Yes! This is the inevitable outcome of the world of connectedness and giving a voice to the voiceless that we all wanted isn't it?
It comes off as overly cynical, but this seems to me to merely be the removal of a veil of ignorance about what people actually think and how they actually want to behave when they are either anonymous or not present physically (with the possibility of having their mirror neurons engaged, physical assault, in person shaming, etc).
If it wasn't obvious beforehand, then it must be obvious in retrospect that a culture war was the inevitable result right?
While I agree that the responsibility falls on the individuals taking part ... pragmatically isn't the outrage economy going to work for a long time? And the physiological tools for encouraging uncivil behaviour just going to keep getting better for a long time? I have my doubts that any significant percentage of people will be able to follow that path of individual responsibility when so many smart people are constantly trying to nudge them off of it using subtle methods the targets don't even understand.
Calls of "can't we all just get along", whether directed against physical violence or uncivil discourse, however correct, never seem to do much when the problem is occurring in a system that benefits from the opposite.
It comes off as overly cynical, but this seems to me to merely be the removal of a veil of ignorance about what people actually think and how they actually want to behave when they are either anonymous or not present physically (with the possibility of having their mirror neurons engaged, physical assault, in person shaming, etc).
If it wasn't obvious beforehand, then it must be obvious in retrospect that a culture war was the inevitable result right?
While I agree that the responsibility falls on the individuals taking part ... pragmatically isn't the outrage economy going to work for a long time? And the physiological tools for encouraging uncivil behaviour just going to keep getting better for a long time? I have my doubts that any significant percentage of people will be able to follow that path of individual responsibility when so many smart people are constantly trying to nudge them off of it using subtle methods the targets don't even understand.
Calls of "can't we all just get along", whether directed against physical violence or uncivil discourse, however correct, never seem to do much when the problem is occurring in a system that benefits from the opposite.