A recent quick dip and paddle into one of the big social media platforms revealed what is probably quite starkly and bleedingly obvious to other observers: attempts (by pretty much anyone) to say anything that is not entirely trivial and inconsequential, regardless of perceived or actual bias or partisan agenda, creates an enormous flurry of hateful, angry and offended responses; whether authentic or automated and professionally-trolled, I do not know. It is a collective and enthusiastic (even if in places wilfully manipulated for influence and effect) “peer group pressure on steroids”, to coin a phrase.
What all of this is doing, among other things, is taking the salient, ascendant public marketplace of ideas that currently exists and ensuring that it can only ever be concerned with the shallowest, most vacuous and unreflective discourse. This is the great Dumbing Down of our times.
In this way, our civilisation (such as it is) is post by post, outrage by outrage and Kardashian obsession by utter irrelevancy, being turned into a world of unreflective morons and cretins who will be too afraid to step outside their narrow and normatively safe parameters of colloquial inconsequence. Time, indeed, to rage against the dying of the light…
Daedelus Kite 
One reply on “How Social Media Bruteforces Superficiality”
That’s why God invented “Mute” and “Block”. Rather than dumb down my posts, I block trolls and obvious idiots. The problem is when the gogs and magogs of the social media platforms (those who control the algorithms) prevent links that someone somewhere found offensive, as in your case (and mine) with FB. I can always opt out of the morass.
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