchy/antifa/leftwing extremism in college. Flirted a lot with joining movements like that. Luckily I grew up, experienced the real world, and woke up. A lot of it was peer pressure to join that wing of movements, rather than me actually believing in it. I was more or less looking to fit in with my college friends.

Got better friends, stopped caring about what people thought of me so much, and actually started engaging with the world rather than bitching about how unfair everything is because I wasn't getting my way in life.

[s_bushido]

even to this day I think Saarkesian/Feminist Frequency were and are cringe worthy nonsense/a scam.

Yeah, I don't really see myself ever not rolling my eyes at her nonsense...

Like who would have thought that making fun of a gender theory hyperbole about tits in Hitman would contribute so much to the rise of Fascism in the 21st Century?

...but I do think you're probably overstating this. I don't really buy that these youtube grifters sharing the same ~200k subscribers contributed significantly to that. I'm more willing to believe that they're just a symptom. They saw that they could make money pushing out low-effort conservative content and just ran with it.

[Theodarzna]

First, the end of the Uber Democrat teenager. Really believed in Obama and such as a 16-20 year old. Basically on Dailykos ect. Really Cringy time.

Second, was perhaps my incorrect ideas that formed around my total revulsion to Tumblr and ignorant and incorrect beliefs that these liberal/SJW's were even Leftists. Basically I admit I misread them. Basically becoming reflexively Anti-Feminist because the overwhelming amount of Feminism on offer was just a disgusting marketed product. I still dislike Liberal Feminism; but I'm a little more aware now of what it is. This might also dub-tail with the incorrect but common belief that Socialism itself is just Liberalism but more so, when in reality they are different animals.

[Mihalik]

...but I do think you're probably overstating this. I don't really buy that these youtube grifters sharing the same ~200k subscribers contributed significantly to that. I'm more willing to believe that they're just a symptom. They saw that they could make money pushing out low-effort conservative content and just ran with it.

I think you vastly underestimate their influence.

While their YouTube audience might have been relatively small in the grand scheme of things, it gave them a platform and the resources to actually mainstream their narratives, their influence on Breitbart, Daily Caller cannot be understated which in turn shaped Fox.

Their success in resonating with the masses and their hyperbole and click bait messaging tactics, plus the nonsense they were saying were used by groups like Cambridge Analytica, Russian Troll farms, the Trump campaign, Fox News talking heads like Tucker Carlson and now QAnon which is literally just a fucking Reddit troll joke that somehow metastasized into something that is affecting mainstream political discourse now and has caused a series of terrorist attacks.

I'm not saying they did all the work (there's a whole lot of corporate money and old school right wing legwork), but they very much shaped the "How to message and mainstream fascism on the Internet" handbook. And they are especially influential on the more extreme end of the right wing spectrum.

[Theodarzna]

Yeah, I don't really see myself ever not rolling my eyes at her nonsense...

...but I do think you're probably overstating this. I don't really buy that these youtube grifters sharing the same ~200k subscribers contributed significantly to that. I'm more willing to believe that they're just a symptom. They saw that they could make money pushing out low-effort conservative content and just ran with it.

I think GamerGate was a bigger deal to media people than it actually was to the people who sincerely called themselves "GamerGaters". Like, in the end it was arcane internet drama in which a lackluster/mediocre game dev got caught trading sex for good reviews of unfun games and it simply spiraled from there. Zoeie went to her circle of friends, and they all to release articles within 24 hours of one another calling all video game players pieces of shit and filled with Social Justice nostrums that allegedly changed the narrative. And it did work, it not longer became the original story which was minor and unimportant but a web was spun about sexist bigoted gamers.

What spooked journalists is that a bunch of apolitical gamers saw in real time how media narratives get spun and how a well connected person with a clique of well placed friends can essentially invent a narrative out of whole cloth. Basically it got a bunch of video game nerds to say "Oh, this is all made up" and to some extent media people in general have been dealing with that anxiety that the general public does not believes what they say anymore. GamerGate has become this explanation for why the public isn't trusting of the usual gatekeepers of information. Basically the public are all evil, and a bunch of demonic deplorable gamers corrupted America.

For the record, I don't think GamerGate was that significant and in a hundred years it'll be the most obscure thing that maybe some future academic might read about.

[Endus]

I'm pretty much in the feminist camp now, always been mostly sympathetic even tho a bit clueless, regardless even to this day I think Saarkesian/Feminist Frequency were and are cringe worthy nonsense/a scam.

Without defending everything she's said (some of it's valid, some if it goes a bit too far IMO), claiming she scammed anyone is pretty much completely baseless. She got way more than she asked for in her Kickstarter, true. She produced the promised content for that Kickstarter campaign, however. Some of it was delayed slightly due to some unforeseen issues (largely in scaling up that content to make it worth the additional funding she'd received), but that doesn't breach the Kickstarter agreement, and she did produce the content that was promised.

Not saying you have to like her content or whatever, but the idea that she "scammed" anyone is pretty much straight-up anti-feminist red-pill malarkey.

[s_bushido]

I think you vastly underestimate their influence.

Maybe... But I'm not really inclined to give them credit for anything other than profiting off the outrage culture they pretend to hate.

[Kraenen]

I grew up mildly anti-western, very xenophile (basically a radical egalitarian in the sense of race/gender/etc.), anti-technology, anti-capitalist, and generally pacifist. Used to be radically anti-religious as well. Generally speaking your average mainstream teen leftist, I guess. During young adulthood I took a step back and evaluated what I believed and why I believed in it, and applied critical thinking (examining the assumptions under the belief, and trying to weigh the evidence pro/con). I think my intuitions are still guided by those beliefs to some extent, though I don't ultimately espouse them anymore.

[Themius]

I was slipping down the slipper slope of anarchy/antifa/leftwing extremism in college. Flirted a lot with joining movements like that. Luckily I grew up, experienced the real world, and woke up. A lot of it was peer pressure to join that wing of movements, rather than me actually believing in it. I was more or less looking to fit in with my college friends.

Got better friends, stopped caring about what people thought of me so much, and actually started engaging with the world rather than bitching about how unfair everything is because I wasn't getting my way in life.

How terrible it would be to be anti fascist. Egads.

[Masark]

This might also dub-tail

The word is dovetail.

I no longer think that Ron Paul has any useful ideological contributions (I was an idiot the first year of college).

[Thee ANCOM]

the belief that the USA wasn't a giant mistake from the start.

[Ivanstone]

I used to be against the whole politically correct thing. "You're not short!" "You're vertically challenged." It just seemed silly.

And then I noticed that the loudest people railing against political correctness were often aggressively shitty people.

Turns out it was mostly just assholes attacking their political enemies. Like they did in the past, like they still do today.

[Doctor Amadeus]

Not much or many, I am still a male feminist, but over the years I have certainly question what that means in terms of being an ally or someone who supports feminism because of a misguided concept.

I think if I ever moved away from that or arrived at the point I am not a feminist it wouldn't be because I disagreed with the feminist movement, but it could be very possible that I am just NOT a very good feminist therefor I shouldn't call myself that at all. I believe in equal rights for women in everything full stop. Maybe that isn't enough. Oh and I also hold my faith closer than I used to, I am a christian so that is really part of me also.