At first it was for community; having lived my life in hard red regions, it was a relief to find like-minded people. Of course, at that point, I was a moderate at DU. Interestingly enough, over the years, without ever having changed my positions on issues or my political outlook, I'm now the despised left-wing. I liked DU better when it self-identified as left-wing.
Over time, I showed up to keep up with people I'd met and enjoyed chatting with. I discovered that DU was not a fount of political integrity, and that we weren't so like-minded after all. For a long time, I still tried to have political conversations; to listen to people, consider their pov, and respond thoughtfully.
Occasionally I still do that, but not often. 2016 has broken whatever respect I had left for mainstream DU. As a matter of fact, I went from having zero people on ignore to having 76 people on ignore, and 15 of the most common terms in my trash can, including Obama, HRC, Clinton, Hillary and Trump. That doesn't mean they don't keep showing up anyway, but I don't see as many of them. I'm still interested in talking about issues on the rare occasion that it happens without dragging the rest into it.
I still like to keep up with the people here I actually have political respect for. So I check in once a day or so.
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