We've always been followers and joiners. Look back 1000 years, we talked to very few people and our sphere of influence was small. Look at the changes the print

We've always been followers and joiners. Look back 1000 years, we talked to very few people and our sphere of influence was small. Look at the changes the printing press had, influence could be cheaply disseminated. The newspapers took an out sized role and increased our sphere of influence. Today, with social media, our sphere is the entire world. It isn't curated (well, except to favor things that will cause outrage to sell ads) and it is information overload. This pushes us even further down the follower path. The world is too big and too complicated. It is impossible to be truly informed on a single issue. How could we possibly be objective on everything? Especially, when there are so many people purposefully trying to deceive for "eyeballs". Instead, we tend to pick a "trusted anchor" who we are in complete alignment with on a specific issue and then just trust them on everything else. It is quicker and makes us feel safe to be part of the group. We'll trust that person to loop us in as to what we should care about. IMO, the only way out of this cycle is a tax on digital advertising revenue. Right now this media is extremely profitable and the only way to stop it is to make that not true.