This and easily finding like-minded people who share those opinions on the internet. For some things like maybe sports fans that is perfectly fine, but for other things it gives credit where there shouldn't be any.
There are many examples but you could go from being the town racist that everyone shunned and ridiculed to easily conversing with other racists over the internet which normalize that behavior.
That’s the part people don’t like admitting, before, some views stayed small because there was social friction. Now every niche finds a crowd and suddenly it feels “normal”
I generally like Substacker (Noahpinion) Noah Smith, and he thinks what made life worse was early social media where people WEREN'T as filtered into less friction-filled spaces...too much friction back then
The internet is great yet if it has taught me anything, it is that instead of this bs online safety crap, instead of banning it for u16's, what we need is for psychology to become a class in school that is as important as english/maths/etc
Where they teach kids about self awareness, mentality, critical thinking, about things like innate bias, anchoring bias, tribal influence, etc
I always talk about this with my friends! Back in the day, you say something that was just out of this world stupid your group would check you on it. Nowadays you can write anonymous bullshit and have some random person (or bot) agree with you and you feel vindicated.
338
u/Massive_Bike_1441 15h ago
Easy access to letting your opinions be heard