aviet Posted November 9, 2016 Posted November 9, 2016 From what I saw there seemed to be a large number of Trump supporters who emanated from the demographic that may be disparaged as living in their mother's basement, playing World of Warcraft, reading comics etc.?I've noticed that there also appears to be a lot of people here who fall in or close to this demographic. In particular there are an over-representation of programmers here.Does anyone have insights into this trend?
D-Light Posted November 9, 2016 Posted November 9, 2016 It's a matter of in-group preferencing. Trump is viewed as the successful culmination of everything the demographic you speak of dreams of becoming. Rich, attracting beautiful women, power, respect, masculine, renegade, Individualist, the classic American Dream. Hillary represents the antithesis - Shrill, corrupt, unattractive, no respect for men, anti-masculine feminist, establishment, collectivist, elitist. 1
aviet Posted November 9, 2016 Author Posted November 9, 2016 It's a matter of in-group preferencing. One angle of thought I have had is that some of this demographic see Trump as a superhero. I've got little expirience with this demographic, but in my town there is a family of Star Wars, superhero etc. fanatics. From what I do know about them, I could see them gravitating towards Trump. They are also people who are somewhat marginalised, though not bullied, seen as somewhat of a joke. One of them wanted to train me as a bodybuilder and had a fetish for spontaneous muscle growth - Incredible Hulk style. I can see these sort of people being attracted to Donald Trump for the reasons you outline. Again, from my experience of this family, they appear to have an attraction to crushing corruption, leveling things out and draining the swamp. It's interesting that people who are seen as wimps and outsiders have this attraction to the Trump archetype. I'm interested to know more on the driving themes.
dsayers Posted November 9, 2016 Posted November 9, 2016 From what I saw there seemed to be a large number of Trump supporters who emanated from the demographic that may be disparaged as living in their mother's basement, playing World of Warcraft, reading comics etc.? How do you know?
shirgall Posted November 9, 2016 Posted November 9, 2016 Old school network and hardware platform geeks like myself are pretty strongly libertarian, and all over the map with respect to Trump acceptance. We are a pretty cynical bunch. After all, we were making the Internet before Al Gore got into office.
Wuzzums Posted November 9, 2016 Posted November 9, 2016 The things they stood to lose are the things they can live without, and the things they can't live without were outright attacked by the establishment. Or they inadvertently created a cult summoning the god Kek for the last decade entering thus in a spiritual battle against Moloch, the god worshiped by the establishment. Kek made the basement dwellers strong and sent Trump as a guiding figure for them to direct that newfound strength against the one true enemy. Though Moloch controlled the banks, the armies, the media, and academia it had no defenses against meme magic, the final ultimate weapon. There is nothing stronger than an idea. Praise Kek.
DaVinci Posted November 9, 2016 Posted November 9, 2016 I think to a certain extent those who are outsiders are often times more apt to be critical thinkers just by the very nature of being shoved to the outside and having to look back in. The only analogy I can make is it is like being shoved into Earth's orbit and seeing the entire planet spinning by as opposed to someone just standing in one spot on the Earth. An observer from space will therefore notice patterns impossible for people on the ground to see. If that person radios back down to Earth and says, "hey, the uh, river is flooding 10 miles upstream from point A" and no on the ground responds back and even ignores the observer (and they know that they are being ignored because they can see the person from space ignoring them) and that person in space has to watch people, and houses, etc get flooded it's frustrating. I think that is why the Trump archetype works. He disrupts the system on the ground which the observer knows is purposefully ignoring them.
A4E Posted November 9, 2016 Posted November 9, 2016 What kind of rude affiliation are you trying to make between programmers and people living in their mothers basement? Everyone knows programmers have their abode in the attic!
aviet Posted November 9, 2016 Author Posted November 9, 2016 I think to a certain extent those who are outsiders are often times more apt to be critical thinkers just by the very nature of being shoved to the outside and having to look back in. The only analogy I can make is it is like being shoved into Earth's orbit and seeing the entire planet spinning by as opposed to someone just standing in one spot on the Earth. An observer from space will therefore notice patterns impossible for people on the ground to see. If that person radios back down to Earth and says, "hey, the uh, river is flooding 10 miles upstream from point A" and no on the ground responds back and even ignores the observer (and they know that they are being ignored because they can see the person from space ignoring them) and that person in space has to watch people, and houses, etc get flooded it's frustrating. I think that is why the Trump archetype works. He disrupts the system on the ground which the observer knows is purposefully ignoring them. An astute point and analogies. What kind of rude affiliation are you trying to make between programmers and people living in their mothers basement? Everyone knows programmers have their abode in the attic! This touches on another point, that people who may get lumped in the Minecraft-playing, basement-dwelling bracket are possibly considered the easiest game going. Basement-dweller and similar slurs are used to disparage people, who in some cases are at the fringe of society, but probably of above-average intelligence. They could be lumped into the grief bracket of 'the poorest and most vulnerable people in society', yet they have become a punching bag, castoffs to be laughed at. Outliers on the victim hierarchy don't get this treatment. I don't think this demographic either has sought or wants to plant itself into the victim heirarchy
Iron Horse Posted November 10, 2016 Posted November 10, 2016 What kind of rude affiliation are you trying to make between programmers and people living in their mothers basement? Everyone knows programmers have their abode in the attic! /pol/... was right again.
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