False flag operations. Purposeful provocateurs. Seeing a lot of that lately. The thing to remember -- and this comes before the time there was a net -- is that

False flag operations. Purposeful provocateurs. Seeing a lot of that lately. The thing to remember -- and this comes before the time there was a net -- is that the vast majority of people are nice, socially intelligent, and well-meaning. What the net is doing is convincing us that those in the out-group are simple-minded fools being led around by evil demagogues. That is not the case. But the net is not doing that because of bad people on the net. The net is doing that because humans are predisposed to consume lots of content that tells them this. The fault is internal to each of us. The net is just automating the ability of content providers to take advantage of it.