alt Hacker NewsI find it so bitterly ironic that the people whose opinions we read the most of - the terminally online Redditors and tweeters - are exactly the kind of people we should not be listening to.
Like you alluded to, the terminally online people who post the most tend to be those with neuroticism, isolation, severe anxiety, etc. There's a famous Reddit post about this I can't seem to find - "Everyone Online Is Insane" or something.
I really think this is why the past decade+ of American culture, politics, and society has been so off-the-wall insane. The Overton Window - another overused Redditism - of society has shifted towards the opinions of the neurotic and anxious. Those are the people whose words fill the comment sections and posts that we all read, which then infuse our minds to expect these thoughts as the baseline/median opinion of society.
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Post you mentioned (Most of What You Read on the Internet is Written by Insane People): https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/9rvroo/most...
> I really think this is why the past decade+ of American culture, politics, and society has been so off-the-wall insane. The Overton Window - another overused Redditism - of society has shifted towards the opinions of the neurotic and anxious. Those are the people whose words fill the comment sections and posts that we all read, which then infuse our minds to expect these thoughts as the baseline/median opinion of society.
Why should anyone entertain this theory? You’re a comment box.
Edit: Thirty years ago us online freaks would just interact with other online freaks. Because normal people had real hobbies.
But now that we are all doomscrollers: why would normal people be interested in the comment boxes of online freaks? They’ve got YouTube shorts and whatever to watch.
That things like 4Chan has had an outsized effect is a different matter. It’s all mediated through twenty layers. It’s not normal people reading 4Chan and other freaks directly.
Yes, this is a theory I've been thinking about too.
Explains the rise of various political leaders very well.
I find it funny that even the people who comment on the "Everyone Online Is Insane" post sound obsessive or outside the norm.
I find it messes with my mental health when I read too many comments. In the real world I normally find people to be nice and kind. But then I go online and the world is totally different - I have to keep in perspective that its just a small outsized fraction.