Politics in nonpolitical online forums and communities

I play chess on Yahoo pretty often. There's a lounge area for people to chat. When people talk intelligently, they often talk politics. In the last couple of months, I've noticed a definite trend away from Bush. The proBush sentiment used to dominate most of the discussions, but now the players who had proBush handles are never around, the proBush players rarely speak up, and the people who oppose Bush often dominate the boards.

Today, someone from Florida talked about unemployment, someone from Tennessee about the high price of housing, and others talked about Iraq and the falling stock market. They all had one thing in common: They don't want Bush to get a second term. I'm an optimist who is pessimistic about Kerry's chances, but if the change going on in the chess forum reflects a change going on in society, then something exciting is going on.

Do any of you belong to nonpolitical forums or communities where politics is sometimes discussed? Have you noticed any changes?

forgive me if I'm ignorant about this, but I'd guess that the type who goes online to play chess is a bit more intellectual than the general public. But I do think things are getting bad enough where even joe six pack is starting to get it.

97/98.

It was a planned attack.

Of course, those were the ones who voted for Bush because the Rock said to . . .

I play hearts, literati and spades among others. The hearts and spades players are NOT, I repeat NOT, intellects. However, I also see a lot of anti-Bush talk in the lounges. It's great to see. I've joined in a few times.

And then there was the time I was about to stop playing and a player came to the table with a pro-Bush name. I was tired but stayed and vowed to beat him. I never said a word about politics but I opened up a can of whoopass and he never knew what hit him.

It felt so good to beat him, I smoked a cigarette afterwards. :evilgrin:

Lots of freeper types. The liberals seem a bit more numerous but less willing to engage in politics flamewars.

has HUGE arguments about politics. There's a very wide mix of people there, ideologically and nationally, but man it's something to see how the line in the sand (Dubya) neatly sorts folks out into us and them. (Well, there's a few folks who stand on the line or stay out of it, but the Americans are ruthless with each other.)