I've noticed more people in tech posting mostly political stuff nowadays, when I followed them because of their tech posts. I had to go back and prune my feed to get away from all the bile. Angry political screeds are hard to filter out nowadays.
A sign of the times. A lot of people are just really pissed off right now. I also think a lot of people that used to ignore politics realized that it matters...
While political opinions are more numerous, they're divorced from evidence and calcified. As useful as no opinion, and possibly worse. (Then again, that's my opinion, right?)
It is people trapped in their echo chambers. Some chambers are better than others (some, much better, but alas). I personally don't hold much hope for things to ever get de-calcified without some kind of large-scale real-world incident to force it. It is almost like two entirely different species of humans at this point who are almost incapable of empathising with each other.
(and note, in many cases, refusing to empathise.... I refuse to empathize with alt-right supporters for example.)
Democracies have never been about evidence, they are about making sure the "rulers" enjoy the support of the people and are strongly incentivised to listen to the concerns of said people. Democracies have a long and storied history of being arbitrary and unfair in defiance of evidence.
In light of that, I'd suggest interpreting political opinions as "I think this person understands what my problems are". When I mentally add that to the end of a political rant usually the rant moves from incomprehensible railing against reality to something rational, but disagreeable.
The cost of communication, price and latency, has always defined the structure of our communities. Letters, cars, phones, internet, every invention expanded the reach of individual "community" while cost acted as friction to prevent bad ideas from gaining too much momentum - individuals still had to engage with their local community too.
Social media finally brought the cost to essentially zero. We can talk to anyone or about anything at any time. Great for early adopters and their critical/creative tendencies, but mass adoption by consumers has enabled mass tribalist tendencies to fully decouple from proximity constraints. This might be the "boiling point" for historical conflicts, but "supercritical" seems more appropriate here.
Media consolidation has been synonymous with consolidation of broadcasting viewer opinions and their political parties - many unhappy with both choices but faced with the false dichotomy of "their guy" and "the enemy". Meanwhile grass-roots are numerous but now diffuse and ineffective, cut off from broadcasting influence and digitally disconnected.
Hopefully society starts correcting back to offline engagement. Anecdotes suggest we are, but undoing the damage will still take a while.
>The cost of communication, price and latency, has always defined the structure of our communities. [..] Social media finally brought the cost to essentially zero.
Worse. It brought it in the negative, at least perceptually.
https://gist.github.com/potatoqualitee/d873c10d8cc578c11fc2e...