People who like to talk politics absolutely everywhere have ruined every single social network I know. "No politics" is probably the most intelligent way to go.
> I finally realized today why politics and religion yield such uniquely useless discussions.
> As a rule, any mention of religion on an online forum degenerates into a religious argument. Why? Why does this happen with religion and not with Javascript or baking or other topics people talk about on forums?
> What's different about religion is that people don't feel they need to have any particular expertise to have opinions about it. All they need is strongly held beliefs, and anyone can have those. No thread about Javascript will grow as fast as one about religion, because people feel they have to be over some threshold of expertise to post comments about that. But on religion everyone's an expert.
> Then it struck me: this is the problem with politics too. Politics, like religion, is a topic where there's no threshold of expertise for expressing an opinion. All you need is strong convictions.
The problem is that what is considered “politics” has vastly expanded over the past decade or so. Most controversial topics today wouldn’t have been considered “politics” in the past.
In context of habr, even asking "why'd my internet/corporate vpn stopped working?" or "why did I suddenly get summoned for a medical checkup to enlistment office?" are politics.
No politics is only feasible if your life or your existence isn't considered political in itself, or maybe if you can hide how you challenge the status quo without harming yourself.
Which begins with...
> I finally realized today why politics and religion yield such uniquely useless discussions.
> As a rule, any mention of religion on an online forum degenerates into a religious argument. Why? Why does this happen with religion and not with Javascript or baking or other topics people talk about on forums?
> What's different about religion is that people don't feel they need to have any particular expertise to have opinions about it. All they need is strongly held beliefs, and anyone can have those. No thread about Javascript will grow as fast as one about religion, because people feel they have to be over some threshold of expertise to post comments about that. But on religion everyone's an expert.
> Then it struck me: this is the problem with politics too. Politics, like religion, is a topic where there's no threshold of expertise for expressing an opinion. All you need is strong convictions.