We have Ignore, Alert, and Hide Thread. Now "Unrecommend." How fragile are you people? [View All]

[Political Heretic]

No site in the universe gives more options for hyper sensitive fragile hearts to avoid all forms to discussion or disagreement than this one. That's not exactly something to be proud of, in my book.

It's embarrassing the wide number of tools this site gives to marginalize different points of view, when they don't break any of the DU rules but still unsettle some over privileged DUers.

I believe that this is the first (and last) thread I've ever made exactly about the unrecommend "feature," and I made it only because Skinner has posted that its here to say. How silly and childish. Is it the end of the world? Of course not. It just means that the "Latest" page is now better than the "Greatest" page for me.

As I've said before, maybe it is desirable for the clique of mainstream members to have a page where they can quickly browse all their establishment opinion without facing any difference or challenge. Or put nicer, maybe a page where the "majority" can browse "majority" opinion is desirable for some.

But if DU had any sort of intellectual honesty, it would rename that page from "Greatest" to "Most Popular" - because that's all it is anymore, a giant, childish popularity contest. Honestly, I didn't know until this move that the "Greatest" page was such a big deal. The threshold was always pretty low for getting on it, I liked it because it was a snapshot of a lot of diverse topics and opinion on one page.

Now its just bland, homogenized silliness. The evolution of DU into bland, mainstream and gutless has been really sad to watch for me. And yet, unless I'm kicked out for my criticism in this post, I'll likely continue to post here. It is one of the few places on the internet this big that creates the opportunity for broader topical discussion in sub-forums.

Sigh... I guess I just liked this place better when it was underground than I do now that its mainstream. And yet in many ways its the only game in town, so...