How Democrats are Losing the Brightest Young Minds

athenachrome

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Friday July 28, 2006 · 4:50 PM PDT

2006/07/28 · 16:50

With close to 100,000 users, DailyKos is the top political blog. Gaia Online, however, the largest english-speaking forum on the internet, has 4.2 million users. Gaia is a place for (mostly) teenagers to talk about everything under the sun. I am 15 years old and an active Gaian.

Just like every other large community, Gaia has a wide range of subcultures. Each topic-related 'subforum' attracts a certain type of person. I found my niche in the brainy Writer's Forum. "WF regs" have zero tolerance for bullshit (We're writers, we've got real good at detecting it), and a penchant for snark. We apply our razor wit to everything, be it current events or insanity from the depths of the internet.

For some reason, though, politics is a taboo subject. If someone tries to bring it up, the post is ignored, or maybe greeted with stale Bush jokes. There's none of the discussion that crops up everywhere else, and this surprised me. The WF regs aren't your typical bunch of unconcerned teenagers. So I asked the group some questions, and uncovered a startling reason why the most intelligent people I know are shutting out politics. Read More

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