IMO you should never be shocked by what you read on social media, if you keep in mind that you are seeing the most shocking of the millions of reactions to rece

IMO you should never be shocked by what you read on social media, if you keep in mind that you are seeing the most shocking of the millions of reactions to recent events. The way retweets on Twitter work mean that the most interesting tweets get distributed widely and are more likely to end up in the average user’s timeline. That means that your timeline is going to show you a lot of stuff that’s not representative of the average person’s reaction, which probably gives you an inaccurate view of public opinion. A lot of people will adopt views that they are presented as popular, so this can have the effect of making the most extreme views more prevalent. Then you hear your friends spouting insane conspiracy theories that were invented five hours ago, or proudly repeating clever jokes to spit on the graves of the recently deceased. Of course, it’s not just Twitter that has this effect. Political commentary shows on TV and radio have been doing this professionally for decades, newspapers did it before that, and politicians probably invented the practice. I do think that social media, by drawing from such a large sample of posters, can find more extreme takes phrased in a more compelling way, and deliver them to people are weren’t event looking for political content.