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Comment by oldboyFX | Hacker News Reader

Let me play devil's advocate for a moment:

Is there any hard data that proves that people are becoming increasingly tribal?

Perhaps the number of radicals is the same like it was 20 years ago, but the internet and social media now give those radicals a voice. Because of this it feels like we are becoming increasingly tribal, when in reality we're not.

Similar to how the crime rates are going down, but most folks think that it's getting worse.

For us who spend a large portion of our time on internet, it certainly feels like everything is crashing down.

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The number of radicals might be the same, but the internet gives these existing radicals a much easier way to establish communities than before. As far as I know it's an accepted fact within social psychology that groupthink causes radicals to become more radical, which could suggest that even if the number of radicals is the same, these same radicals might become more extreme.

In the past without electronics there were multiple large groups radical enought to be violent, organize loud disturbing marches, attacked those organizing marches and so on.

I am not sure things were calmer back then.

I definitely doubt things were calmer in general, because as you say, there are a bunch of examples of the opposite. However, an interesting point is that the groups in question, in the past, were somewhat restricted to their geographical location, and were in many cases dependend on organized leadership. As I see it, these two points are less of a challenge now.

I believe there is data that shows that online interactions lead to more extreme opinion. You’re seeing this now with racist groups... it’s easy to talk about this stuff and absorb the propaganda in the privacy of your own home, while in public it’s harder to speak of it or interact with the true believers.

That makes sense to me as well, simply along the lines of the concept of "Skin in the game". With the internet, the amount of risk you take to "be yourself" is small to nil, where in the real world there can be immediate and large consequences to you and your family.

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