I pride myself on having friends from different race/religion/politics/nationality backgrounds. This carries over to what web forums I participate in online. But it doesn't always work out.
One of my non-rocketry hobbies (which shall remain nameless) is pretty technical and there is really only one forum worth its salt. I've been on there for something like 5 years, maybe 6. So, since before COVID and the 2020 election by several years for sure. While that forum has an international membership, in terms of active members it's mostly a bunch of old white conservative men who are retired or nearly so, who spend a lot of time polishing their guns and complaining about liberals and the government (it's not a gun forum, but it might as well be...). It was that way when I joined but for my first several years there I stuck to the technical threads. I wasn't one of the most active folks but I was there often enough to be recognized as more than a random member. I appreciated the help I got from several of the active members and developed respect for them; I helped others to the extent my growing knowledge and experience allowed.
Then, in January 2020, when COVID started becoming a thing that was talked about, I happened to join a COVID-related thread. My background as a scientist and person involved in the clinical trials process gave me a perspective that few others there had, so I took it on myself to help explain things in response to questions posed in the thread and present facts, while debunking a few ridiculous things that came up (usually from zerohedge links and the like). It actually was going fine until the hydroxychloroquine thing came up. That one incident resulted in massive polarization of folks on the thread into two camps (95% in the pro-'droxy camp). After that, everything COVID-related was political, for no good reason. Nonetheless, I remained subscribed to that thread and would post fact-supported replies and new research that I encountered. I figured even if a lot of people ignored it or even openly scorned it, perhaps what I was posting was helpful to some. I kept at it for a year until maybe ~March 2021 when I realized that it was negatively affecting my mental health to have facts, common sense, and logic repudiated continually by people citing crap article-mill content that would take research out of context to support politically-aligned clickbait. Eventually I unsubscribed from the thread but still went back to the forum once in a while for technical issues, though I had little to post about (my involvement in the hobby was at a stable point) and frankly didn't want to draw attention of the main posters. My mental health improved significantly, being out of that thread.
More than a year after I left the thread, so about a month ago, someone posted in it an article and tagged me so that I got a notification. The article was a good one, but their take on it was using the research and a few sentences out of context, actually flipping the meaning. So, I walked them through what the article was saying, what the conclusions meant, and cautioned them that the sentence they were referring to, which by itself suggested the mRNA vaccines weren't very effective anymore, was actually very focused on infection and wasn't saying anything about their effectiveness against severe covid. In fact, later in that article it was made clear the vaccines still had something like 90% effectiveness against severe covid in the population studied.
But no, I was clearly a tool of a liberal conspiracy; other metrics were thrown at me unrelated to the article; I debunked those as well, showing how they were being interpreted out of context to flip the meaning. At which point I told them I was again leaving the thread; if they wanted a scientific analysis of something from someone with 30 years experience they could let me know, and I would be happy to walk them through it, but that I was done arguing. To which I got a retort that they didn't need someone with a piece of paper; they could read the articles themselves and google any terms they didn't understand. I did not reply.
To Chuck's point, it's a shame that medicine has in many ways become a debatable third rail in this country.
The sad thing is that I respect these people for their technical prowess in the forum's subject matter, but at the same time they are objectively deluded conspiracy theorists. To the point where if I do run into a technical issue and need their help, I am not sure I want to post on that forum anymore, out of concern they may bring up their scorn of me from the other thread.
One of my non-rocketry hobbies (which shall remain nameless) is pretty technical and there is really only one forum worth its salt. I've been on there for something like 5 years, maybe 6. So, since before COVID and the 2020 election by several years for sure. While that forum has an international membership, in terms of active members it's mostly a bunch of old white conservative men who are retired or nearly so, who spend a lot of time polishing their guns and complaining about liberals and the government (it's not a gun forum, but it might as well be...). It was that way when I joined but for my first several years there I stuck to the technical threads. I wasn't one of the most active folks but I was there often enough to be recognized as more than a random member. I appreciated the help I got from several of the active members and developed respect for them; I helped others to the extent my growing knowledge and experience allowed.
Then, in January 2020, when COVID started becoming a thing that was talked about, I happened to join a COVID-related thread. My background as a scientist and person involved in the clinical trials process gave me a perspective that few others there had, so I took it on myself to help explain things in response to questions posed in the thread and present facts, while debunking a few ridiculous things that came up (usually from zerohedge links and the like). It actually was going fine until the hydroxychloroquine thing came up. That one incident resulted in massive polarization of folks on the thread into two camps (95% in the pro-'droxy camp). After that, everything COVID-related was political, for no good reason. Nonetheless, I remained subscribed to that thread and would post fact-supported replies and new research that I encountered. I figured even if a lot of people ignored it or even openly scorned it, perhaps what I was posting was helpful to some. I kept at it for a year until maybe ~March 2021 when I realized that it was negatively affecting my mental health to have facts, common sense, and logic repudiated continually by people citing crap article-mill content that would take research out of context to support politically-aligned clickbait. Eventually I unsubscribed from the thread but still went back to the forum once in a while for technical issues, though I had little to post about (my involvement in the hobby was at a stable point) and frankly didn't want to draw attention of the main posters. My mental health improved significantly, being out of that thread.
More than a year after I left the thread, so about a month ago, someone posted in it an article and tagged me so that I got a notification. The article was a good one, but their take on it was using the research and a few sentences out of context, actually flipping the meaning. So, I walked them through what the article was saying, what the conclusions meant, and cautioned them that the sentence they were referring to, which by itself suggested the mRNA vaccines weren't very effective anymore, was actually very focused on infection and wasn't saying anything about their effectiveness against severe covid. In fact, later in that article it was made clear the vaccines still had something like 90% effectiveness against severe covid in the population studied.
But no, I was clearly a tool of a liberal conspiracy; other metrics were thrown at me unrelated to the article; I debunked those as well, showing how they were being interpreted out of context to flip the meaning. At which point I told them I was again leaving the thread; if they wanted a scientific analysis of something from someone with 30 years experience they could let me know, and I would be happy to walk them through it, but that I was done arguing. To which I got a retort that they didn't need someone with a piece of paper; they could read the articles themselves and google any terms they didn't understand. I did not reply.
To Chuck's point, it's a shame that medicine has in many ways become a debatable third rail in this country.
The sad thing is that I respect these people for their technical prowess in the forum's subject matter, but at the same time they are objectively deluded conspiracy theorists. To the point where if I do run into a technical issue and need their help, I am not sure I want to post on that forum anymore, out of concern they may bring up their scorn of me from the other thread.
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You at FB presume that I'm too stupid to have seen the last 3 to 5 years of network news items covering FB privacy breaches?
