Reconciling SO MANY VOICES

krg
2020-04-20T05:12:17Z

a phenomenon I think I've witnessed is what I might call...

Group-think Attribution

Many people interact on this Internet of ours via many different outlets espousing many different opinions. Yet, often, certain opinions seem to froth to the top in people's minds when convenient for those people. Depending on the views of Those People, they may attribute a form of "group-think" to those Internet outlets where many opinions are being collected. I find Reddit to be a major example of this phenomenon occurring, if only because it is the "front page of the Internet."

I'm writing this as I go and my thoughts are scattershot, so read disregard the previous stuff. Or read into it further.

My main point is: we (or...I) often read many opinions and thoughts from many different people on the Internet and kinda roll it all into one. Personally, I experience this when I read different experts giving their expert opinion on many subjects and condense it in my mind to "wow, everyone is so damn smart and I'm not" when in reality it might be closer to "wow, a person who is an expert in their field is so damn smart in their field but probably not as smart in other fields (and I'm not, too)."

But, also, this goes for ideology. People may read many different ideological opinions and only register those that are counter or pro their opinion depending on how receptive they are to a certain viewpoint at that moment. Which makes it easy for someone to say "wow, <website> feels x about y! What a buncha <jerks>/<friends>!" And, also, those people may speak on the supposed hypocrisy of a community and say something along the lines of "When <community> sees THIS they act like THIS, but when they see THAT they act like THAT" disregarding the fact that THIS and THAT groups are entirely different groups of people.

Well, when you scroll through all the voices in these communities that give us voices, are you cognizant of this? Or do you tend to blend all the individuals into some shit-colored mess?

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