My idea of creating a website for political debate is not a new one. I first had this idea around the beginning of 2021. This is right after the election of Joe Biden, and I had taken issue with the political discussions of that election cycle. The biggest problem I had was the lack of formality that plagued many important conversations. Rather than begin empirical, most people regurgitated the same lies and myths spouted by, admittedly, both sides of the political spectrum. Being in the midst of the Covid pandemic, I knew the importance of scientific research in political debates, and I had witnessed firsthand how easily such things were discarded by the less educated people in this country. The fact that some would so easily condemn others to die in order to preserve some sense of freedom, a faux independence, as if being unvaccinated was somehow supposed to be this grand protest against government tyranny, was ridiculous and infuriating.
Besides the influence that months of quarantine had on this matter, I thought that the ecosystem of social media was especially to blame. The tendency of websites like Twitter and Facebook to push controversial takes, even if they were dangerously false, to the front page was a likely cause for the notable rise in extremist beliefs around the world at the time. Combined with being trapped inside for months, with everyone on internet constantly it's no surprise that these ideas would catch on so rapidly.
Facebook and Twitter aren't designed for political discussion, yet they have become ground zero for some of the most important ideas in contemporary politics. Rather than encourage honest and factual conversation on issues affecting millions, they instead highlight extreme thoughts which don't bother to justify themselves. Tweets and posts are meant to be short and easily digestible, so typically interactions involving politics would boil down to either liking the posts you already agree with, or leaving some hateful and uninsightful comment expressing disapproval on the one's you don't. Either way, the post gets engagement and is pushed in front of more and more people. The effect here is that you are given immediate satisfaction with said interaction. In either case, your current beliefs are feel more justified. The algorithms which dictate what you see on these websites foster echo chambers which only preserve the beliefs of those caught in their current. The desire to question what you believe never appears when you are constantly reminded that you are correct, regardless of whatever belief you might hold.
Not to be mistaken, I don't think that social media algorithms are entirely to blame here. I fell for the same trap myself. Considering the circumstances, the Covid pandemic brought about uncertainty to the lives of many people whom had never experienced such a dramatic change in society, it's not hard to see why so many found themselves the victim of online misinformation. Many people look to social media not to question their everyday lives, but to find a sense of certainty to grasp onto. People look to politics as a structure for explaining the world around them, not to different from how some may look to religion for the same effect. When we are surrounded by external conflicts, the last thing we need is another internal one. This psychological necessity tends to override rationality in most cases; it's why so many people happened to latch onto these wild conspiracies surrounding the pandemic, it just happened to be the explanation which comforted them the most at the time. Again, this is not to dissimilar to how some may find themselves religious following something traumatic in their life.
This is where my idea came about. While this whole process seems natural, and while I can't blame anyone especially for falling into the social media trap, we obviously must attempt to avoid it. No one wants to admit that they're being irrational, so we must take steps to eliminate or discourage the possibility of irrationality. My idea was to make a website, a political forum, which would encourage civil debate based in evidence rather than blind rhetoric. The website wouldn't have any likes or upvotes, that way ideas would be weighted evenly, and it would be the responsibility of the user to determine the truthfulness of each post. I had actually worked on this project idea for awhile at the time, and had finished it to about 90 percent completion. It was called "Discere", meaning "to learn" in Latin, since I was sixteen and thought that would make me sound smart, but also because I had hoped it would appropriately set the tone for what I was trying to encourage: meaningful conversation based in evidence, not controversy.
I never finished the project because I had some sense of doubt over whether my grand philosophy would be shared by anyone else. Anyone who actually cares about reading scientific papers and crafting long, logical posts likely had better things to do than use a website like mine. Four years later, I am trying this idea again. I still have my doubts about whether this will work, or if anyone will actually care enough to read these posts or write their own. I have nothing to lose though, and nothing better to do with this website, so, here we are. Take this as my manifesto for the purpose of this website. Hopefully someone will be inspired by this. Even if no one else uses PoopSock for what I intended, at least I can say it makes writing posts a lot easier.
Jackson (March 25, 2025, 9:38 p.m.)
To be clear, I don't necessarily want PoopSock to just be politics. You are free to post whatever you want on here. I just wanted to state my "vision" so to speak for what I had initially imagined that this redesign would be used for. Above anything, I just want people to use PoopSock, regardless of whatever purpose I intended.