Substantiating a hunch

Ugh, I'm back in writing hell--this time at a Starbucks outside of Montgomery, AL.

Here's the challenge of the moment: how do I position a particular blog whose comment thread I'm reading as an example of lefty conversations that happen a lot? So--specifically talking about one (among dozens) of instances of "Nazi-punching,"* I'm suggesting that the lefty fallout from such conversations online hits some predictable notes.

I've not, alas, done exhaustive research to determine if in fact the notes I'm detecting actually exist across a wide spectrum of lefty online conversations. That's a huge research project in and of itself.

But I think I'm right. I think I can take this one comment thread about this one instance of Nazi-punching from this one blog as exemplary. My assertion (along with an epistemic humility disclaimer) is likely good enough for the kind of work-in-progress roundtable exchange this is. But later on, if I want to use this, I'll need to come up with something better and more substantial than "I think this is true!"

There's no great way to do this, though, outside of a quantitative, comparative study of numerous sites. And even then you'd have questions--how do you choose which sites to compare? Why look only at sites and not tweets, facebook comments, instagram posts, etc? It quickly becomes a research singularity of a rabbit-hole.

I'll think of something.

More tomorrow,

JF

* For the record: I'm against punching people, Nazis included, except in special self-defense scenarios. Explaining why is a whole other set of posts.