Then come the “saviors” of the internet that blame it on illegal aliens, women having rights etc because according to their logic we had it good in the 70s so we must reverse everything back to the way it was in 70s.
The problem isnt just the “saviors” and their message. Those people have always existed, always had the same blaming strategy. The problem is that the internet has made it easier for those messages to reach a global audience, has made the messenger faceless and unaccountable and given the presumption of legitimacy, has made it easier to get absorbed into isolated communities saturated in this kind of messaging, and made it easier to warp the worldview of the community to something antithetical to reality. If you run into a dude saying wacky shit in a bar, and he just seems to be some drunk asshole, you’re not likely to give him much credence against all of the other messaging around you. But if you find an entire community saying the things he says, and they welcome you in, and you get a sense of comradery and purpose from it, that same messaging holds a lot of sway over you.
Isolation has always been the secret sauce to radicalization. Exposure is the antidote. Humans have always had cultural feedback loops that reinforce a specific worldview. And meeting with other cultures often causes conflicts when those worldview collide. The promise of the internet was a more global culture wherein we have a shared reinforced world view. But that didn’t really happen for everyone. What we are seeing now is that same feedback loop phenomenon in a digital space, but often with dramatically different worldviews, even within the same local physical space. That still causes conflict when those communities collide, both online and in the real world, but now that conflict happens everywhere, even in your own household sometimes.
We’re losing physical communities, friends and family for our online echo chamber communities. People are definitely driven more into those digital communities as their physical life is more of a struggle financially, socially, etc. Relieving those struggles would certainly go a long way in remediating the problem, but it won’t go away.
The problem isnt just the “saviors” and their message. Those people have always existed, always had the same blaming strategy. The problem is that the internet has made it easier for those messages to reach a global audience, has made the messenger faceless and unaccountable and given the presumption of legitimacy, has made it easier to get absorbed into isolated communities saturated in this kind of messaging, and made it easier to warp the worldview of the community to something antithetical to reality. If you run into a dude saying wacky shit in a bar, and he just seems to be some drunk asshole, you’re not likely to give him much credence against all of the other messaging around you. But if you find an entire community saying the things he says, and they welcome you in, and you get a sense of comradery and purpose from it, that same messaging holds a lot of sway over you.
Isolation has always been the secret sauce to radicalization. Exposure is the antidote. Humans have always had cultural feedback loops that reinforce a specific worldview. And meeting with other cultures often causes conflicts when those worldview collide. The promise of the internet was a more global culture wherein we have a shared reinforced world view. But that didn’t really happen for everyone. What we are seeing now is that same feedback loop phenomenon in a digital space, but often with dramatically different worldviews, even within the same local physical space. That still causes conflict when those communities collide, both online and in the real world, but now that conflict happens everywhere, even in your own household sometimes.
We’re losing physical communities, friends and family for our online echo chamber communities. People are definitely driven more into those digital communities as their physical life is more of a struggle financially, socially, etc. Relieving those struggles would certainly go a long way in remediating the problem, but it won’t go away.