Diegetics

I do not do facebook, I don't know that I've ever been to the site. A lot of my extended family does, but I don't even go to their sites.

Recently had a conversation with a friend who relayed the following.

This person has a lot of liberal friends on there but is conservative. This person mentioned that the liberals are very vocal on there but the conservatives are not. Further explained that the conservatives don't say anything because if they do they will be "defriended". It's starting to drive this friend crazy, they feel "oppressed".

An ongoing Tinker theme for a long time has been the "atomization" of society. I have read him on that with some real mixed feelings, and don't know what to think. I don't know if that is a formal concept or anything, but I don't know what to think of it. This person was pretty upset about the whole thing, to the point of thinking about "pre-emptive defriending" and giving up on liberal friends.

This was sort of new to me. My memory is that I used to regularly mix it up with Democrats and it rarely was a big deal. We would go at it and then do whatever,it could be put aside, and was regarded as much as entertainment as anything. My feeling is that that sort of stopped during the Iraq War, people wouldn't talk politics anymore publicly. The left grew more condemnatory then I could really ever remember, and it had an effect on a lot of people. Likewise, conservatives had no problem giving to people who were anything less than supportive of the war. So this is not tit for tat. Both sides did what they did.

Blah blah blah. But it doesn't seem like it has changed back. I still won't talk politics with someone unless I am very familiar with them. I don't know if the above is

I along with usually CS am quite skeptical of golden age theory, things used to be better in the past, but in reality things do certainly change sometimes better sometimes worse. Since the Obama election in particular for the first time in my life I hear people talking about whether they will move in or out of a state based on if it is blue or red. You might have heard that at a much smaller scale in the past, but now it is right up there with are the schools good, what is the job market, what is the weather, now "is it Democrat or Republican". I'm hearing that all the time now.

So is this really happening? Is this "atomization"? Is it something else? What is this?

For all the talk of bipartisanship, I have long suspected that the left and right can't really co-exist at the end of the day, not functionally. One will have to dominate the other and the small group will live as sort of an Amish ghetto, intellectually speaking. Look at the zoo animal, keep moving.

So I'm wondering if we're beginning this process. I've seen data the conservatives are moving out of blue states, but this may be incomplete. We'll see.

But that is getting off track. My question is more to do with "social media", are the left and right, or other groups doing a "run on the bank" sort of thing, are people silently executing their biases on people and restructuring their lives. I really don't know, I don't do the twits and facetubes and whatnot.

And I'm not saying this is indicative of liberal and conservative behavior, your experience may be dramatically different.

ive been seeing this for a while and its one of the things i think tinker gets dead right.

we have several generations now brought up on the "peoples democracy, change the system to suit you" theory and with absolutely zero carefactor for the nuances involved in having a system that includes more than them in it.

both sides are getting increasingly hostile about the "other" corrupting their nirvana.

i missed the point in terms of social media - people who dislike the current system are getting echo chambered and supported all across the world and getting more and more certain their nirvana is correct.

my facebooking is mostly lurking and it main use is catching up with old friends lost in past travels, ive noticed the increasing hysteria of late.

interesting times.

If I had a Facebook or other social media page, and if it were associated with my name, then I would be use it for news feeds, like noddy, and keep my personal political and other opinions to myself.

Which brings me back to the merits of this board.

As for the atomization that Mr. P. refers to, this post-modern belief that one's opinions can define reality has always struck me as rather odd.

What changed in the Iraq war wasn't dem or rep behavior, but American behavior. America finally took the paranoia to its illogical conclusion. The word, "enemy" became such a loosely identified term under the broad aegis of " anti-terrorism" that people supporting bad ideas became threats ( sound familiar?) Well, this is ex-Protestant America. We decide what the law means. Americans decided each and every one where to draw that line between friend and foe. Guess where it got drawn.

In short, America began to reap the consequences of it's aggression and fear. It turned on them, like it always does. Now, both sides have defined the other as a threat and rightly so, by the new metric. The new metric will outlast old civilities. There is no loyalty.

And BTW, what you may be seeing is the beginning of a civil war on some level. When people start leaving for ideologically/ethnically homogeneous places familiar to them, it's a short walk to the exit. I had thought this unlikely, still not sure what is going on, but it's looking more like that every day.

“What concerns me is that man, unable to articulate, to express himself adequately, reverts to action. Since the vocabulary of action is limited, as it were, to his body, he is bound to act violently, extending his vocabulary with a weapon where there should have been an adjective.”
— joseph brodsky

I think this is more than Iraq War fallout. We've seen divisive wars before, as recently as Vietnam. The for us-against us/protests of which in many ways were more radical. Life moved on.

I don't know if this is really something new, I don't know if internet society is playing into it, I don't know, I'm just seeing weird things I don't remember seeing before.