Can we agree the media is a problem wedging us further apart?

Race. Gender.

What/who is "the media"?

I see this pattern where you define a class so broad any proposition becomes a truism, and productive discussion becomes impossible.

The media are a trusted class of society who are afforded a blanket level of respect based on their role in society.

The media have started to act in the best interest of their clan vs society as a whole. The Media has fragmented and serves their niches but not society as a whole.

So talking about the media as a whole is possible without having to identify tribes within.

In the above paragraph replace "the media" with "doctors", "scientists", "politicians", "elected officials", "the police", "big pharma", "journalists" ...

I'm not saying you are not making a point - it's just a unnecessarily broad point that is difficult to discuss constructively.

Have you read the article "the media" had nothing to do with it, it was people with an agenda creating a story on social media that went viral.

More like the drive for eye balls, klicks and ad revenue. But overall, at least part of

An alternative interpretation is that the media is a reflection of society. If people weren't looking for bullshit articles to click on (actually, not even click on, they usually end up just resharing the article on social media for the headline) to artificially confirm their biases, then the media wouldn't be making bank on this strategy.

Also, the media does not exist outside of society. The media sucks because our culture in general sucks.

Same thing with politicians. We don't get shitty politicians out of nowhere. They come from the people, they optimize for what people want, and people vote for them.

It can be tempting for others to try to call this an example of the Prisoner's Dillema, but the Prisoner's Dillema doesn't apply because there isn't even a marginal upside to "defecting" when your counterpart "defects". We're personally better off when we choose to not participate in this stuff, regardless of what other people do, and we're all more better off as more people choose to not participate.