Re:How Trolls Overran the Public Square
by trophycase on Tuesday December 10, 2019 @01:02AM
(#21750040)
I'd tend to agree. Ironically "othering" is one of the strongest social binders there is, see: religion, nationalism, etc.
Re:How Trolls Overran the Public Square
by remarkEon on Tuesday December 10, 2019 @01:29AM
(#21750191)
This isn't really "othering", though. It's similar to a two-sided-market, where the Elites sit as the middle-platform and transmit value between the existing state or corporate institutions and the, well, not-elite. And then this latter group transmits value back via an extraction mechanism employed by this Elite.
I could make the exact same argument (also without sources, since I'm lazy tonight) but in the inverse, that most social liberalism is caused by network damage to the social fabric - and I bet I could make a much more compelling argument, given that the contemporary brand of social liberalism (i.e. social Progressivism) sees breaking down traditional social fabrics as an axiomatic good.
>Pluralistic values and greater ability to form consensus arises in spaces where we re-weave the social fabric into the sorts of topologies that cities tend to permute through on their own.
This only happens when the topologies are not organic, but artificial. And to top it all off these new topologies still require elite support to supplant the organic ones. The only reason a place like San Francisco still draws people (to the extent that it actually does; I keep seeing stories here and elsewhere about people quitting that place in droves) is because of an Elite network that is seriously incentivized to squeeze out every last benefit they can from their existing network effects before it crashes and burns.