Not sure what forum rules are in this section (feel free to remove if it violates them obv) but thought some of you might enjoy this piece I wrote examining the psychological factors in how social media (and internet communication in general) may be fundamentally a divisive, society-fracturing medium: https://apokerplayer.medium.com/how-...s-c8070e0847d4

Much of the focus lately has been on specific product features (e.g., algorithms, button choices, etc.) but this piece looks at fundamental aspects of internet communication that are almost always present and true, no matter the product or platform.

Zach Elwood

yes

yes, cause most indifferent people don't post so you get a ton of extremists posting on both sides. in the past, without social media, you would only see and hear people in your bubbles. social media allows you to hear opinions from anywhere in the world. not only do you have extremists, but you also have people who are trolling and enjoy that aspect of the internet.

Yes

Great read OP, thanks for sharing.

The internet is an amplifier for those with addiction and mental illness and that of course extends to politics.

So yes, social media would accentuate extreme views and political animosity.

Yes OP
Social media = mostly echo chamber if you aren’t open minded.

Yes and now with right wingers being disabled from big tech sites and migrating to alternative social media sites, it becomes even more of an echo chamber with groupthink and few contrarian viewpoints.

Nohands, how do you interpret what d2 means when he says that? What is unsound about it?

d2_e4 and nohands: did either of you read the piece? So many of the angry interactions I see online can be explained by the fact that we speak to each other online in disrespectful, unnuanced ways that we would never use in person. In person, we have a natural give-and-take; online, no matter the platform/app we are using, it's just a bunch of un-nuanced, easily-misunderstood, easily-misinterpreted statements.

I really hope people read the piece, as I feel like, while some of it might be rather obvious (we treat people more badly when we're not in front of them, duh), some of the aspects I don't think are obvious. I've had psych and polarization researchers tell me I make some points in there that they hadn't seen elsewhere. So I do hope people read it, mainly because I feel like unreasonable and extreme polarization may very well be the downfall of our society, as it's been the downfall of so many countries before ours.

Maybe of interest, I talked with Wayne, of LATB, recently, and we tied in some of these concepts with poker beef/fights. Because I do see all of this stuff as being related; as a long time 2+2 visitor, I've seen how social media distorts perspectives and increases animosity, and leads to long-term feuds, and I feel like so much of our political life is now that on a grand scale. Here's that talk with Wayne about social media effects and poker world: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNMY9WI_Hjg

yes and I agree. media companies exist to make money above all else so they must get as many views as possible. Manipulating peoples emotions achieves this goal quicker then presenting non-biased logic. opposite sides fight fire with fire which creates an increasing amount of polarization. even presenting pure objective statistics could lead to be labeled a certain way because logic is not how many people formulate their views. We are largely forced to choose sides.

Yes, I read the piece, and agree with your points in general. However, not everyone is reachable across the divide (as you acknowledge) and nohands holds some of the most extreme and deluded views on this forum. If you think he's "reachable" I urge you to acquaint yourself with some of his work here.

Also, if you think I don't talk like that to people face to face, you clearly underestimate how much of an assh*le I am IRL.

Ha, I hear you. I'm not trying to be all "Kumbaya" here; there are definitely major philosophical differences to be argued over.

Mods have kindly moved religion derail to the science & religion thread. Nohands, I responded to you there.

How does social media posting translate to behavior in society?

I've done a lot of traveling over the past several weeks, and social media is not indicative of society.

The people engaging in the contentiousness online seek it out, and I would not be surprised those folks are predisposed to certain psychological and personality trails (self-included). They also are a fraction of all communication that occurs on social media.

Those talking about extremist don't realize those folks were always likely to become extremist, its just a matter of what flavor.

Finally, these type of pieces have been done on porn, video games, music...pretty much all forms of expression.

I would be interested in finding out how much derp was spread by the invention of the printing press, as its our only historical analogue for rise of teh interwebtubes.

Posting that article here is like holding an AA meeting at a bar.

But, I also say 'yes'.

Yes, good points. That is talked about in there. One path in how it affects rest of society, even non-internet users, is that social media content and conflict is covered as news. The contentiousness spreads. Another potential path is that more people come to be aware of political divides and views via social media, and become more polarized, and they spread that themselves, person to person.

All human communication techs amplify normal human nature in various ways. That’s all I think is happening here. But what I don’t think many people are aware of is how dark human nature is. We tend to assume: hey, we’re bringing people together, that’s got to be good, right? But if there are dark aspects to our group psychology and you put that on amphetamines and speed it up, I think you get some dark effects.

There are many criticisms of books and TV, too, in how they can have some negative effects on humans; some of those criticisms were not wrong; we’ve just had to deal with the effects. In same way, we will have to deal with effects of internet and social media. Internet is just a much bigger effect than anything we’ve created before, I’d say.

Eagles fans.

Damn son, "Hotel California" is one of my favourite songs.

LOL

This misses the key difference, right now, between liberals and conservatives in the US. It's not that conservatives believe nonsense and liberals never do, it's that conservative nonsense is now inseparable from mainstream conservative thought.

Obama did a good job talking about this just this week on 60 Minutes. When you give up completely on truth, you end up with something like the modern republican party, where party leaders are forced to take nonsense like "massive election fraud is why Trump lost" or Obama was not born in the US" seriously even though they know it's false. Agree or disagree with Joe Biden, he isn't talking about fireworks or Melania doubles and that is why it makes absolutely no sense to devout equal effort to left wing nonsense.

I agree completely and I don’t think my piece or these ideas in general take away from those points. I’m not arguing for not finding one side is worse; obviously there’s always going to be a worse side in any situation. I’m just examining factors that help lead to these situations. That’s the tough thing about trying to talk about underlying factors; it’s easily perceived as making false equivalencies or not recognizing the true issues. Trust me; I’m very disturbed by the fact that, for example, half of Trump supporters apparently believe top democrats are in a pedophile sex trafficking ring. As I often say: conservatives elected the worst of themselves to high office; democrats haven’t done that, not by a long shot.

Are you sure about that? Seems more like the median.

Yeah probably closer to that. You can def find worse. My bad.