[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by Saqe

This is US politics in a nutshell (Canada too?). It's a form of tribalism where no matter how wrong you are, you can't admit it since it's considered a concession for the other side. Instead both camps dig deeper and use everything as ammunition against each other. It creates a toxic spiral which effectively ends any real discussion.

Timely article in the Atlantic yesterday.

The Dark Psychology of Social Networks

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine...ocracy/600763/

...The problem may not be connectivity itself but rather the way social media turns so much communication into a public performance. We often think of communication as a two-way street. Intimacy builds as partners take turns, laugh at each other’s jokes, and make reciprocal disclosures. What happens, though, when grandstands are erected along both sides of that street and then filled with friends, acquaintances, rivals, and strangers, all passing judgment and offering commentary?

...Human beings evolved to gossip, preen, manipulate, and ostracize. We are easily lured into this new gladiatorial circus, even when we know that it can make us cruel and shallow. As the Yale psychologist Molly Crockett has argued, the normal forces that might stop us from joining an outrage mob—such as time to reflect and cool off, or feelings of empathy for a person being humiliated—are attenuated when we can’t see the person’s face, and when we are asked, many times a day, to take a side by publicly “liking” the condemnation.