A Few Good Words

Riot in the Galleria,  Umberto Boccioni Everyone agrees that America is becoming more and more polarized and that social media deserves some of the blame. I think it’s worth tracing out exactly why this is the case. What mechanisms on social media trigger our most tribal impulses? What are the individual actions or habits on social media platforms driving polarization?  Much has been written and said about the way social media creates echo chambers of similar opinions and insulates us from disagreement. But beyond simple groupthink, I’d like to focus on the way social media tends to convince us that opposing tribes are sinister. Consider the following sequence: The Sharks and the Jets are social groups that distrust each other and each has its own Facebook group. A Shark writes a somewhat nasty joke about a member of the Jets as part of an email that he accidentally sends to the wrong email address. Of course, it ends up forwarded to a Jet. The Jet shares the email joke

Gilles Sabrié for The New York Times The coronavirus is everywhere, and not just in the scary virus sense -- it now looms over social media platforms, cable news, sports, and conversation. This cultural dominance is challenging if you want to stay somewhat up-to-date but not go crazy. The time I've spent on social media platforms over the last month, particularly on Facebook, has been genuinely terrifying. Friends, close and otherwise, have shared a metric ton of articles, opinions, memes, and pyramid schemes. These range from insightful to helpful to speculative to foolish to full-on, unpasteurized crazy. If you're in isolation with nothing to do but feed your anxiety, social media is a toxic soup of confusion. Very Smart People aren't sure what has happened, what is happening, or what will happen. They also are unsure about what should be done about it. So, unfortunately, your old high school friend is unlikely to be sharing really incisive commentary.  Seve