Pervasive Unrest

I had started a post on pervasive unrest, that when discord occurs in a society around one issue it tends to bleed over into others when Cranberry popped in with the news that foreign "rage farmers" were posting a lot of the highly charged political information on X.  Presumably similar things are happening on at least some of the other conflict sites: bluesky, instagram, Facebook, snapchat, TikTok, substack, and whatever else is out there.  Likely all of them.

I wondered what effect this would have on my thinking about the subject and decided it reinforced some of what I wanted to say, but in quite a different way than expected.  So I am just going to put down my bullet notes for now to give you ideas to play around with.

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There is a concept of evaporation of groups, analogous to what happens to a liquid as it evaporates.  The elements that do not evaporate off become more concentrated.  Think of salt water left outdoors in a basin for a few days.  When you come back there will be less water, and it will be saltier.  The social analogy is that as fads and fashions "simmer down" (hehe) the less engaged wander off, pay less attention, and bring less energy, leaving a concentration of core believers behind. I don't know how well this has been demonstrated, but the idea at least makes some sense. I had a related post about the SPLC and Hate Groups in 2013.

The people who went online and finally found communities of people who like to collect old license plates or are interested in the War of 1812 mostly found each other 20 years ago. It's one of the benefits of social media, but it's not likely to expand much now.

If concentrated groups encounter each other, whether IRL or online, they are more likely to spark conflict, even if they are surrounded by "mostly peaceful" protests. So the impression that people have that bluesky and Twitter have become crazier may be spot on.  Facebook is for Boomers, community groups, and young parents now, and the residual is a few people with very confrontative politics. Hell's Grannies come to life. I've about had it with a lot of my wife's old sorority sisters and elementary school staff. 

Jesse Singal is a major target for hatred on Bluesky.  Who knew?

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Maybe we are less angry than we thought.  If the angriest people we know ratchet down a bit we might all do better.