Social media is creating echo-chamber "bubbles" that polarize us politically

It is common now to gather online with those who think as you do. Social media is said to be responsible for this extreme polarisation of views. Here, you can hang out with those who will reinforce your worldview by adding their own frisson of outrage, even if that view is that the world is flat. Don’t @ me, by the way, because I will block you. That is my prerogative. This mode of being has moved from online to the real world: many people behave as though they can block their fellow citizens.

This is the lesson of Brexit, which has brought about a maniacal state of affairs in which anecdotes have replaced data and dishonesty is not merely tolerated but applauded.

Trump says racist things, yet parts of the media are too cowardly to call them racist. Johnson lies, yet his mendacity is compared to clowning. Liberals may despair – to each other – but these are the same liberals who discuss the “white working class” and won’t see the working class as multi-ethnic; they are the same liberals who didn’t see Brexit coming, the same liberals who promised to leave Westminster more but never do. So, forgive me if I don’t pay them much attention, for I know I am part of that bubble. Indeed, when I went to work for a more rightwing newspaper – I was ostracised by part of the left – it was because I have long believed it is important to talk to Conservative voters, because I believe politics to be about persuasion. Changing hearts and minds and all that jazz.

Now, however, the bubble machine creates a politics of purity: either Corbyn is the second coming, or – as the millennarian cult of the crazed Brexiters would have it – Brexit will herald utopia. Both are delusional.

Ben Reilly wrote:

It is common now to gather online with those who think as you do. Social media is said to be responsible for this extreme polarisation of views. Here, you can hang out with those who will reinforce your worldview by adding their own frisson of outrage, even if that view is that the world is flat. Don’t @ me, by the way, because I will block you. That is my prerogative. This mode of being has moved from online to the real world: many people behave as though they can block their fellow citizens.

This is the lesson of Brexit, which has brought about a maniacal state of affairs in which anecdotes have replaced data and dishonesty is not merely tolerated but applauded.

Trump says racist things, yet parts of the media are too cowardly to call them racist. Johnson lies, yet his mendacity is compared to clowning. Liberals may despair – to each other – but these are the same liberals who discuss the “white working class” and won’t see the working class as multi-ethnic; they are the same liberals who didn’t see Brexit coming, the same liberals who promised to leave Westminster more but never do. So, forgive me if I don’t pay them much attention, for I know I am part of that bubble. Indeed, when I went to work for a more rightwing newspaper – I was ostracised by part of the left – it was because I have long believed it is important to talk to Conservative voters, because I believe politics to be about persuasion. Changing hearts and minds and all that jazz.

Now, however, the bubble machine creates a politics of purity: either Corbyn is the second coming, or – as the millennarian cult of the crazed Brexiters would have it – Brexit will herald utopia. Both are delusional.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jul/23/how-social-media-echo-chambers-fuelled-the-rise-of-boris-johnson

We even see that here; I find people in general less and less tolerant of people who disagree with them, these days. "Oh, this site has become too this-wing or that-wing, I'm just going to leave."

I guess it is a challenge to listen to people we don't agree with, but I think we'd better be up to that challenge or society is doomed. We'd better stop retreating into places that make us feel good because everybody agrees with us there.

Maddog wrote:

Ben Reilly wrote:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jul/23/how-social-media-echo-chambers-fuelled-the-rise-of-boris-johnson

We even see that here; I find people in general less and less tolerant of people who disagree with them, these days. "Oh, this site has become too this-wing or that-wing, I'm just going to leave."

I guess it is a challenge to listen to people we don't agree with, but I think we'd better be up to that challenge or society is doomed. We'd better stop retreating into places that make us feel good because everybody agrees with us there.

I follow sites of every political vein.

I don't want to act like Wolf.

Ben Reilly wrote:
We even see that here; I find people in general less and less tolerant of people who disagree with them, these days.

"Oh, this site has become too this-wing or that-wing, I'm just going to leave."

WhoseYourWolfie wrote:

Maddog wrote:

Ben Reilly wrote:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jul/23/how-social-media-echo-chambers-fuelled-the-rise-of-boris-johnson

We even see that here; I find people in general less and less tolerant of people who disagree with them, these days. "Oh, this site has become too this-wing or that-wing, I'm just going to leave."

I guess it is a challenge to listen to people we don't agree with, but I think we'd better be up to that challenge or society is doomed. We'd better stop retreating into places that make us feel good because everybody agrees with us there.

I follow sites of every political vein.

I don't want to act like Wolf.

I would much rather be that noisy and obnoxious prat who consistently stands up  for the disabled, the downtrodden, workers' rights, and our threatened environment...

Then a pathetic, blustering and clueless dopey redneck like you, Dopey Dawg --  laughingly describing yourself as "libertarian" while preaching small government and personal freedoms, but inevitably ending up sounding like a big-mouthed self-serving bully defending the bigots, greedy bosses and big business..

Raggamuffin wrote:It can be fun to be on a forum where you are opposed to almost every single person, but if it gets too much - well birds of a feather flock together.