On Internet Mobs and Tribal Loyalty

[agoraphileOrator]

Amplified by the global pandemic, the primal need for social connection makes isolated people adopt cultish beliefs as a way of socially signaling their devotion to a tribal cause. The greater the instinct to belong, the more corrosive the idea.

To the thinking person, loyalty to causes from religious cults to manufactured conspiracies is indistinguishable from sheer lunacy, but to those caught up in it, its is a warped reality that serves to alienate them from their fellow human beings.

The Internet was not built as a tool to amplify self-destructive cognitive biases but to accomplish the exact opposite: bring people together to amplify their intellectual output for the common good.

“Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.” – Voltaire

Further Reading: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/02/17/online-mobs-wallstreetbets-qanon/

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