5 ms·

I think it's just how we tend to think, unfortunately. We conflate individuals into uniform groups. Americans certainly do it with domestic politics. ~100 mi

• mancerayder 5y ago
  We do it everywhere: You'll hear teenagers talking about their generation in the third person: "I recognize that my generation has a lot more to deal with than previous generations". College students in a similar way. You'll hear us paint the enemy, as you described with "the Republicans" and "the Democrats" - although each will use other terms less endearing. Politicians always talk about what "American families want .." The recent culture wars as well, whether it was about Covid stuff, or the racial conversations that were prominent up until recently. Am I a "privileged X" or a "member of the community"? Either way, I will start the sentence with, "As an X, I want to say ...". Are "they" "anti-maskers"? Or are "they" "triple vaxxers"? It's almost like people have internalized sociological statistics as identity, and internalize the language used about us, but from the outside. It must be a great time to be alive if you work in a marketing department of a big tech company, given how easy it is to "target the market segment"[1] or perhaps engage in state-sponsored information warfare that pits right against left and left against right.[2] 1 - https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/market-segment.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/market-segment.asp 2 - https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.technologyreview.com/2021/09/16/1035851/facebook-troll-farms-report-us-2020-election/amp/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.technologyreview.com/2021/0...