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I recently blocked a childhood friend on Facebook over this. They shared one of those stupid Biden stickers with a $5 a gallon price Tag.
Their point was, of course, the democrats made it worse than Trump ever did. I don't know how this happened. How people got so turned around. Arguing with him seemed pointless. Pointing out that Biden didn't do that. Pointing out that it's going to get worse. Pointing out that democrats in general are just status quo bitches...
I just blocked him. I can't fix whatever shit has pickled peoples brains.
We're living in the disinformation age, where people silo themselves in media, including news, that reinforces whatever they want to believe. Eventually their views will run into cold, hard reality, but even then some will continue to live in denial.
Yep. I try not to do that. Discussion is good when done in good faith. It's too bad the disinformation age also has AI agents and censorship. Man. It's just wild. The censorship. We educated ourselves and now we have the next generation growing up in slop but not knowing their in slop. Or worse, knowing but having know way to escape it as all methods of escape are cut off. So many sides of digital enlightenment being attacked. I don't know if we'll escape it. Information has become entertainment. Activism is just performance.
People aren't mad enough.
I hope you're right though. I hope we find a way. Likely the US is fucked but that doesn't mean humanity is fucked. Action still has inpact. It's hard to remember that, but it does.
Ironically, sites like this very one we're on now seem tailor-made to enhance that effect.
Like what someone said? Upvote and respond with supportive comments. Don't like it? Downvote, denigrate, block, defederate. Eventually people sort themselves out into communities where they "belong" and stop seeing what other people are saying, and they start to think that everyone shares their views.
I try not to lock myself into a community like that. I like data and fact supported by evidence. I tend to filter myself as needed. Federation has a tribalism problem but I haven't seen it as toxicity present in most of the main spaces. The fringe server like hexbear...sure. I keep my nose there too. They're funny. The smart phone and social media in general has wrecked our ability to self regulate in public digital spaces. And the algorithm broke the upvote system that used to help show a level of class solidarity between people in different backgrounds. I can't say how much was intentional and how much we slipped into, but we all need to make an effort to regulate ourselves.
Tribalism is the enemy of progress.
Even more ironically, my point is illustrated by my comment itself. It's already getting downvoted heavily.
Guess that's not an opinion that people want to see here, eh?
Yeah, I'm tired and got snippy myself. It's late and I should be asleep. There's a thread-bare line between keeping a line of dialogue open and being suseptible to brainwashing. It's hard to self-regulate sometimes.
Sorry about that. The instinct to just bark at someone online is pavlovian. Trained into us by doom scrooling and positive reinforcement from having the behavior upvoted.
I wrote a paper on it actually. More people should try to be aware of how many ways they're getting happy chemicals from comments and upvotes.
I try to keep social media (in general) framed as a casino.
I'm with you. Village idiots with an audience become emboldened