6 ms·

A Substack on how social media has supercharged culture war and driven us insane

56 points by apsec112 5y ago

kstenerud 5y ago
Bear in mind that every paragraph in this piece should be appended with "... in America". These kinds of acrimonious, partisan political discussions only occur in places where democracy has damaged foundations. In America, this is caused by the "winner takes all" style of state-level national vote, leading to gerrymandering, battleground states, strategic legislation, and a two-party system where most people don't feel heard or understood by either party, and no politicians other than the idealists will run independent or with a 3rd party. When things feel broken enough to be threatening, politics get nasty, and the rest of the world watches on with worry.
- inglor_cz 5y ago
  I speak German and Polish. Polish politics is absolutely broken, Austrian has a lot of tension between the leftists and the rightists, German, well, let us say that they have massive fringes, especially in the former GDR. My wife speaks Spanish and says that Spanish politics is absolutely hateful and crazy, a legacy of the Civil War. I won't even start with Czech politics. A lot of polarization, bad. Most democracies have damaged foundations. The reasons are different (in Spain, shadow of the Civil War; in the Eastern Bloc, legacy of Communism; in the German speaking world, legacy of Nazism; in Greece, legacy of Ottoman rule...), but damaged foundations are almost everywhere. Perhaps Iceland is better off.
  - kstenerud 5y ago
    Yes, the fringes in Germany can get pretty crazy, but in general politics in Germany are pretty tame overall. In fact it's nice that parties like FDP exist because then it's easier for AFD to push out their more extreme members as they grow more mainstream, while FDP remains irrelevant to the nation as a whole. You're not going to have families splitting up over politics, or super crazy flame wars except with the most extreme of partisans. The same goes for Canada. Most things are a storm in a teacup that average people don't get too terribly worked up over. If anything, it's municipal and state/province/prefecture level politics that rile people up the most in more stable democracies. Turkey, on the other hand, has gotten pretty nasty, to the point where my friends refuse to even talk about politics anymore.
- sz4kerto 5y ago
  True, but as with many other trends, things _start_ in America, then conquer the rest of the world (often in a distorted, sometimes significantly worse way). Maybe a wrong example, but the political life of my home country was bad enough but when some politicians started to import professional political consultants from the US then everything got significantly worse. Another example: English is not my native tongue and in my native tongue nouns are not gendered so I always have to pay a bit more attention to them (e.g. someone from Germany or Italy uses gendered pronouns much more self-evidently than me). Now because I work with people from all over the world, I had to start paying attention not just to use he/she properly, but all the other stuff, it's quite stressful actually (because we all know: embracing diversity definitely does not include embracing the social mistakes made by e.g. autists, foreigners). So what happens in America matters, a lot.
  - ksec 5y ago
    Yes.... and especially with Tech. I am actually sad this is happening. I want each nation, countries and culture to stay weird in their own way.
- Y_Y 5y ago
  I'd like to add that unhealthy messed up democracy (e.g. two-party system, recent civil war, support for "extreme" wings, corruption etc.) is not a sufficient condition. I can think of at least three Western European countries that meet this standard, but still manage to have vaguely civil social media, and a naturally-aspirated culture war.
- smt88 5y ago
  I agree this article is US-centric. > These kinds of acrimonious, partisan political discussions only occur in places where democracy has damaged foundations. By this definition, there are very few (if any) democracies with sound foundations. What, in your mind, is the healthiest democracy in the world? > two-party system where most people don't feel heard or understood by either party I don't think this is supported by evidence. Out of people who had an opinion, 50% of them had a favorable view of the Democratic Party[1]. If you add in the 37% of people who had a favorable view of the GOP, between 50% and 87% of Americans had a favorable view of at least one party. Democracy is always about compromise. People who refuse to be "satisfied" unless they agree 100% with a party (or candidate) are never going to be satisfied. 1. https://news.gallup.com/poll/24655/party-images.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/24655/party-images.aspx
- venamresm__ 5y ago
  I recently did a mini internet-studies on this and some of the stuff is indeed regional, but a lot of it is international too. https://venam.nixers.net/blog/internet_communication_narrative_control_booklet.pdf https://venam.nixers.net/blog/internet_communication_narrati...
okareaman 5y ago
I take the author to mean some things we do with social media are insane, not the we are literally driven insane. However, I feel strongly that psychiatry has not caught up with social media and in the future several social media related diagnoses will be listed in the DSM-6 or 7
- yoz-y 5y ago
  For those looking DSM: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diagnostic_and_Statistical_Manual_of_Mental_Disorders https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diagnostic_and_Statistical_M...
  - okareaman 5y ago
    Thanks. For those unfamiliar, there is always a lively debate on what should be included in the DSM as a mental disorder and definitions often change and new definitions added as more research comes in.
papito 5y ago
What you see here is the effect of opening the floodgates and letting the masses in without any barriers of entry. Be it a social media or a trading platform. You know who they are. I think we underestimate greatly the rock bottom levels of average attention spans and intellectual curiosity. In the past, you had to be a somebody to voice your opinion - you had to publish an article, a book, be on TV. Not an easy feat. Then came the web and democratized this a bit, but it was still not trivial. You had to find a hosting provider, learn HTML, spend one hour on the phone with Network Solutions, etc. If you wanted to say something - you could, but it wasn't free and easy. And that's why the early web was so high quality. I was an early customer of WebTV, and I got a glimpse into the future by browsing their fenced-off usenet. It was a tornado of flame wars and just pure stupid. And why? WebTV made it super easy to access the web. 2007 changed everything. The iPhone came out, Facebook, Twitter, big data. Now, every idiot could whip out their phone and type in "owning the libz 24/7! MAGA! Lolz!" [SEND]. And we all have to process that shit. A barrier of entry is good. It ups the quality of whatever it's applied to. Social media fundamentally destroys the hardship of voicing an opinion, which, as we can see, most should probably not voice. If you are not willing to work for it, then it's probably not worth hearing.
- marcus_holmes 5y ago
  I see posts by intelligent, knowledgeable, people that are pure poison. I have worked with journalists and half those people shouldn't be allowed near a keyboard. I don't think the "barrier theory" adequately explains why everyone is so involved these days. Looking forward to hearing how TFA explains it.
  - papito 5y ago
    They are involved because it's easy.
- MrGilbert 5y ago
  > Social media fundamentally destroys the hardship of voicing an opinion, which, as we can see, most should probably not voice. Well, you can put the blame on the sender. But I think that everyone is allowed to have an opinion and voice it. Maybe the receiving end needs to learn and distinguish between "important feedback" and "just ignore it". We should stop treating everyone's little issue as top-notch priority.
drops 5y ago
>(...) where every Monday and Friday you can read new posts about how everyone is well-intentioned, stupid, and desperately in need of checking out from politics. Why would I, though? It's not a fresh perspective, it offers nothing new. Also, the author calls almost everyone idiots yet has a hard time proving that he is not one himself.
betwixthewires 5y ago
Outrage bait is so yesterday. Outrage over the outrage bait is the new opium of the masses. Article after article of why you should be terrified of the existential threat that hyperpoliticization represents to our society. It's still fear porn. It's still designed to drive clicks. You're not doing yourself any favors reading it. You're not becoming more educated, or more mindful. You're just trading one boogyman for another. Want to really solve the problem for yourself? Stop reading news, and stop reading articles about news. Stop using social media and stop reading articles about why you should stop using social media.
- Y_Y 5y ago
  Obviously I'm not interested in solving this problem for myself. That's why we're here. Like other vices, internet news just needs to be consumed in moderation.
  - betwixthewires 5y ago
    Well I come here for the interesting nerd stuff, the research papers, the interesting perspectives on everything basically. Honestly I was a fan of substack and this article spurred me to realize what I said above and re think whether I like that publication or not. I agree with the principles and motivation of it's founding.
- smt88 5y ago
  I agree about the original outrage bait, but I disagree that the resulting outrage is not scary. > Article after article of why you should be terrified of the existential threat that hyperpoliticization represents to our society. Why shouldn't I be terrified that nearly 1,000 people attempted to prevent the peaceful transfer of power in the US on Jan 6, and something like 30% of the country agrees with their cause? How is it not terrifying that so many elected officials get death threats, and there was a botched plot to kidnap the governor of Michigan? To make it more personal: a friend listed me as a co-organizer of a demonstration to support the counting of votes in the US (i.e. we were opposed to throwing out thousands of votes, which the courts prevented in the end anyway). A few days later, the FBI warned us that our names and addresses were on Oathkeepers message boards. They advised us to cancel the demonstration for our safety, which we did. Let's assume at least one of those people really wanted to kill me. The original outrage bait that made him so angry was certainly fake, but his outrage was absolutely real. I can stop reading news and social media, but that doesn't solve the problem of all the other people who are reading it.
sol_invictus 5y ago
Good article. Would also add polarisation & political extremism is a major catalyst in converting people of good faith into people of bad faith through questionable narratives, false statistics and all the other means of propaganda available. This is the main reason why the political forcefeeding we are experiencing right now is highly dangerous.
- lucasverra 5y ago
  Plug as a founder: We are trying to balance things out on https://polemix.co https://polemix.co (invite code hn169, download app at both stores) Launched 6 weeks ago, we bring together people from both sides of hot questions. The format is inspired from TikTok and consists of 30-second videos in which speakers answer YES or NO to controversial questions. The app’s goal is to break echo chambers. We are onboarding early adopters to shape the next paradigm of internet dialogue, and we have the most caring debating champion on board (defeated IBM!) https://youtu.be/qgIAEUPyGMM https://youtu.be/qgIAEUPyGMM If you are passionate about exchange of ideas, shoot me your thoughts to feedback@polemix.co to have your intake on social media current situation.
  - sol_invictus 5y ago
    I can't see how this can affect the echo chamber issue in any way. Turning the "disklike" button into "respect, but dislike" hardly does anything to the substance of the general conversation topics. People are still socially afraid of presenting viewpoints and trying to make people do so with their own name and face will produce worse results VS twitter. Unless a monochamber is what you're shooting for. To be fair to you, I hardly see any technological solution within humanity's current capabilities as a solution for the problem.
    - lucasverra 5y ago
      Hi there, thank you for taking the time to reach out. I'm glad you've seen the respect button innovation. The meaning of that button is not "respect, but dislike". We want it to be "normally I wouldn't engage, but there is a positive signal I want to share". Since we are alternating the YES / NO sides all the times, engaging with the other side and showing respect foster more balanced debates.
mrtksn 5y ago
I don’t think that the social media has something special. A cliche in the movies is the bar scene where everyone fights with no apparent reason . Social media is like a bar, It’s optimized for engagement, so it’s only gas no brakes large gathering space and it’s well known what happens in such environments. Stadiums, concerts etc are all known for for the antisocial behavior of some the participants. The social media is a supercharged stadium. I used to think that it’s the way it is because the human communication tools are implemented without the self control tools but now I believe that it’s simply because people are incapable of living in large groups with no barriers.
- op03 5y ago
  People are capable of living in large groups. Thats how we get the largest cities in the world. But the Upvote/Like & Follower count based reward/signalling system on social media is dumb as shit. Even Ants with billion member colonies have more sophisticated signalling. So now we just sit around and wait for the buffoon class that invented it and mindlessly cling to it to retire or die.
  - mrtksn 5y ago
    In cities people don't live in hippie commune like organisations but in separate houses with no direct interaction with others outside of the house most of the time. The issues arise when they come together in bars, concerts, workplaces etc. Workplaces tend to be more orderly though, which means that it's possible to moderate large groups.
inglor_cz 5y ago
The idea that "the personal is political" stems from the 1960s, before the advent of the Internet. What the Internet and especially social media did was give it wings. To use an analogy: you can throw down bombs from a baloon, but there were no carpet bombings of cities in the baloon era. You need airplane for this threat/tactics to grow into massive proportions. The result is the world where you cannot really distinguish between the parodic account Titania McGrath and real people.
- watwut 5y ago
  The origins of "the personal is political" is the idea that if man abuses his wife, it is not just private family issue, but it is caused/related to general gender politics: social status of women, their employability, ability to get education and so on. The phrase basically died over time, because it is not 1960 anymore and gender issues nowdays are different.
  - inglor_cz 5y ago
    TIL. Nowadays it means, though, that whatever you consume (from a sandwich in a fast food chain up to a video game) should align with your worldview.
    - watwut 5y ago
      Nowdays, basically no one is using it.
      - hackeraccount 5y ago
        No one is using the term because so many people are living it.
jhoechtl 5y ago
We are facing the issue that our real life has become global while our virtual life has become very local. The first by the news which convey for example the effects of a supply chain disruption to the world economy down to the effect for every one of us. The later by infotainment supercompanies which try to group us with like brethren and keeping us in a virtual small world bubble. Escape from supercharged culture war and the insanity the OP is talking about is to make real life local and virtual life global again.

56 points by apsec112 5y ago

Bear in mind that every paragraph in this piece should be appended with "... in America". These kinds of acrimonious, partisan political discussions only occur in places where democracy has damaged foundations. In America, this is caused by the "winner takes all" style of state-level national vote, leading to gerrymandering, battleground states, strategic legislation, and a two-party system where most people don't feel heard or understood by either party, and no politicians other than the idealists will run independent or with a 3rd party. When things feel broken enough to be threatening, politics get nasty, and the rest of the world watches on with worry.

inglor_cz 5y ago
I speak German and Polish. Polish politics is absolutely broken, Austrian has a lot of tension between the leftists and the rightists, German, well, let us say that they have massive fringes, especially in the former GDR. My wife speaks Spanish and says that Spanish politics is absolutely hateful and crazy, a legacy of the Civil War. I won't even start with Czech politics. A lot of polarization, bad. Most democracies have damaged foundations. The reasons are different (in Spain, shadow of the Civil War; in the Eastern Bloc, legacy of Communism; in the German speaking world, legacy of Nazism; in Greece, legacy of Ottoman rule...), but damaged foundations are almost everywhere. Perhaps Iceland is better off.
- kstenerud 5y ago
  Yes, the fringes in Germany can get pretty crazy, but in general politics in Germany are pretty tame overall. In fact it's nice that parties like FDP exist because then it's easier for AFD to push out their more extreme members as they grow more mainstream, while FDP remains irrelevant to the nation as a whole. You're not going to have families splitting up over politics, or super crazy flame wars except with the most extreme of partisans. The same goes for Canada. Most things are a storm in a teacup that average people don't get too terribly worked up over. If anything, it's municipal and state/province/prefecture level politics that rile people up the most in more stable democracies. Turkey, on the other hand, has gotten pretty nasty, to the point where my friends refuse to even talk about politics anymore.
sz4kerto 5y ago
True, but as with many other trends, things _start_ in America, then conquer the rest of the world (often in a distorted, sometimes significantly worse way). Maybe a wrong example, but the political life of my home country was bad enough but when some politicians started to import professional political consultants from the US then everything got significantly worse. Another example: English is not my native tongue and in my native tongue nouns are not gendered so I always have to pay a bit more attention to them (e.g. someone from Germany or Italy uses gendered pronouns much more self-evidently than me). Now because I work with people from all over the world, I had to start paying attention not just to use he/she properly, but all the other stuff, it's quite stressful actually (because we all know: embracing diversity definitely does not include embracing the social mistakes made by e.g. autists, foreigners). So what happens in America matters, a lot.
- ksec 5y ago
  Yes.... and especially with Tech. I am actually sad this is happening. I want each nation, countries and culture to stay weird in their own way.
Y_Y 5y ago
I'd like to add that unhealthy messed up democracy (e.g. two-party system, recent civil war, support for "extreme" wings, corruption etc.) is not a sufficient condition. I can think of at least three Western European countries that meet this standard, but still manage to have vaguely civil social media, and a naturally-aspirated culture war.
smt88 5y ago
I agree this article is US-centric. > These kinds of acrimonious, partisan political discussions only occur in places where democracy has damaged foundations. By this definition, there are very few (if any) democracies with sound foundations. What, in your mind, is the healthiest democracy in the world? > two-party system where most people don't feel heard or understood by either party I don't think this is supported by evidence. Out of people who had an opinion, 50% of them had a favorable view of the Democratic Party[1]. If you add in the 37% of people who had a favorable view of the GOP, between 50% and 87% of Americans had a favorable view of at least one party. Democracy is always about compromise. People who refuse to be "satisfied" unless they agree 100% with a party (or candidate) are never going to be satisfied. 1. https://news.gallup.com/poll/24655/party-images.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/24655/party-images.aspx
venamresm__ 5y ago
I recently did a mini internet-studies on this and some of the stuff is indeed regional, but a lot of it is international too. https://venam.nixers.net/blog/internet_communication_narrative_control_booklet.pdf https://venam.nixers.net/blog/internet_communication_narrati...

okareaman 5y ago

I take the author to mean some things we do with social media are insane, not the we are literally driven insane. However, I feel strongly that psychiatry has not caught up with social media and in the future several social media related diagnoses will be listed in the DSM-6 or 7

yoz-y 5y ago
For those looking DSM: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diagnostic_and_Statistical_Manual_of_Mental_Disorders https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diagnostic_and_Statistical_M...
- okareaman 5y ago
  Thanks. For those unfamiliar, there is always a lively debate on what should be included in the DSM as a mental disorder and definitions often change and new definitions added as more research comes in.

papito 5y ago

What you see here is the effect of opening the floodgates and letting the masses in without any barriers of entry. Be it a social media or a trading platform. You know who they are. I think we underestimate greatly the rock bottom levels of average attention spans and intellectual curiosity. In the past, you had to be a somebody to voice your opinion - you had to publish an article, a book, be on TV. Not an easy feat. Then came the web and democratized this a bit, but it was still not trivial. You had to find a hosting provider, learn HTML, spend one hour on the phone with Network Solutions, etc. If you wanted to say something - you could, but it wasn't free and easy. And that's why the early web was so high quality. I was an early customer of WebTV, and I got a glimpse into the future by browsing their fenced-off usenet. It was a tornado of flame wars and just pure stupid. And why? WebTV made it super easy to access the web. 2007 changed everything. The iPhone came out, Facebook, Twitter, big data. Now, every idiot could whip out their phone and type in "owning the libz 24/7! MAGA! Lolz!" [SEND]. And we all have to process that shit. A barrier of entry is good. It ups the quality of whatever it's applied to. Social media fundamentally destroys the hardship of voicing an opinion, which, as we can see, most should probably not voice. If you are not willing to work for it, then it's probably not worth hearing.

marcus_holmes 5y ago
I see posts by intelligent, knowledgeable, people that are pure poison. I have worked with journalists and half those people shouldn't be allowed near a keyboard. I don't think the "barrier theory" adequately explains why everyone is so involved these days. Looking forward to hearing how TFA explains it.
- papito 5y ago
  They are involved because it's easy.
MrGilbert 5y ago
> Social media fundamentally destroys the hardship of voicing an opinion, which, as we can see, most should probably not voice. Well, you can put the blame on the sender. But I think that everyone is allowed to have an opinion and voice it. Maybe the receiving end needs to learn and distinguish between "important feedback" and "just ignore it". We should stop treating everyone's little issue as top-notch priority.

drops 5y ago

>(...) where every Monday and Friday you can read new posts about how everyone is well-intentioned, stupid, and desperately in need of checking out from politics. Why would I, though? It's not a fresh perspective, it offers nothing new. Also, the author calls almost everyone idiots yet has a hard time proving that he is not one himself.

betwixthewires 5y ago

Outrage bait is so yesterday. Outrage over the outrage bait is the new opium of the masses. Article after article of why you should be terrified of the existential threat that hyperpoliticization represents to our society. It's still fear porn. It's still designed to drive clicks. You're not doing yourself any favors reading it. You're not becoming more educated, or more mindful. You're just trading one boogyman for another. Want to really solve the problem for yourself? Stop reading news, and stop reading articles about news. Stop using social media and stop reading articles about why you should stop using social media.

Y_Y 5y ago
Obviously I'm not interested in solving this problem for myself. That's why we're here. Like other vices, internet news just needs to be consumed in moderation.
- betwixthewires 5y ago
  Well I come here for the interesting nerd stuff, the research papers, the interesting perspectives on everything basically. Honestly I was a fan of substack and this article spurred me to realize what I said above and re think whether I like that publication or not. I agree with the principles and motivation of it's founding.
smt88 5y ago
I agree about the original outrage bait, but I disagree that the resulting outrage is not scary. > Article after article of why you should be terrified of the existential threat that hyperpoliticization represents to our society. Why shouldn't I be terrified that nearly 1,000 people attempted to prevent the peaceful transfer of power in the US on Jan 6, and something like 30% of the country agrees with their cause? How is it not terrifying that so many elected officials get death threats, and there was a botched plot to kidnap the governor of Michigan? To make it more personal: a friend listed me as a co-organizer of a demonstration to support the counting of votes in the US (i.e. we were opposed to throwing out thousands of votes, which the courts prevented in the end anyway). A few days later, the FBI warned us that our names and addresses were on Oathkeepers message boards. They advised us to cancel the demonstration for our safety, which we did. Let's assume at least one of those people really wanted to kill me. The original outrage bait that made him so angry was certainly fake, but his outrage was absolutely real. I can stop reading news and social media, but that doesn't solve the problem of all the other people who are reading it.

sol_invictus 5y ago

Good article. Would also add polarisation & political extremism is a major catalyst in converting people of good faith into people of bad faith through questionable narratives, false statistics and all the other means of propaganda available. This is the main reason why the political forcefeeding we are experiencing right now is highly dangerous.

lucasverra 5y ago
Plug as a founder: We are trying to balance things out on https://polemix.co https://polemix.co (invite code hn169, download app at both stores) Launched 6 weeks ago, we bring together people from both sides of hot questions. The format is inspired from TikTok and consists of 30-second videos in which speakers answer YES or NO to controversial questions. The app’s goal is to break echo chambers. We are onboarding early adopters to shape the next paradigm of internet dialogue, and we have the most caring debating champion on board (defeated IBM!) https://youtu.be/qgIAEUPyGMM https://youtu.be/qgIAEUPyGMM If you are passionate about exchange of ideas, shoot me your thoughts to feedback@polemix.co to have your intake on social media current situation.
- sol_invictus 5y ago
  I can't see how this can affect the echo chamber issue in any way. Turning the "disklike" button into "respect, but dislike" hardly does anything to the substance of the general conversation topics. People are still socially afraid of presenting viewpoints and trying to make people do so with their own name and face will produce worse results VS twitter. Unless a monochamber is what you're shooting for. To be fair to you, I hardly see any technological solution within humanity's current capabilities as a solution for the problem.
  - lucasverra 5y ago
    Hi there, thank you for taking the time to reach out. I'm glad you've seen the respect button innovation. The meaning of that button is not "respect, but dislike". We want it to be "normally I wouldn't engage, but there is a positive signal I want to share". Since we are alternating the YES / NO sides all the times, engaging with the other side and showing respect foster more balanced debates.

mrtksn 5y ago

I don’t think that the social media has something special. A cliche in the movies is the bar scene where everyone fights with no apparent reason . Social media is like a bar, It’s optimized for engagement, so it’s only gas no brakes large gathering space and it’s well known what happens in such environments. Stadiums, concerts etc are all known for for the antisocial behavior of some the participants. The social media is a supercharged stadium. I used to think that it’s the way it is because the human communication tools are implemented without the self control tools but now I believe that it’s simply because people are incapable of living in large groups with no barriers.

op03 5y ago
People are capable of living in large groups. Thats how we get the largest cities in the world. But the Upvote/Like & Follower count based reward/signalling system on social media is dumb as shit. Even Ants with billion member colonies have more sophisticated signalling. So now we just sit around and wait for the buffoon class that invented it and mindlessly cling to it to retire or die.
- mrtksn 5y ago
  In cities people don't live in hippie commune like organisations but in separate houses with no direct interaction with others outside of the house most of the time. The issues arise when they come together in bars, concerts, workplaces etc. Workplaces tend to be more orderly though, which means that it's possible to moderate large groups.

inglor_cz 5y ago

The idea that "the personal is political" stems from the 1960s, before the advent of the Internet. What the Internet and especially social media did was give it wings. To use an analogy: you can throw down bombs from a baloon, but there were no carpet bombings of cities in the baloon era. You need airplane for this threat/tactics to grow into massive proportions. The result is the world where you cannot really distinguish between the parodic account Titania McGrath and real people.

watwut 5y ago
The origins of "the personal is political" is the idea that if man abuses his wife, it is not just private family issue, but it is caused/related to general gender politics: social status of women, their employability, ability to get education and so on. The phrase basically died over time, because it is not 1960 anymore and gender issues nowdays are different.
- inglor_cz 5y ago
  TIL. Nowadays it means, though, that whatever you consume (from a sandwich in a fast food chain up to a video game) should align with your worldview.
  - watwut 5y ago
    Nowdays, basically no one is using it.
    - hackeraccount 5y ago
      No one is using the term because so many people are living it.

jhoechtl 5y ago

We are facing the issue that our real life has become global while our virtual life has become very local. The first by the news which convey for example the effects of a supply chain disruption to the world economy down to the effect for every one of us. The later by infotainment supercompanies which try to group us with like brethren and keeping us in a virtual small world bubble. Escape from supercharged culture war and the insanity the OP is talking about is to make real life local and virtual life global again.