It is a feedback loop. The American ideal of rugged individualism has mutated into anti-neighbor and is exactly the model for echo chambers (not neighbors with diverse opinions but cultural clones!), which are facilitated by technology. The ease at which our culture Balkanizes is backed up by trillion dollar profits from a handful of companies, which then pay politicians to look the other way.
This online toxicity is a reincarnation of the populist hate that has driven wars for millennia. It is a cancer that has been given super-steroids because of the intersection of huge amounts of cash and limitless political control. Not to mention the propaganda that idolizes billionaires and strongmen.
I think the crash and burn of America would be a solution: the collapse of trillion dollar companies and monopolies that own the government. Unfortunately this is infecting other countries where the top 1% want's to be as rich as America's, hence their urgency to imitate what is happening here for their own profit.
There's no cure: the tech monopoly and insatiable greed of the top 0.1% will be the main drivers of global poverty and oppression, and to get there they need to keep us hating each other and divided. They even picked wedge issues like race and religion, which are almost 100% irreconcilable.
I would give the top-tier credit, but I think stimulating base beliefs for profit isn't really that hard, you just need a country-sized platform.
It is a feedback loop. The American ideal of rugged individualism has mutated into anti-neighbor and is exactly the model for echo chambers (not neighbors with diverse opinions but cultural clones!), which are facilitated by technology. The ease at which our culture Balkanizes is backed up by trillion dollar profits from a handful of companies, which then pay politicians to look the other way.
This online toxicity is a reincarnation of the populist hate that has driven wars for millennia. It is a cancer that has been given super-steroids because of the intersection of huge amounts of cash and limitless political control. Not to mention the propaganda that idolizes billionaires and strongmen.
I think the crash and burn of America would be a solution: the collapse of trillion dollar companies and monopolies that own the government. Unfortunately this is infecting other countries where the top 1% want's to be as rich as America's, hence their urgency to imitate what is happening here for their own profit.
There's no cure: the tech monopoly and insatiable greed of the top 0.1% will be the main drivers of global poverty and oppression, and to get there they need to keep us hating each other and divided. They even picked wedge issues like race and religion, which are almost 100% irreconcilable.
I would give the top-tier credit, but I think stimulating base beliefs for profit isn't really that hard, you just need a country-sized platform.