Got sucked into a discussion about whether social media radicalizes people.
To the extent that this happens on the left, I think it's a good thing. We are facing massive, existential problems, and there is a lot of denial that is coming from the top. Powerful people want us complacent.
Climate change, rising fascism, wealth disparities... social media has made me more aware of these things, and I'm glad. If anything, we're not being radicalized enough.
@charliejane Tumblr helped tons of folks amp up their inner queerness to 11, and that's 💯 a good thing.
I'm sure that's "radicalizing" to a ton of self-identified nazi-sympathizing centrists. To everyone else, it's just introspection, developing identies, and not forcing their problems on everyone else.
@charliejane Social Media turns out to be our civilization's Naked Lunch moment (as per William Burroughs)—that frozen moment in time when you can't un-see what's on the end of the fork poised in front of your mouth, when the essential brutality of the world is unavoidable and impossible to look away from.
(How we individually respond to it,now ...)
Agree with both of the above.
IMHO it also contributes to the breakdown of our society's abilene paradox, which (to those who still buy into it) can look like radicalisation.
@passenger
Thank you for reminding me of Abilene paradox. I will now go and think about it in the context of this article from Nate Silver.
https://www.natesilver.net/p/twitter-elon-and-the-indigo-blob
My take so far is that useful learning, (in this context I mean where a social media participant becomes informed and then deciding to absorb it into the self), depends on how one is aware or otherwise of the bubble/biases in the source. Aka beware the echo chamber. But like I said I need time to consider the implications.
@charliejane I think the problem with radicalisation is more of a far right thing, where people need to be convinced to believe a million incompatible conspiracy theories.
When I talk to someone who's been a subject of this, I feel they're talking past me. They're incoherent, afraid of everything, and just really really mad.
This is not something that, for instance, anarchist social media posts can do to you.
@charliejane Nothing is more likely to radicalise than a political class not engaging with the material conditions of society and being increasingly isolated from the lived truth of people.
Here in australia our major parties have shrinking membership and bureaucracies that take more and more power from their membership. The result has been a steady increase in third party votes, as you would expect, and these parties are further from the, party perceived, centre.
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