Social media divides us, makes us more extreme and less empathetic, it riles us up or sucks us into doom scrolling, making us stressed and depressed. It feels like we need to touch grass and escape to the real world.
New research shows that we might have largely misinterpreted why this is the case. It turns out that the social media internet may uniquely undermine the way our brains work but not in the way you think.
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Super not enthused with how centrist this is. Comes off as more of the “can’t we all just get along and live in unity??” stuff people say, when really they mean “the left needs to chill and stop making everything a big deal.”
Kinda hard to just ‘get along’ when the other side is trying to destroy democracy and strip large portions of the population of their basic human rights.
People who want to destroy democracy are influenced by their brain too. But they do react more extremely than others.
The thesis here is consistent with people believing political violence is justified, with human brain’s tendency to form a “us vs them” mentality. But it doesn’t explain why some act more extreme and violently.
People react differently because of multiple factors, such as living through different circumstances, different cultures, being more or less subject to cognitive biases, seing more or less misinformation, … For instance if you see more misinformation about polical adversary being evil, AND your biases and culture makes you more likely to believe it.
That isn’t an excuse for any violence. Understanding these mechanisms may help prevent reduce violence or hate. That’s a worthy goal even if some groups have a much greater responsibility for political violence.
There’s a difference between violence never being desirable, and violence never being necessary. Calls for pacifism at all costs only serve those in power.
Many people live daily with violence being done to them and their communities, but are continually admonished against the wrong kinds of resistance…
I mostly agree with you.
But I also think it’s important to think of the neighbors we disagree with very differently than how we view right wing politicians and corporate executives. Our neighbors may have some shitty opinions and ignorant positions, but they might be decent people at heart. No right wing politician or billionaire CEO is going to be decent at heart.
Any neighbor whose beliefs and views lead them to look at Trump and say “yeah give me more of that!” can fuck right off.
I’m not sure where you live, but living/growing up in the south… I can tell you that those beliefs run deep. Deep deep deep. Deeper than you can fix by just being pleasant to your neighbor.
If you try to talk to them with kindness and openness, they dig in their heels and start spewing fox news talking points like it’s the most obvious thing in the world (I’m pretty sure they like it so much because it confirms every awful belief they already had). Try to present different sources, they’re rejected as fake news. I’ve tried everything with people around here since before 2016 and nothing seems to help. Mostly I just keep to myself.
Living in the south, if you’re not indoctrinated, is very isolating. Even living in the cities doesn’t really help. You still need to dig deep and look carefully for people who don’t think you deserve fewer rights.
Edit: thinking about it more, I think the isolation is the point, and it’s how so many people in my state believe some of the same basic things when it comes to religion and politics. You learn pretty young around here that if you don’t get with the program, you’re not going to have many friends. If you didn’t go to church, especially, you lost out on most of the community’s socializing for the week. It feels very cliquey in the smaller towns especially, almost by design.
It seems that americans think the entire world is the american south. Generally in more civilised places outside of the U.S, people care less about other people’s beliefs.
Anyone who thinks their country is more “civilized” than to engage in bigotry is just revealing that they live in a bubble themselves.
I definitely don’t? I was just providing my experience for the place I live. Obviously not all places are the south…? And good for you on your ‘more civilized place’, but we’re not talking about those areas.
Seems to me that, to solve rent crisis, Americans should just move into Europeans’ heads, since we seem to live there rent free already.
I think that was a stab at you saying “living in the south” as if it automatically meant south of the USA. So your US-centric world view shines through. I think no one wanted to attack your world view per se, but rather your bias.
And regarding your second comment, why so passive-aggressive? Obviously the US lives in everyone’s head rent free because it messes around with the whole world. Don’t get offended by people trying to point out that there is more in the world than one single country.
I get that, I live in the south of my country too, but only the US feels entitled enough to say “the south” and expect the whole world to know where they are.
I guess it adds to the problem that it’s very context specific. When you are in your country talking in your mothertongue with someone, you would probably only say “the south” to refer to the south of your country (or another by society predefined south).
And while we are on a mostly English-speaking platform inhabitated by mostly US people, I’ve heard US people throwing around US specific terms in a lot of different contexts/countries without checking the context they are in.
It’s probably the same kind of culture clash that the original video talks about. I’ve got to admit it is something that can rile me up probably more than it rationally deserves to, if I let it (and I’m sure others too).
Right, but if the person I was talking originally to had said “I’m not from the US so I know nothing about it” it woulda been fine and I would have immediately apologized and we’d go from there. Having a nice chat.
That’s not what happened. Someone new chimed in with a pretty rude non-sequitur in the vein of ‘stupid Americans’. I don’t think I was particularly defensive or angry, but maybe it came off that way.
The phrasing of “more civilised places” in the comment you mention seems highly problematic to me, yes. I think the “stupid Americans” is your biased interpretation though.
Oh, btw I wouldn’t call people from the USA “Americans”, because it is just one of many countries in the Americas. Another blind spot in the US perspective.
Haha, “why so defensive”?
Nah, I meant “stupid americans”. They were right.
I live in a third world country, what they’re saying is mostly accurate here too. Entire world isn’t Europe