Intimacy Does Not Scale

Intimacy Does Not Scale So, on another social network, a familiar pattern emerged earlier today: Person A discussing a matter of personal relevance, with a specific interpretation. Person B, not an immediate party to the conversation, but linked through other participant C, voices an apparently reasonable alternate viewpoint. Person A attacks B, largely for challenging A's narrative. Person B counterattacks A, calling out the hostility. Several others join. (Please trust me that the details and specific conversation do not matter. The pattern is an archetype.) In the ensuing conversation, a friend, online discussion facilitator, my own instance's admin, and a long-time friend from Google+ days, suggests a technical solution: context tags, applied by post authors. TL;DR: I don't think technical fixes will work here. My first inclination on seeing several later posts in the thread was to note that some people operate in "conflict reduction" mode, others in "conflict amplification" ...