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If a civil war happens, the blame will be on (1) social media and (2) politicians using topics such as abortion and guns to divide people in order to get votes.

If a civil war happens, the blame will be on (1) social media and (2) politicians using topics such as abortion and guns to divide people in order to get votes. But politicians leveraging divisive topics to get votes is not new. What is new is social media. In the old days news was filtered, vetted and verified by reputable news services before being distributed. Now because of social media everyone is a publisher, and lies and conspiracy theories spread before truth has a chance to get its pants on. The events of Jan 6 shows what can happen if a large percentage of the citizenry believes the lies. If this continues unchecked a civil war is not outside the realms of possibility.

realcertify 4y ago
Absolutely agree. The amount of hate increased significantly over the last few decades. A lot of people became absolutely intolerant to other's views. Many of my friends stopped talking about politics, because it quickly becomes drama. I don't remember society being so divided before. This is very concerning.
trasz 4y ago
In the old days the reputable sources often spread the lies themselves - from local lobbying, to national propaganda, to churches.
JamesSwift 4y ago
I agree social media is mostly the problem but I think the issue is that social media (and more generally a globally connected digital world) creates a _much_ tighter feedback loop. So you can see that politicians or anyone else with an agenda is able to test messaging and see how it succeeds/fails then iterate at a much faster pace. I don't think its a coincidence that we saw so many similarities in how certain world leaders mimicked Trumps approach of declaring Fake News etc. You see the same thing in a lot of app development frameworks / languages being more homogeneous in features these days after github and open source has really taken hold. Its much quicker to see something working in another ecosystem and then adopt it into your own.
foolinaround 4y ago
social media made this situation bad. and cancel culture made it worse. So, a lot of self-censorship is happening...
corrral 4y ago
Our kinda-bad system of government relying heavily on social norms & personal restraint that are no longer present and without which it's extremely vulnerable to malicious game-thinking methods and crass populist manipulation to bring it down from within, is where I'd point the finger. I expect future historians will point to Nixon's pardon as the beginning of the end.

realcertify 4y ago

Absolutely agree. The amount of hate increased significantly over the last few decades. A lot of people became absolutely intolerant to other's views. Many of my friends stopped talking about politics, because it quickly becomes drama. I don't remember society being so divided before. This is very concerning.

trasz 4y ago

In the old days the reputable sources often spread the lies themselves - from local lobbying, to national propaganda, to churches.

JamesSwift 4y ago

I agree social media is mostly the problem but I think the issue is that social media (and more generally a globally connected digital world) creates a _much_ tighter feedback loop. So you can see that politicians or anyone else with an agenda is able to test messaging and see how it succeeds/fails then iterate at a much faster pace. I don't think its a coincidence that we saw so many similarities in how certain world leaders mimicked Trumps approach of declaring Fake News etc. You see the same thing in a lot of app development frameworks / languages being more homogeneous in features these days after github and open source has really taken hold. Its much quicker to see something working in another ecosystem and then adopt it into your own.

foolinaround 4y ago

social media made this situation bad. and cancel culture made it worse. So, a lot of self-censorship is happening...

corrral 4y ago

Our kinda-bad system of government relying heavily on social norms & personal restraint that are no longer present and without which it's extremely vulnerable to malicious game-thinking methods and crass populist manipulation to bring it down from within, is where I'd point the finger. I expect future historians will point to Nixon's pardon as the beginning of the end.