Social media amplifies people’s worst traits. From Paul Rosenberg at freemansperspective.com:
Sure, we’ve all seen this in practice and people have developed catchy terms for it, like echo chamber, but the polarization effect of social media has been demonstrated scientifically. In fact, some of us were warning about it a long time ago. And while I can no longer find my original documentation on the subject, I can tell you precisely how it works.
The One-Room Phenomenon
What researchers discovered twenty-some years ago was that putting people of the same opinion into a single room had a striking effect: The opinion in the room moved, inevitably, to the extreme. And this effect was the same no matter what the original opinion may have been.
So, then:
- If you put a bunch of right-wingers in a room, the shared opinion in the room will become stridently right-wing.
- If you put a bunch of left-wingers in a room, the shared opinion in the room will become stridently left-wing.
- If you put a bunch of save-the-planet advocates in a room, their opinion will become all the more adamantly save-the-planet.
- If you put in a bunch of the-planet-is-just-fine advocates, their opinion will become all the more adamantly the-planet-is-just-fine.
This happens because of human insecurity and status-seeking: Anyone taking a contrary opinion (advocating “right-wing” economics in the left-wing room, for example) is instantly branded as a traitor and suffers heavy shaming within the group.
