So in light of this thread I would like to share my experiences from an extended lunch break today, and related thoughts.
Long story short, I left work and walked down to a pub to order some food for an early lunch. I completely forgot to order it to go and ate it there and decided why not, I'll grab a beer. I wound up talking to a couple that was about 10 years older than me, close to 50, and the husband came across as kind of a shiny happy person. At the risk of edging into some semi-political not allowed stuff I'll just say that I'm somewhat reasonably liberal and he seemed like a pretty solid trump train person. I say that for a reason though: an hour and a half later he had bought me three beers, while pounding mimosas with his wife and we're talking about old racecars and the saturn 5 rocket and how awesome and pure 1960s america awesome that rocket was. And everything was cool. There was an old Mexican gentleman between us and the three of us started talking about food from different countries. The three of us all basically agreed that if we had the money we would all love to travel to every country in the world, sample all their best food and experience their culture. When we left we all shook hands and thanked each other for the excellent conversation. I could tell we were different people with different values and different beliefs, but with a bit of alcohol, approaching the conversation with a light heart, and just generally being in a good mood everything was cool. I even made a few general political statements that everyone agreed on - like I wish our politicians - on both sides - cared more about helping people and our country and cared less about lobbyists and corporations throwing money in their pockets. Even with different beliefs everything was cool and we all agreed on that.
Now let's imagine that same conversation on social media. It would have started off with awesome stories of the Porsche 917, and then once I derailed into a general political statement he possibly would have called me a libtard and I would have called him a member of the trump cult or something and we would have argued and hated each other and gone in a rage. No beers would have been bought, no smiles would have been had beyond the point of car discussion.
As much as social media is a part of our everyday lives and how many benefits it has, the dynamics of a conversation changes drastically when there's no body language or vocal tone to accompany a person's words. If I say "man, I can't stand nancy pelosi, I wish she had a spine!" in person then we can all have a discussion that, no matter if you're a republican or democrat, she hasn't been very firm on her own party's values (and I'm just using her as an example for this, please don't derail). But if I said the same thing online, my republican friends would say something like "yeah all those democrats are traitors and hate america!" and my liberal friends would be say something like "why would you be against" a blah blah blah I don't even know. something crappy.
My basic point is, social media makes it incredibly easy to keep in touch with our friends, to learn about new things, etc, and it also makes it really easy to completely misconstrue the meaning behind a person's words. And I think equally importantly, it for some reason makes people say things in a manner they wouldn't in person. Like generally sensible people just go wild on social media. Regular old Bob who is easy going suddenly logs onto faceblargh and he's like "LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT THE REPTILIANS RUNNING THIS COUNTRY YOU BUNCH OF CUCKS." Let's take fictional congressman Bill, for example. He's a typical congressman, accepts plenty of money from lobbyists, votes on things, and basically refuses to have a spine and actually take a stand and help people and this country. Regardless of your political affiliation or his, in person I could probably show you news articles about him accepting money from corporations and then voting against related legislation, etc, and regardless of our political affiliation we would all agree he's a bad politician. But on social media it just breaks down to name calling and a lot of Berk you.
So my personal thoughts/opinion involves a mixture of things as to why this is happening. Yes there are shiny happy people in this world. Always has been, always will be. But I think everyone is agreeing it has increased by a notable amount. I have seen political charts of the past 80 years and it shows how politicians used to vote according to their beliefs - republicans voted in favor of liberal bills and vice versa - years ago, and talked to other politicians from the opposite party. That has steadily decreased, and everything has become more polarized. Along with that, regular people have become more polarized. Since around I would say Reagan, it started and then with Bush Jr, things showed a notable change in polarization, and even moreso with Obama, and I think extremely so with Trump. Now the country is fairly sharply divided. And we most often deal with each other through social media, which takes away all the subtle social nuances, so whenever someone says something we always assume it's an attack and we E36M3 on them. I don't know what the solution is. But it's something I've paid attention to for 15 years or so.
Now as far as people acting like shiny happy people in person to everyone, that just makes me wish we could punch shiny happy people in the mouth and not catch a charge for it. But that's a different story. Please never make me a judge.
Sorry for the novel.
