I have been on reddit for just about 12 years now. Something I’ve noticed over time is just how hateful the place has become. A complete outrage machine. Every single sub became filled with it. I’ve filtered so many subreddits over the last few years, it’s insane. I don’t know enough about this place to be sure, but I do hope it doesn’t become the same type of echo chamber of anger.
Real people do post hate, though, at least in some capacity. I left Facebook over a decade ago and never went back because of all the insanely hateful shit some of my family posts. My wife’s still on Facebook (marketing manager, she kinda has to be) and every once in a while she’ll show me the stuff my family is still posting.
I mean, maybe my family is just particularly shitty?
Well, this is after years of hyper targeted propaganda and upvote validation.
I know these family members. Many of their opinions are the emotional, reactive opinions, I had when I was in elementary school and had learned of some new provocative fact. Like at one time it made sense to want to imprison every criminal and I’m sure I once said that my country should just bomb everyone else and rule the world.
It’s not that they’re shitty, it’s just that they’re emotional and uninformed. Deep inside, they’ve suppressed what they know is true about themselves: that they have no relevant expertise or education and don’t know what they’re talking about.
Upvote validation has convinced them that if other people share the same emotional, reactionary opinions, it must be valid. They didn’t have their ideology honed by peer critique or professional experience.
They are unable to face their stupidity. This is why they have no limit to what evil they will accept from their political and thought leaders, blindly clinging to ideology they will never benefit from, such as climate denial, anti-labor, or tax cuts for the super rich.
If the truth were consciously revealed to them, they would decompensate. Their defense mechanisms literally prevent them from seeing what it in front of their face, it’s cognitive dissonance. Sorry you lost family to capitalist propaganda.
Before social media, idiots knew they were idiots and they just went about things that were their business and left smarter people alone do what was best for them.