1/ I complain about twitter a lot. Some of my complaints are valid with strong empirical backing; some of my complaints are plausible, based on what I study; and, plenty are just exasperated hot takes.
5/ But, since vitriol is the only community sword-shield this site affords while smashing together groups bound by Hebbian belief bundles, things get pretty fucked.
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6/ As these emergent, fuzzy, and out-of-focus boundaries get reinforced, the probability that an idea from one group crosses that over and takes hold in another approaches zero. Affective contagion invades everything... ...and becomes a reliable heuristic.
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7/ We're approaching a stage where things break down dangerously, because social calculus over stereotypes that encode this weird maximum entropy identity environment has extremely pathological results.
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8/ Like, Taylor Swift is a collision zone between the alt right and TheHashTagResistance right now. And overt racists champion Kanye West. wut?
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9/ This is NOT me making an argument for rationality and logic (TM) absent emotion. (Mostly, because unicorns don't exist.) I'm just pointing out that vitriol and group identity and the absence of boundaries without policing that demands expensive attention probably doesn't work.
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10/ And, at least on this web site, it is a technological problem, not a social one.
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End of conversation
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