My hypothesis is that answering the following questions truthfully may illuminate contextual predictors for an individual's posting habits, communication style, and capacity for good-faith interactions:

1. What was/are the prevailing political and religious beliefs of your parents/primary caregivers growing up? (i.e. What were those beliefs and how prominently or not were they espoused growing up?).

2. What are the prevailing political and religious beliefs in your current surrounding country/state/community/city/town? (i.e. Do you live in a conservative and rural area, a moderate suburb, neoliberal city, progressive town, etc.?).

3. How would you describe people who have political and religious views that are different, or even opposed, to your own?

4. How would you describe people who share your political and religious views?

5. How many real-life relationships do you have with people who hold different, or even opposing, political and religious views to your own? What rough % of people with different or opposing views constitute your total real-life interactions (i.e. High/moderate/low/no interaction with people who hold different/opposing views)? And, finally, what is the frequency of real-life political and religious discussion you have with people who hold different or opposing political and religious views? (i.e. A parent/friend that holds different views and whom you speak to/see often; Never really speak about politics/religion with others of different/opposing views; Frequently discuss politics and religion with others of different/opposing views).

6. Where do you get most of your political news/information from and how would you describe the type of source? (i.e. Cable news, print, online articles, non-primary source 'react' videos). Do you ever watch/read unedited, non-react, primary source news reporting from sources that hold different political views than you?

7. Lastly, how would you describe your own communication style and interaction with people who hold different or opposing political and religious views than you? This can be both in-person communication and also online interaction such as PaRD, and potentially, are there differences between the two?

This post was edited by Handcuffs on Sep 3 2021 04:57pm

1. Religious beliefs - Catholic and both parents are staunch Republicans. My mom is more radical because she's a former Ted Kennedy supporting Democrat.
2. I don't really discuss politics with people in real life outside of a few friends and the beliefs are pretty diverse. I'd describe my particular neighborhood as neoliberal/liberal I guess. The city is just way too big to describe as X.
3. Fucking morons
4. Smart
5. I don't discuss politics in real life outside of family. The people I know just aren't as interested in it as I am.
6. Lots and lots of reading. I also listen to some podcasts while I walk the dog.
7. Cordial if they are thoughtful but different. Brutal if you believe in obvious bullshit.

1. Politics and religion were never discussed in my house growing up, and it wasn't until I had reached high school that my parents shared that they 1) Are left-leaning moderates and 2) Don't believe in any God/religion, but do believe in Heaven. They also never watched any political news or listened to political radio. They have, however, become more left-leaning over the past 10 years and describe themselves as Democrats now. Extended family is all MAGA Trump supporters.

2. Currently live in my home city, which is one of the more conservative areas of California. Has historically been, and still is, a deeply red part of the state. It is a suburb though, so political and religious 'noise' is relatively quiet here as most people seem to be on the political right and just keep those views private/to themselves.

3. Due to my parents having different views, and growing up with peers who have opposing views, I have no real strong reactions towards the people with different/opposing views--just the idea/views themselves. I am a petty homosexual though, so I do have strong reactions to people who engage in bad-faith, 'troll', or just otherwise choose to be a tribalist dick.

4. No strong reactions here either, aside form increased frustration for the more 'extreme', hostile, and uncordial groups that can pervade the far-left. Many in the far-left condemn so-called 'incrementalism' and believe only revolution will achieve positive outcomes, which I find tiring.

5. I have a diverse group of relationships, from communists to Trump supporters (skewed to the Left though, of course), and frequently engage in political and religious discussion with those same people. In working in therapy, many people come to process the happenings of the world/political landscape, so am well-versed and used to disclosing my political views with folks who are wanting to know--and who may hold views different than mine.

6. Mostly primary source reporting online/videos. I'll occasionally watch 'react' style content, but personally find it to be corrosive to long-term development of nuanced views. I also spend a good amount of time reading/watching conservative news outlets to get primary information from them too.

7. Although passionate about my beliefs, I do try and remain humble, cordial, and to interact with integrity--imperfectly, of course. I think that the way that I speak to people here on PaRD is not dissimilar to my real-life conversations and is an accurate portrayal of myself. Although, I have the self-described Handcuffs Law: The shorter my post, the less serious I am.

This post was edited by Handcuffs on Sep 3 2021 05:15pm

1. Mother is vaguely conservative. Dad is a 70's/80's Democrat. Politics was never discussed, neither was religion.
2. Large city surrounded by incredibly conservative countryside that leaks in.
3. People who have drastically different political views to mine tend to either not know what they're talking about on a very fundamental level (conspiracy nutters), be fairly ignorant of the state of affairs, or be incredibly dishonest. If you aren't any of those and think you're very opposed to me politically, we tend to talk and after about 10 minutes realize it's a difference in language or a small disagreement rather than a real significant ideological difference.
4. People who share my political views are all kinds of things. I'm only slightly left of center, maybe one standard deviation to the left of the american public when you actually poll their ideas instead of the politicians they vote for, since choice is really skewed.
5. I talk politics IRL with very few people.
6. I will never watch a "react" video. If there's too much editorializing, even if I agree with it, I tune out and remove it from my recommendations. I get my news from a pretty large variety of sources, and if I want to read up on a specific topic I'll read from several sources.
7. Depends on if I actually want to talk, and how dishonest the other person is. If we can have a real conversation, I'll talk candidly (nothere, on here I'm a flaming bag of shit) and mostly ask questions to lead them to the contradiction. I've left two missionaries dazed and confused leaving my apartment because I listened to their pitch for 30 minutes, and then asked a couple inoccuous questions that lead them down a path they didn't really want to go.

1) classic liberals. also part of my family is immigrants from not so good situations
2) city so its fairly lefty
3) irl people with different views are often far more compromising so its often no harm no foul
4) center-left libertarians are good for having a beer with. talking politics is not of interest
5) quite a few. i like the balance
6) non-US media
7) its a shitposting message board. I think most regulars are well informed

1. moderate right and left

2. moderate right

3. interesting often but sometimes very obtuse and absolutely annoying

4. Normal people

5. same than 3, the annoying part is just not working to be with.

6. Press

7. Ahah did you saw the foot?

No strong political or ideological affiliation. Moderate, with a tendency towards center-left on economic issues and center-right on social/cultural issues. We did discuss politics from time to time, but my parents and family were not "political animals".




Living in a big city which is very affluent and educated. Lots of upscale liberals and wokesters, but due to my city's residual conservative DNA and upper middle-class skew, there is very little support for far-left politics in my city.




It really depends on the reasoning behind their views. I would consider myself quite tolerant of differing opinions, I don't tend to hold a grudge against somebody for disagreeing with me. I also don't reflexively think of others as bad human beings for having other values and morals as me. However, I am arrogant enough to consider a lot of people with a wildly different worldview to be gullible or misinformed.




Really bimodal. There are those who make similar observations and draw similar conclusions. I generally hold those people in high regard and appreciate the implicit confirmation they are giving to my own views. But there are also those who are stupid and ill- or underinformed, yet end up arriving at similar values and opinions to mine, based on a haphazard or sloppy information filtering process. I obviously hold these in lower regard and occasionally am outright embarrassed that "someone like that" is my ideological ally.




Only talking politics or philosophy with a very limited set of people. Mix of those who generally agree with me or have very different values. Having respectful and productive conservations with someone with a very different worldview and value set is possible, but tedious and only happening occasionally.




Websites of major newspapers, plus some reddit and some infos from political websites (e.g. fivethirtyeight, rrh). I'm actually reading left- or liberal-leaning news sites more often than conservative ones.




In rl, it really depends on how well I know the person and how much respect I have for him/her. Online, I'm a lot less patient with stupid or bad faith posters. I also tend to put online debates to a rest when I feel like coming to a common understanding will be impossible.
And of course I'm more willing to troll or shitpost online.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Sep 3 2021 10:54pm

1. Conservative but not that clear cut. Protestant.
2. Medium sized city in north east, very liberal
3. Idk, depends on the specific beliefs, for the most part I don't care too much about what others think.
4. Also kind of depends, very broad question so tough to answer.
5. Hard to tell because I try my best to leave divisive things out of relationships. That's the problem nowadays, people are hyper focused and divide themselves based on politics which is nonsensical. Nowadays, I speak about politics/religion much less than what I did 4-5 years ago
6. I almost don't watch any news. I read. Reuters & googling specific things, stuff that's pulled onto financial websites, etc. Some things I read I don't wholly agree with, typically you can pick out the specific spin/sentiment within a few paragraphs and try to strip the political lean from the actual information.
7. IRL I'm courteous, I have no interest in being argumentative or trying to prove a point because people are mostly very set in their beliefs and for the most part it's a complete waste of time.

This post was edited by ofthevoid on Sep 4 2021 07:55am

1. Religious conservative, didnt influence me much as i turned atheist

2. Diverse metropolitan city. I live within a somewhat affluent conservative suburb.

3. Probably exposed to different forms of media and their brain is wiree differently. Some people simply seem insane to me

4. They seem sensible and open to changing their views like myself

5. Moderate interaction with family members with opposing views. My wife has views strongly opposed to my own on a handful of important subject matter but we're always able to have civilized discussions. Most of my friends circle are techy, well educated and liberal and politics comes up every time we meet up.

6. I get most of my news from people who interpret sources of information e.g. scientific studies and statistics, i rarely examine the sources myself. I like to get more than one perspective on the same topic and one of the key struggles i have is both sides of the political spectrum won't approach certain stories with open honesty. For example i cant get a clear picture of whether there is or isn't a migrant problem in the eu.

7. Enlightened centrists who gets along with, doesn't get along with and also makes fun of both sides.

This post was edited by duffman316 on Sep 4 2021 08:26am