(02-23-2021 02:56 PM)tigergreen Wrote:  

(02-23-2021 02:49 PM)VA49er Wrote:  

(02-23-2021 11:35 AM)No2rdame Wrote:  

(02-23-2021 11:26 AM)tigergreen Wrote:  

(02-23-2021 11:14 AM)DFWMINER Wrote:  I wonder if we would ignore people if we were all in the same room having a beer together? Would the discord be as strong?

Of course it wouldn't. There would be a small percentage of the people on here who would name call & shout at the rain as they do on here, but that's because they're so far down the rabbit hole they're incapable of seeing past their own immediate world. For the most part people would discuss and likely find some common ground.

Social media outlets like this, while entertaining for discussion sometimes, have really made the polarization worse.

Social media really has polarized society and exacerbated issues. It's also opened and entirely new avenue for bullying, especially Fakebook.

I agree, but would add the 24 hr news media as well. Those two together, IMO, is what has divided so many people. 24hr news networks have to fill time, and drive viewers (for $$) by filling the majority of that time with controversial topics. Been going on since 9/11. Social media allows people to create ideological silos that they never leave.

I'd argue that it started wayyyy before 9/11.

Once the Fairness Doctrine was done away with in 1987, you started getting Rush Limbaugh-types on the radio spouting their drivel, and 24 hour news stations started coming around at the same time (they wouldn't have been held to the FD anyway, but FCC had control of radio & broadcast TV).

Too bad we can't reinstate a 'fairness doctrine' on cable/satellite.

Ah, you are correct. I think CNN started in the early 1980s. I just remember it getting intolerable shortly after 9/11 with the constant scroll bar across the bottom of the screen.