Social
platforms, as do their number of users, perpetually proliferate. As a result,
people find more people with shared opinions and more people without. What I
notice is that the former exceeds the latter. In both cases, the causes and yielded
consequences are equally interesting. However, my focus is specifically on group
activity and digital conditioning. Hopefully I can then quickly emphasise the importance of separating fact from feeling.
When people find
likeminded individuals they form an associative relation. This boils down to an
inherent homophily in terms of viewpoints i.e. the tendency of us liking those
who agree with us. The accumulation in these relations leads to the formation
of a group. With the formation of a group, there exists the possibility of negative
group-related phenomena. On the internet this possibility is amplified to such
an extent that it becomes a near certainty. This will be explored sporadically. In any case, there are three main reasons that cause us to disregard the truth.
1. We usually accept authority
too quickly
Strength of
feeling has proved to be much more important than facts and figures. People
take cues from each other, and through the distortions of personal bias, uninformed
opinion, misinterpretation and artificial interest, a cumulative error is born.
Accepting
authority is as risky as it is easy. One can accept authority blindly, or
through prejudices, or through mistaken judgements, or through other
propensities. Cynicism is a quality imbued on a privileged few. Critical
thinking, source analysis and other forms of verification are integral these
days. Yet many people lack the capacity or prudence to fact check. Many people
lap up what they are fed, and then regurgitate their basic levels of awareness
onto the same palette from which they drew their ideas, leading to an endless cycle
of tip-of-the-iceberg thinking. This negligent pretentiousness is obviously not
universal, but remains consistent and palpable.
2. We are conditioned
to bite-sized information
Pictures,
videos, comments and updates do not form a representative view of anything. In
fact, they are wholly unrepresentative due to their singular nature. But it
just so happens that they are the most accessible and most understandable forms
of media. Nobody wants to read a credited analysis of the Chilcot report: a CNN
infographic will do. Nobody wants to research the nature of gun violence and
race relations with an objective consideration of multiple factors and
comparisons: 140 characters about injustice will do. What we are exposed to is
a morsel of the truth, or often, a lie. Yet such fragments are what form our
evidence. They are what back our opinions. They are the counterfeit ammunition
we use to load our weapons of argument.
3.
We are majoritarian
I would not use
a majoritarian definition in its strictest sense. It is only what appears to us
as the majority that seems correct. If you were on social media leading up to
the Brexit vote, it seemed like Britain would vote Remain by a distinct
majority. Yet this was a fake majority. There was no true representation of British
sentiment. An entire demographic was ignored simply because they had little
presence in media. We are constantly swept up in a torrent of external
information. In such situations, phenomena like groupthink begin to take over. Instead
of navigating the ocean, we let the current decide our destination.
All of this
group activity, coupled with confrontation by unbowed dissenters, heightens a
sense of belonging and cause. This can have a continuous effect of depreciation
on validity and credibility. Effort and rationality is the only blade that can
cut through a dense forest of malarkey.
Instead of reconciling
differences, group activity has engendered more barriers now than ever seen
before. The internet continues to usher in online activism and group feeling. We
must remain self-reflective, self-critical and self-motivated. Everyone knows
the internet is not gospel, but like many other instances in which we know
something, the knowledge is not acted upon. Ignorance may be a virtue, but nowadays
when ignorance results in division and death, it should not be a trait that we condone.
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