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Is Social Media Making Us Hate Each Other? (bostonglobe.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the global-village-idiots dept.

Nicholas Carr's book The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains was a finalist for the 2011 Pulitzer Prize. Now an anonymous Slashdot reader reports on Carr's newest warning: It seems obvious: The more we learn about other people, the more we'll come to like them. The assumption underpins our deep-seated belief that communication networks, from the telephone system to Facebook, will help create social harmony. But what if the opposite is true? In a Boston Globe article, Nicholas Carr presents evidence showing that as we get more information about other people, we tend to like them less, not more. Through a phenomenon called "dissimilarity cascades," we place greater stress on personal and cultural differences than on similarities, and the bias strengthens as information accumulates. "Proximity makes differences stand out," he writes. The phenomenon intensifies online, where people are rewarded for sharing endless information about themselves. What the research indicates, warns Carr, is that the spread of social media is more likely to create social strife than social harmony.
The article concludes by opposing the idea that "If we get the engineering right, our better angels will triumph. It's a pleasant thought, but it's a fantasy... Technology is an amplifier. It magnifies our best traits, and it magnifies our worst. What it doesn't do is make us better people. That's a job we can't offload on machines."

8 of 312 comments (clear)

  1. What's changed? by beheaderaswp · · Score: 5, Interesting

    We always hated each other. Social media just makes it easier to be in other people's circles...

    If you hated someone in 1970... you just avoided them. On the internet, short of blocking them on social media, you are confronted with them constantly.

    So we haven't changed... social media just brings out some bad things in people. While still doing many good things.

    --
    Another consultant who stuck it out.

    "We are the Priests, of the Temples of Syrinx..."
    1. Re:What's changed? by hey! · · Score: 5, Interesting

      The problem is that social media reduces us to the way we present ourselves. While that certainly is part of who we are, it's not the whole story.

      One of the most popular maxims of ancient Greek philosophers was "know thyself", and the reason they considered it important is that it turns out to be a lot harder than it sounds. You think you know yourself, but chances people who spend a lot of time in close physical proximity to you understand you in ways you don't.

      But online your identity is mediated by how you present yourself. This is not only inevitably somewhat dishonest (in ways that may be more obvious to others than to yourself), even when you are trying to be honest you at best are presenting who you think you are.

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
    2. Re:What's changed? by Dutch+Gun · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Probably true, but even as someone who is likely your political polar opposite, I've always found your arguments to be consistent and well thought-out, even if I don't necessarily agree with all your positions or conclusions. For some reason, I think it's easier to remember a single negative moderation or hateful comment rather than a dozen encouraging responses or positive mods.

      Unfortunately, many people use the relative anonymity as an excuse for venting their own frustration, intentionally lashing out at others with caustic remarks or outright trolling. I've found that viewing such people with pity rather than frustration helps alleviate the frustration of dealing with rude people. What sort of person feels the need to lash out at others online? It's sort of pitiable, and I tend to think "how crappy is your life that online trolling is how you choose to interact with others?"

      I'm not sure there's any solution, other than ignoring the trolls and trying to set a good example yourself.

      --
      Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
  2. Orwell was right... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    What do you expect when activists organize 2 minute hates every 2 minutes?

    I mean, that's like half of the "news" any more. Let's dig up some rumors about someone who says that someone said something and see how many people we can convince that they're thoroughly despicable.

  3. Social media = clique. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    And if you know anything about the dynamics of a clique, you know they don't
    tend to involve niceness or admiration.

    What many forget is that humans are still animals, and that human behavior is
    driven by the desire for power or sex. All else is trivial details compared to power
    and sex.

    A clique is used to exclude more than it is to include. Exclusion is not a friendly
    behavioral phenomenon.

    I'd have to say Nicholas Carr is not wrong in theorizing that social media may foment
    dislike and related behaviors. However, I don't think such a realization is amazing,
    because it's pretty obvious if you bother to think for yourself. Facebook is just an electronic
    version of a high school clique. Some people will find this useful, while others will find it
    distasteful.

  4. Stop calling it social media by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It is not "social media".

    It is a "gossip platform".

    It is a social ill.

    It has transformed society into a bunch of bored. blue haired old women and 15 year old mean girls. We are giving megaphones to mean spirited idiots, and the less responsible they are, the more free time they have to spout stupidity and bile.

    It's time to kill it with fire.

  5. Re:yeah by cheesybagel · · Score: 5, Interesting

    No shit. Take this quote from Dostoyevsky:
    “The more I love humanity in general the less I love man in particular. In my dreams, I often make plans for the service of humanity, and perhaps I might actually face crucifixion if it were suddenly necessary. Yet I am incapable of living in the same room with anyone for two days together. I know from experience. As soon as anyone is near me, his personality disturbs me and restricts my freedom. In twenty-four hours I begin to hate the best of men: one because he’s too long over his dinner, another because he has a cold and keeps on blowing his nose. I become hostile to people the moment they come close to me. But it has always happened that the more I hate men individually the more I love humanity.”
      Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov z

  6. Re:People hate each other more by Kohath · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I have no problem with hating racists.

    Lots of haters have no problem hating whoever, because [reasons]. They should all stop being haters. Including you.

    There's no point in singing kumbaya when half the country cheers ethnic "cleansing", meaning mass deportation and police-state harassment regular people.

    If you're talking about the US, there's no "ethnic cleansing " in the US. Perhaps some of this hatred is because people like you make up or repeat false stories like this? There's also no "mass deportation" of "regular people".

    Unfortunately, there is government harassment -- which is one reason why I support a smaller government with less power over people.