I'm really not all that sure this fits here, but I think most of the people who come here should have a look at this. Move if necessary. I do think debate material can come from this however, such as what is a vocal minority and what isn't.

Vocal minorities. They drown out the voices of the quieter majority and paint an ugly stereotype on a particular group. Or the media covers them so much -because weird is interesitng- that they seem like they're the majority.
Gays all being flamboyant perverts, feminists all being misandriest jerks, compeietive gamers all being a-holes(though quite frankly assole gamers particularly of the Stop Having Fun Guy type are getting louder and louder), casual gamers all being scrubs, black people being mostly criminals, and so on.
I realize how stupid it sounds to put racism next to a much less serious prejudice, but still.

How many times have you let the impressions made on you by a vocal minority effect your opinions? Reading this article might educate you a bit on this phenomina.

I think the jury's still out on the "Most Runescape players are jerks" belief.

i agree wholeheartedly that this is a problem.

especially in the recent debate about Health Care Reform....i honestly can't tell if the majority of conservatives honestly believe that the government is trying to pull the plug on grandma or any of the other odd arguments i hear about from town halls

and as for your last comment....i think "Most Runescape players are nerds" is a more prevalent opinion among non-runescape players

I actually think alot of these stereotypes are true to an extent. Obviously a stereotype is wrong, that is fairly well understood and established, but sometimes a stereotype can reflect a large part of a group of people. We all have our weaknesses, and unfortunately one of those is to judge people, I guess when we put others in groups in our minds, they get put into groups in real life. Social and economic groups can reflect this. For example black people tend to be poorer than white, or more crime is done by a higher proportion of black people. This is wrong, and it only happens because we see people in groups, not as individuals. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6753695.stm). But it does make you wonder why the figures are like this:



And yes, gays are definitely flamboyant pervs, well no..but to an extent yes.

Well of course some gays are flamboyant pervs. Otherwise the stereotype wouldn't exist. It's just they're no the majority. They're just the ones that get noticed because they're the loudest.

No, I'm pretty sure the wackier beliefs are in a minority...the same minority that's pulling for HUCKABEE/PALIN '12 LULZ

But I think the majority don't want healthcare reform, or at least it's too close to call.

Anywho, as far as that goes, Obama needs to do something to recover his crap-scraping approval rating.

I think that among the adult population, a vocal minority is libertarianism...I'm not convinced it's a minority among people able to vote in the next five years, but among current voters, libertarians are probably a minority in their voting.

The key fault with political minorities, though, when going on party lines, is that you don't know who someone is actually supporting.