All the things you listed have nothing to do with intelligence. Compassion, empathy, understanding maybe.
Has reading ERA Off-Topic made you a more intelligent person?
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You clearly haven't read the thread where ERA was acting like they knew more about a novel prize winner's expertise. This place is a bunch of people that have way more confidence in knowledge than is remotely justified.
American Political topics, outside of the main Community, are a staggering shitshow.
First post nails it.
I feel like my IQ has actually dropped due to some of the near-aneurysms I've experienced reading some topics.
I share the same view as well, there are a lot of people with extreme views like the whole abolish capitalism stuff, and capitalism is the root of all injustice. But when you do have a good discussion going or have people engaging in one, there is a lot of interesting things to take in. There was a particularly good thread about Warren wanting to regulate capitalism and other members calling the others out on their more extreme views of how the economy should work.
What I like most about this place is discussions often are well regulated and done in good faith, even the more extreme members I tend to disagree with generally make a strong argument with examples instead of strawmen arguments and such.
That’s an impressively precise statement to sum up how I feel.
But it’s not a condemnation of ERA since this place culturally truly feels like a very small Reddit. And when I say Reddit I mean their most popular subreddits.
I see the exact same talking points here on politics in r/politics and any anything on religion is straight out of r/atheism. Then there’s the same overarching overly pessimistic and cynical attitude toward life in general that slightly colors most posts. I’m not sure if it’s groupthink driving it all a little bit but it’s interesting to see. Also exhausting and makes me crave offline interaction even more.
I appreciate all the times how some of the perspectives posted here have helped me to understand other points of view though. It’s just that most of the time it all feels kinda same old same old.
Reading Era opens me up to a particular "perspective". I think having a wide perspective is a good thing.
Makes me more intelligent? Lol no. If I wanted to get smarter I'll spend my time at the library. Heck, I'd rather browse reddit. This place is good for a laugh though with how silly and absurd posters are.
Makes me more intelligent? Lol no. If I wanted to get smarter I'll spend my time at the library. Heck, I'd rather browse reddit. This place is good for a laugh though with how silly and absurd posters are.
No.
I honestly don't think I've learned anything from era. A lot of the threads in the off topic section are personal accounts, politics (Trump/Brexit majority of the time), pop culture and poop.
What has made me more "intelligent" and learn more is by reading a book a week. I've learned so much in the past 10 months from picking up a book and making the time to finish it within seven days.
I honestly don't think I've learned anything from era. A lot of the threads in the off topic section are personal accounts, politics (Trump/Brexit majority of the time), pop culture and poop.
What has made me more "intelligent" and learn more is by reading a book a week. I've learned so much in the past 10 months from picking up a book and making the time to finish it within seven days.
I wouldn't say ERA made me more intelligent, but it's definitely made me more informed on a whole slew of topics. My online hangouts otherwise are all fandom or art spaces that don't get a whole lot of news or political discussion, so once I discovered ERA (or, well, the place Before ERA) it was kinda a nice eye opener. There's a lot of great discussion here that's helped me a bunch with better knowing about and understanding various topics, and since it's moderated things are always kept relatively civil---which is a huge plus and part of why I'd usually stay away from those topics of discussion before. Plus, I've always been bad with keeping up with news on my own so outside of the really big stories that would infiltrate my fandom bubbles, I was never really aware of most stuff going on. Now that I frequently lurk ERA I learn all sorts of things, from the current political bullshit ongoings to cool space news, from stuff like window cultures based on country to vsco girls, from entertainment news and controversies to just all sorts of random factoids (including ERAs hygiene practices lol), and everything in between. So I get where you're coming from OP, ERA's definitely made me feel like a more knowledgeable and well rounded person.
Also, it's nice having a site to occasionally post on that forces me to use full, proper sentences and grammar. Twitter almost made me forget what that was like, lol.
Also, it's nice having a site to occasionally post on that forces me to use full, proper sentences and grammar. Twitter almost made me forget what that was like, lol.
PoliEra is the worst aspect of Era, I feel. I think I should stop browsing politics on Era altogether. People bite each other's heads off here. I don't learn anything in politics threads, but I only get frustrated.
The off-topic forum here is incredibly singular in terms of the opinions and different viewpoints, categorically the opposite of diverse. ESPECIALLY when it comes to political threads. It's like a prototypical, polarized, left-wing echo chamber in here (I didn't even truly believe such a thing existed until I saw how discussion evolved here). Open up any politics thread and see the number of shitposts on the first page to see evidence of this.
It's really bad. Undoubtedly worse than the old place too, likely due to overmodding and somehow a very similar, authoritarian perspective on how a community should be policed/organized.
It's also probably partly due to people with more diverse opinions not all making it over here, since this place was (ironically) branded off of being more diverse and inclusionary relative to the old place. But the overmodding has definitely helped in creating a chilling effect for any opinions that aren't as woke/progressively knowledgeable as can possibly be, encouraged purity testing for those beliefs between members on the forum, and encouraged people to be more self-righteous and aggressive in expressing their beliefs here. And that's up from a baseline of gamers already having to express their beliefs loudly to get noticed on really active communities like this one.
The authoritarianism is the worst part, though. This place was supposed to be different and more transparent (and relatively, it is), but it adopted all of the worst aspects about modding at the other place. They've been slightly better about this, but worst of all is the funneling of criticism of policies/the website into non-public channels that they don't have to be accountable for. Open criticism of the website is still discouraged - remind you of any country people are railing hard against in the OT right now, by any chance?
I don't think this place will ever ease up on the modding because being a holier-than-thou left-wing echo chamber is kind of the desired final form for this website, I think. This is without any of the self-awareness necessary to know that's a really bad thing for civil discourse. It's dogmatism and narrow-thinking under the guise of diversity and open-mindedness. I don't think there's a way to undo this given that I don't imagine they see any issue, and are probably happier to name-call any criticizers as conservative apologists or something than reflect upon what decisions led to the quality of discussion tanking so hard in the OT.
All of this might also be conflated with the Trump presidency and the horrors that come out of it on a daily basis, but I think the overmodding has mostly been in threads related to social issues generally, not necessarily Trump stuff. It's not like there are a ton of ardent conservatives in here to begin with, anyways.
It's really bad. Undoubtedly worse than the old place too, likely due to overmodding and somehow a very similar, authoritarian perspective on how a community should be policed/organized.
It's also probably partly due to people with more diverse opinions not all making it over here, since this place was (ironically) branded off of being more diverse and inclusionary relative to the old place. But the overmodding has definitely helped in creating a chilling effect for any opinions that aren't as woke/progressively knowledgeable as can possibly be, encouraged purity testing for those beliefs between members on the forum, and encouraged people to be more self-righteous and aggressive in expressing their beliefs here. And that's up from a baseline of gamers already having to express their beliefs loudly to get noticed on really active communities like this one.
The authoritarianism is the worst part, though. This place was supposed to be different and more transparent (and relatively, it is), but it adopted all of the worst aspects about modding at the other place. They've been slightly better about this, but worst of all is the funneling of criticism of policies/the website into non-public channels that they don't have to be accountable for. Open criticism of the website is still discouraged - remind you of any country people are railing hard against in the OT right now, by any chance?
I don't think this place will ever ease up on the modding because being a holier-than-thou left-wing echo chamber is kind of the desired final form for this website, I think. This is without any of the self-awareness necessary to know that's a really bad thing for civil discourse. It's dogmatism and narrow-thinking under the guise of diversity and open-mindedness. I don't think there's a way to undo this given that I don't imagine they see any issue, and are probably happier to name-call any criticizers as conservative apologists or something than reflect upon what decisions led to the quality of discussion tanking so hard in the OT.
All of this might also be conflated with the Trump presidency and the horrors that come out of it on a daily basis, but I think the overmodding has mostly been in threads related to social issues generally, not necessarily Trump stuff. It's not like there are a ton of ardent conservatives in here to begin with, anyways.
I completely agree with this. From top to bottom. It didn't always used to be this way. But over time, its slowly slid to becoming this way. It's so extreme now that any moderation change to try and reignite actual discussion on even general matters would be met with a full on meltdown from those that have grown accustomed to the way it is now.
Better than most? Sure. But that's a very low bar these days.
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