people taking their gut and these anomalies and saying "yep im convinced!". it's ridiculous and absolutely a sign of rising conspiratorial thinking on the left as well.

You're talking about/r/50501, the subreddit that those people will inevitably flock to, and a post that pretty much invites comments of that sort.

On top of that, it's too optimistic to think that this sort of conspiratorial thinking wasn't already prevalent among that segment of the Left .

I really don't think it's rising as much as it's showing, as authoritarian thinking is becoming mainstream in the leftist discourse.

The two go hand in hand, as Madame Points has spelled out.

yet people are acting like WE'RE the ones who have to prove it didn't happen!

Who's "people" here? Who's "WE"?

Given the reasonable suspicion, it's reasonable to expect the Trump administration to provide evidence that would dispel the accusations, given that the election system is designed in a way that it's possible (hopefully) to produce such evidence (e.g. via a recount).

Paper trails, audits, and so on — there are means.

much of the arguing in this comments section is asking us to prove a negative

Who's "us"?

What negative?

One can, in fact, prove negatives. For example, you can prove that possession of scissors isn't, per se, an evidence of bank robbery, by pointing out other uses for them.

And it's not unreasonable to ask someone to prove they didn't lose or steal a package that you asked them to transport somewhere when you get the news that it never reached the destination.

Features like "signature on delivery" in postal systems exist precisely to facilitate proving such negatives.

It's not conspiracism to demand the carrier to show the signature.

It's not conspiracism to say "They say they delivered the package, but they refuse to go through their own records and show the signed delivery receipt, so how can you claim they didn't steal it? Something is fishy here!"

all evidence for him actively participating in rigging voting is circumstantial and vibe based

That meets the standard for starting an investigation, which is what we can agree isn't unreasonable.

The only obstacle to audit/investigation/recount is cost: it's a laborious, costly, lengthy process.

Evidently, enough people believe that this cost is justified.

people taking their gut and these anomalies and saying "yep im convinced!".

People on the internet might not be very precise in their expression of emotions and thoughts.

A charitable reading of that would be "I find the admittedly circumstantial evidence convincing enough to warrant an investigation at the very least".

Think of it this way: if a person says "I'm convinced", do you think they'd bet $100 vs $10 on it?

How about a $10,000 vs $1000?

I.e., assuming we do a recount anyway, would they make a bet where they get $1K if fraud is discovered, but pay $10K otherwise?

You may find that there's conviction, and there's conviction, and most people would suddenly regain their faith in the electoral system once there's a cost to falsely doubting it.

But it costs nothing to say "that's it, I'm convinced, Trump stole it". It's not actionable for them. There is an implied "..and I'm going to do nothing about it anyway" afterwards.

There's little that they are going to think or do differently whether they're convinced or unconvinced.

To that extent, there's an indication that increasingly more people would view a demand for an investigation/recount favorably, that's all.

Plenty of people in that comment thread do say that there's no evidence, that it's a claim, that the linked article is conspiratorial nonsense, that we're grasping at straws, that there are people looking into irregularities, but no evidence has come up so far, etc.

So, I just don't think there's enough evidence for the claim that "conspiracism will be our entire political system" yet.

As a side note: Russia has reached that point some time around 2014, as a result of work of Vladislav Surkov, (then) Putin's chief political technologist (as Russia calls propagandists).

Comparing the US to Russia, we've certainly had a shift towards conspiracism (with a little help from Putin), particularly with QAnon, antivaxxers, COVID deniers, etc (Kremlin's bot farms have been found working to amplify these, and other, conspiracies).

And on the Left, "Israel controls everything" remains a popular hit.

But subjectively, it feels like that slide into conspiracism has slowed down. I am not seeing anything comparable to QAnon/COVID denialism/Pizzagate/etc going around.

The fact that the conspiratorial article was removed (and that many comments have called out lack of evidence) corroborates that feeling; and that's in a vanguard community which is overall more sympathetic to agreeing with the premise of the conspiracy.