DIVIDED AMERICA: Constructing our own intellectual ghettos

annabenedetti

annabenedetti

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DIVIDED AMERICA: Constructing our own intellectual ghettos

Meet Peggy Albrecht and John Dearth. Albrecht is a free-lance writer and comedian from Los Angeles who loves Bernie Sanders. Dearth, a retiree from Carmel, Indiana, grew up a Democrat but flipped with Ronald Reagan. He’s a Trump guy.

They live in the same country, but as far as their news consumption goes, they might as well live on different planets.

Abrecht watches MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow each night. She scans left-leaning websites Daily Kos, Talking Points Memo and Down With Tyranny, where recent headlines described Donald Trump as “pathetic” and “temperamentally unfit” to be president. She can read stories that describe Trump University as a scam and question whether the Republican candidate is as rich as he lets on. The website Think Progress, which has contrasted Trump’s Republican endorsers with criticisms they’ve made of him, sends her email alerts.

Dearth is a fan of Fox Business Network anchors Neil Cavuto and Stuart Varney. He checks the Drudge Report, Town Hall and Heritage Foundation websites, where recent stories talked about Trump supporters being “terrorized” by demonstrators and suggested Hillary Clinton answered planted questions at a supposedly unscripted event. An American flag tangled in red tape illustrated a story about Obama administration business regulations.


​



What's interesting to me is that these silos aren't inflicted on anyone, all information is out there for anyone to access.

These silos are self-created and most may not even realize what they've built because they're so very comfortable.
 
aCultureWarrior

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annabenedetti said:
"...Dearth is a fan of Fox Business Network anchors Neil Cavuto and Stuart Varney. He checks the Drudge Report, Town Hall and Heritage Foundation websites..."
Click to expand...

who tells him that Donald Trump is a conservative, and the pathetic little man actually believes them.
 
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annabenedetti

annabenedetti

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Something related that I've been thinking about for a long time.

I think the thanks button here has significantly added to the polarization of the forum.

For many, if not the majority of posts, when you look at who thanked a post, you can pretty much make a judgment about where that poster falls in the roster of TOL tribes. And you can also predict who's going to thank a post that's made by a tribe member.

A few people seem to use the thanks button to boost their tribe to the top of the thanks pile, because I'll do a search and land on a thread that hasn't been posted on for a year, and there will be a row of thanks (for particular posters only) from the same day (a year later) all down the pages. :chuckle:

Whatever floats their boat, it's just kind of fascinating. I've also seen threads which aren't combative, which used to have more friendly interactions, where people (I do this too) will thank the people they like and skip the people they don't. It could be a birthday thread or a thread about picnic food and people would still parcel out their thanks.

I wonder if (even factoring in Trump) we'd be as polarized as we are right now if we didn't have the thanks button to immediately identify that tribal mark of approval and membership. It's interesting from a social psychology standpoint. They've done various studies on what leads people to certain actions when they click a link, or a like button or whatever. No matter how fleeting and how subconscious, there are decisions being made in someone's brain before they make that click. Costs and benefits, social calculations, and so on.

Of course thanks is often just thanks for a good post, sure. But it's also based on tribe, friendship, reciprocation. And unlike rep, it's committing to a public statement. It has a social cost. Case in point: sometimes I get a rep comment from people (which is appreciated, always), and I wonder if they give the private rep because maybe it's not easy to give a public thanks to someone who holds unwelcome views on the forum, who's not in the conservative tribe - and they realize it'll be a public statement which comes with a social cost. And they can't go there - the digital equivalent of not wanting to be seen in public with someone. I can understand that. I know I've withheld thanks for posts I thought were good ones because I wouldn't be caught dead giving thanks to someone whom I consider an adversary.

Someone might say "Oh for Pete's sake - it's just a thanks!" and I can guarantee that person has made social calculations and thanked accordingly.

From a psychological standpoint it's something more than that. Like implicit bias, people aren't aware of the calculations their subconscious is making.

Anyway. Internet tribalism.
 
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D

Danoh

New member
annabenedetti said:
Something related that I've been thinking about for a long time.

I think the thanks button here has significantly added to the polarization of the forum.

For many, if not the majority of posts, when you look at who thanked a post, you can pretty much make a judgment about where that poster falls in the roster of TOL tribes. And you can also predict who's going to thank a post that's made by a tribe member.

A few people seem to use the thanks button to boost their tribe to the top of the thanks pile, because I'll do a search and land on a thread that hasn't been posted on for a year, and there will be a row of thanks from the same day (a year later) all down the pages. :chuckle:

Whatever floats their boat, it's just kind of fascinating. I've also seen threads which aren't combative, which used to have more friendly interactions, where people (I do this too) will thank the people they like and skip the people they don't. It could be a birthday thread or a thread about picnic food and people would still parcel out their thanks.

I wonder if (even factoring in Trump) we'd be as polarized as we are right now if we didn't have the thanks button to immediately identify that tribal mark of approval and membership. It's interesting from a social psychology standpoint. They've done various studies on what leads people to certain actions when they click a link, or a like button or whatever. No matter how fleeting and how subconscious, there are decisions being made in someone's brain before they make that click. Costs and benefits, social calculations, and so on.

Of course thanks is often just thanks for a good post, sure. But it's also based on tribe, friendship, reciprocation. And unlike rep, it's committing to a public statement. It has a social cost. Case in point: sometimes I get a rep comment from people (which is appreciated, always), and I wonder if they give the private rep because maybe it's not easy to give a public thanks to someone who holds unwelcome views on the forum, who's not in the conservative tribe - and they realize it'll be a public statement which comes with a social cost. And they can't go there - the digital equivalent of not wanting to be seen in public with someone. I can understand that. I know I've withheld thanks for posts I thought were good ones because I wouldn't be caught dead giving thanks to someone whom I consider an adversary.

Someone might say "Oh for Pete's sake - it's just a thanks!" and I can guarantee that person has made social calculations and thanked accordingly.

From a psychological standpoint it's something more than that. Like implicit bias, people aren't aware of the calculations their subconscious is making.

Anyway. Internet tribalism.
Click to expand...

Many excellent points, there, anna.

Rom. 5:8
 
annabenedetti

annabenedetti

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Thanks, Danoh. I've just been watching this for a while now. It's not particularly well put together, but I hadn't put any of it down until last night and maybe if I'd written down observations as the year went on it might seem more coherent.

When it comes to social/human behavior, TOL has a wealth of case study possibilities. :)
 
annabenedetti

annabenedetti

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My goodness, steko. I can't remember the last time I got a thanks from you. ;)

Hopefully you understand I'm not calling for an end to the thanks feature.

I'm sharing observations about the use and effects of it that I thought were interesting, in case anyone else might be interested too.

:e4e:
 
steko

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annabenedetti said:
My goodness, steko. I can't remember the last time I got a thanks from you. ;)

Hopefully you understand I'm not calling for an end to the thanks feature.

I'm sharing observations about the use and effects of it that I thought were interesting, in case anyone else might be interested too.

:e4e:
Click to expand...

I'm usually involved in different threads than the one's you're in.

I don't monitor all threads.

:e4e:
 
D

Danoh

New member
steko said:
Watching? Well... it's something to do.

So is the 'thanking'... for what ever reason.
Click to expand...

The "watching" is an automatic in one such as anna.

In other words, it is not so much a deliberate watching, as a "par for the course" kind of a thing.

Sort of like how one notes "things that differ" or stand out in Scripture, that most do not automatically pick up, on during their own time in The Book.

It is that kind of a thing.

There is no deliberate work at it.

Rather, it is more the nature of the more curious about connections between things.

It can be paused on and reflected on a bit more consciously, but this aspect is added to it..."on reflection" as it's patterns begin to point out patterns such an individual often notices, moves on from, but then every so often might pause to reflect on.

That appears to be the case as to where anna is coming from on all this.

Actually, hers is the very pattern - of pattern recognition - unconsciously followed by Darby that had allowed him to see what Protestantism had long mostly lost sight of.

His pause to reflect on said patterns then began to be systematized by him into a more conscious "system" of "things that differ" or stand out, between things.

Rom. 5:8
Acts 17:11,12
 
steko

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Yep.

[video]https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=kramer-+youtube-+I+do+what+I+do&view=detail&mid=FBD026E0AF3660B027AAFBD026E0AF3660B027AA&FORM=VIRE[/video]
 
Tambora

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steko said:
Watching? Well... it's something to do.

So is the 'thanking'... for what ever reason.
Click to expand...
Whoopie!
Something to do!
:banana:

It can be fun or it can be a drag.
All in one's perspective.
 
annabenedetti

annabenedetti

like marbles on glass
So - thinking about my own information silo...

Common/popular internet places I'm not getting news from:

Facebook (never had an account)
Instagram (never had an account)

These two are big ones for funneling to you algorithmic news based on your past viewing and clicking history. Facebook is the worst, and for the life of me I really don't understand why people would want to give away so much of themselves to an entity which ends up knowing more about you than you know about yourself, because it operates on your implicit as well as explicit mind - which you've given to them freely of your own accord. I'm saying that knowing full well that much of extended family and my very best friends are regular users of either or both.

I just signed up to Twitter in the past year. Now this, I'm fully aware, is funneling to me news and commentary that I want to see. It took me a long time to take this step, I resisted it for years. But at least there's an awareness that it's been self-curated as well as algorithm-generated, I'm not oblivious. My account is pseudonymous, and it's closed to followers. So it's not a social outlet for me, it's just a tool I use to follow journalists, columnists, economists, historians, news organizations, ambassadors, some government officials, etc., so a lot of individual voices as well as organizations. I get some fast-breaking news that way, links to informative articles (very important part of it for me) and I look at it a few times a day. An important (to me) choice that I made in an effort to keep myself as untethered to my phone as possible: I don't allow notifications. I have to think to look at Twitter, it can't beckon me.

I get the print version of The New Yorker and the Wall Street Journal delivered to me. These are my ties to a more analog past which I'm in the process of transforming to a more analog future.

Of all of these, the most conservative voice is the WSJ, so that provides some balance to what's overall a fairly liberal news aggregate.

Drudge was my first online stop of the day for over 10 years, but not anymore. I watched throughout the 2016 election how deftly he manipulated the news cycle for millions of devoted conservative readers and I firmly believe he played a significant role in Trump's ascendance among them. (Not to mention a ridiculous number of his links went to conspiracy sites and other dubious sources, fomenting and growing the conspiracy mindset of who knows how many people.)

Being aware of your silo and wanting to venture outside of it are two different things. Aware is good, and it's not inconsequential. But stepping outside of it - that's where the adventure is, and where the danger lurks for those of us who'd rather stay inside where it's safe. Maybe at least poke our heads out once in a while and scout around. Could be interesting, could be challenging, could be fun, could be life-altering (that last is what's scary to many - it might mean changing our minds).
 
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