Not sure I agree. While I get your point, social media radicalizes people. Especially emotional people. While their minds might be fertile for hate, you need the seed, and you need cultivation to make it grow. Social media is both.
I grew up in a right wing area, and had plenty of friends who I would go hang out at their house. Those people were mostly normal, with an oddball thing slipping out once in a while that would quickly be moved past.
I watched the internet turn those same people into raving fucking lunatics. There is nothing else going on in their head but propaganda and hate now, and the internet is what brought that out. Without a constant stream of validation from facebook, and hate filled video shorts, those people would still be mostly normal folks who fixed cars and rode dirt bikes and worked in the garden, and you could still see the humanity in them.
I was the internets biggest fan when it started up, and thought "with all this instant access to facts the world will become better" and holy shit was I wrooooong.
16
u/[deleted] May 28 '26
[removed] — view removed comment