[happythebob]

Unfortunately I think it's a combination of popularity and exposing what happens in upvoted systems as opposed to discussion forums; the lowest common denominator rules.

"Both sides" fallacies, typically having a political meaning, are naturally going to get exploited on social media sites where both sides upvote the poorly baked, emotionally charged fallacies.

It is alarming to me as a statnerd that the NBA and NFL communities seem to be getting dumber as time goes on, not smarter, but I'm not positive this is a Reddit problem (but possibly, due to how mainstream it is now).

[TMWNN]

>It is alarming to me as a statnerd that the NBA and NFL communities seem to be getting dumber as time goes on

In addition to what sunspark said, I've heard that the average /r/nba person doesn't actually watch games, and only participates for the memes.

[Sunspark]

The NBA community is just for entertainment purposes not serious sports research and discussion. It has 5 million nephews. If 1% of that number decide to participate on any given day, that's going to be 50,000 nephews out in force.