I've been thinking recently that Twitter is rapidly becoming a tool for people to claim Moral Superiority. There's all sorts of culture wars being fought, and b

I've been thinking recently that Twitter is rapidly becoming a tool for people to claim Moral Superiority. There's all sorts of culture wars being fought, and both sides seem intent on showing how much more Moral they are. That's always been around, but it feels like it's become much more intense online over the past year or two. I think it may have been an inevitable phase of moving the world online, when I step back and try to look at it objectively. Suddenly billions of people are talking to each other and getting a sense of their place in the world. Naturally, they're trying to establish an identity in that mass of humanity. Staking out their territory. Part of that is aligning themselves with a tribe. Some of the old tribal leaders (politicians) are extremely adept at that game and have been successfully pulling people into the highly (and quite intentionally) polarized divisions that serve the leaders' goals. You can see this at work when you see the masses parrot whatever the approved outrage of the week is (and this applies to all extremes on the political spectrum). The key point is that these outrages are specifically selected for their ability to divide the populace into neat little tribes. A lot of political issues are chosen for focus because they serve as a Sorting Hat, if that makes sense. That benefits the people who are already in charge of those Houses. I'd like to think this is just a phase, though. We're very early on in the game. People are just getting used to an idea that they can establish their identity in the big global world, and so far they're leaning on the old structures. Maybe in years to come they won't have to, maybe they'll find other ways to establish identity. At least I hope that's the case. Anyway, this is kind of rambling. I should try to organize these thoughts a little better.