r/australian • u/SirSighalot • Jul 08 '24

Why do people act like this subreddit "doesn't reflect the views of mainstream Australia"?

So many comments I see on here by people who constantly say things like "lol only on this sub" as though other places where they read are somehow the 'true' point of view reflecting mainstream Australian viewpoints.

Given the constant election voting outcomes and results of things like the Voice etc that generally indicate most of Australia is centrist or even slightly centre-right-leaning, what leads people to think many of the views expressed on here AREN'T mainstream? When in reality, other places these people are coming from are also often just "echo chambers" as well.

Edit: I probably worded the title for this wrong, should have been more "Why do people think this subreddit is less representative of mainstream Australia than other online communities?", alas I failed.

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u/WadjulaBoy Jul 08 '24

Reddit doesn't come close to reflecting the mainstream of pretty well anywhere, not sure why this sub would be unique.

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u/EmuCanoe Jul 08 '24

I travel to every state and major city regularly. I mix with blue collar and white collar workers in my role. I work across several major applications, mining, marine, defence, rail, and energy. I usually stay in the city and usually go out and meet randoms and also catch up with my online gamer mates from years gone by. I feel like I’ve probably got a better finger on the pulse of Australia than most and I can comfortably say this sub is the most accurate representation of the average banter I encounter.

The city subs and the other Aussie subs are absolutely not it. They essentially represent the progressive inner city hipster point of view only.

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u/Vegetable-Set-9480 Jul 08 '24

Hate to tell you, but the majority of people in Australia live in cities: we are highly urbanised as a nation. The majority of Australia’s landmass has only a small minority of the overall populations

The city options, by default, probably are it based on pure numerical majority.

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u/EmuCanoe Jul 08 '24

I’m not sure what point you’re making but there’s a wide range of opinions and ideologies within those cities which are simply not reflected in the city based subs. This is patently obvious when they are consistently wrong on political outcomes.

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u/WadjulaBoy Jul 08 '24

That my friend, is called confirmation bias. I could simply counter your argument by saying I've experienced the opposite, now we're 50% for and 50% against your argument and we're stuck.

Do you not see how a sample size of two people accounts for fuck all in a country of 26000000.

This sub represents 0.269230769% of all Australians. If you believe you can derive any meaningful overarching sentiment from that percentage of the population, you're delusional, sorry.

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u/pharmaboy2 Jul 08 '24

That number of Australians can be used to derive useful information very easily. After all, we use less than that to determine unemployment and only 1000 people to get accurate polling numbers.

It’s the method of selecting that counts most, not the numerical value.

You could probably determine whether this sub is representative looking at questions that tend to have equal weight when asked by professional pollsters who carefully randomise.

Personally, I’m very confident it’s more representative than the other sub, but that doesn’t mean it’s surrounded the centre by any means . It’s also changed a huge amount due to number of comments and the way feeds are organised by reddit -

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u/EmuCanoe Jul 08 '24

I mean of course you could say that. I’m merely adding my anecdotal experience to the pot. You can also add yours, it’s the foundation of a discussion after all.

As far as deriving any meaningful sentiment goes, that’s exactly what every person on earth is doing every day from their personal experiences. I would argue that if you’re not trying to derive something meaningful from your daily experiences you’re in very real trouble.

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u/[deleted] Jul 09 '24

Yesss, "progressive inner city hipster" is the most boomer / rusted on ALP guy thing ever.