I love how people don’t like anything even remotely logical online. It’s like the internet is tuned against trying to understand all sides of an issue.
It leans very, very heavily towards tribalism. I’ve seen it a lot. It’s because you have a lot of choice about who you associate with, so you usually choose someone who agrees with you.
This tribalism leads to you always thinking that you’re right (because you’re only listening to people who agree with you constantly).
That’s one of the big reasons why i personally try to follow and interact with everyone. I don’t want to be surrounded by yes-men all the time. I need people to disagree with me.
This lack of negative feedback is one of the biggest problems with the internet. And like I said, it comes from the choice you have about who you listen to.
So really, the huge connected network of the internet (which connects billions of people) really leads to less communication between groups, less sharing and debating, and more tribalism.
Instead of hearing from everyone on earth, you only hear from the people you agree with. You just hear from more of them, not less.
Basically, one of the big reasons the internet sucks is because most people choose to only hear from people they agree with.
comments
i agree that echo chambers are a big problem, but another difficulty with escaping one is that many groups nowadays resort to hateful/fearful/ignorant/bigoted rhetoric, which means that when you try to hear out/understand their principles/arguments/opinions, you are constantly exposed to this hate, making it very difficult to break free from an echo chamber. i obviously disagree with liberals on a lot of things, but i sometimes feel that when i try (and i do frequently) to listen to viewpoints that differ from my own (usually conservatives), they often resort to hate toward specific groups (Muslims, black people, jews, immigrants, etc.), making it really hard to do this. otherwise, i am happy to listen to, associate with, discuss, and debate politics with people who don’t agree with me, though :)
it’s a legitimate problem that so much hate/division exists, but i think this is a (pretty good) john green video on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVD7yWe-LrE
Ok I know this is a little unecessary to say, but I was like really really thinking the exact same thing
BASED TAKE echo chambers are bad, but if arguing with a group loads or seeing hateful content has a negative affect on you than it’s best not to react/see it