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Comment by thenmar | Hacker News Reader

I don't really buy that... the only liberal views I can think of that are popular in the aggregate on reddit are about the war on drugs and sometimes socialized medicine. In general, reddit is pretty hostile towards women, skeptical of feminism, overtly racist, and pro-military.

I guess I would characterize it more as libertarianism strongly centered on the perspectives of middle class, white men.

Edit: I guess "I don't really buy that" was a poor choice of words. I don't think you're lying to me. But your experience was very different from my experience. I stopped using reddit because I felt like all the big subreddits were too socially conservative!

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I disagree. Pretty much any news article or situation is sided with the left on Reddit. Its even difficult to have an open and honest discussion here on HN, because anything that goes against the mainstream view (which tends to be liberal) is downvoted and silenced.

Its getting to the point where the only way to defend against such tactics is to play just as dirty.

You don't buy what? my experience?

I'm not sure how being skeptical of feminism is an inherently non-liberal view. I'd say it depends on whether the feminism in question is oriented around civil rights, or around some form of critical gender theory. "Feminism" alone is not descriptive enough to make any judgment over.

Pro-military? How? I haven't visited it in a while, but a common sentiment on AskReddit was a total disillusionment with the chauvinistic "support the troops" mentality and a belief that military service does not make one righteous in of itself.

Yes, the critical theory is what I'm talking about, and I think that knowledge is definitely associated with the political "left". The issue I had is that the skepticism is almost always ignorant and dismissive. It's just impossibly frustrating to try to talk to someone who refuses to do any background reading but wants to tell you you're wrong about concepts that live in an academic and historical context.

As for the military, I guess that one is more debatable. I agree that the Bush-era "support the troops" jingoism isn't around much, but I used to see a lot posts where it's implicit. Things like hugely popular photos of special ops soldiers followed by adoring comments of how "badass" they are.

>I haven't visited it in a while, but a common sentiment on AskReddit was a total disillusionment with the chauvinistic "support the troops" mentality and a belief that military service does not make one righteous in of itself.

Enough kids who grew up playing Call of Duty has shifted reddit into being more pro-military and pro-weapons. There is also a steady stream of "coming home" photos and videos with kids and pets.

Not sure why being pro-weapons is bad, but alright.

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