Online tribalism
Across several dimensions, tribalism (or group identification) creates a space for otherwise intelligent people to say remarkably stupid things. Traditionally, politics and religion have been the realms in which this kind of conversational cancer flourishes. Group identity and conflict have been around since man uttered his first grunts, but on the internet, it seems like people increasingly decry, fight, insult and threaten each other based on whom a thought is coming from and what side or group they’re affiliated with, often without any real disagreement of substance.
On the web, anyone with an interest in sport, or technology (Apple v. Android), or any number of academic fields (economics, anyone?), will observe the kind of mad, destructive behaviour I’m describing, in addition to the inescapable clerical and political sniping that proliferates everywhere. Visit a sufficiently active web forum or Twitter account dedicated to the above-mentioned areas, and you will quickly have an array of examples to support this.
Online tribalism, which is what I call it, is a bit different from trolling — though the two are often poisonously related. Trolling, at least to my mind, is deliberate antagonisation by taking a contrary position to the person being trolled (the trollee?!), whether or not the antagonist genuinely believes the positions being espoused. With trolling, there is usually a clear aggressor, who knows what they are doing, and a victim who is either unwitting or foolish. Clashes of online tribalists, or between a tribalist and a disinterested observer* feature no such clearly-defined structures, no such ironic distance from opinion: armed with typing speed and the moral authority of their affiliations, people earnestly go into textual and verbal battle, thinking they have nothing to lose but the feeling in their wrists. By the end of their skirmishes, every side has lost. Lost friends, lost dignity, lost time.
Why has the rise of the web, and latterly, social media, played host to partisan mania of this nature? I don’t think a techno-determinist answer (“blame the internet!”) is helpful here. Perhaps the low cost of revealing opinions online has been mistaken for a licence — one with which normal people feel entitled to reveal their darker sides. Online tribalism as a form of catharsis, maybe. Maybe there are just a lot of crazy people with access to broadband! I don’t really know the answers to this, though it would be fun to read some research on it. Personally, I think people -including myself — have too many opinions, take too many sides, and feel too strongly about an increasing number of things, both online and offline. In other words, I think agnosticism and epistemic humility are underrated virtues. The web has brought about many benefits — access to great information and entertainment, borderless communication, etc. But in some corners, it’s turned the Two Minutes’ Hate into 24/7 madness. You know it when you see it, and your best bet is probably to ignore it.
* For examples of “online tribalists v. disinterested observers,” check out a football journalist’s Twitter account whenever he or she breaks a bit of bad (but true) news about one club or another. Football journalists are by no means a group of angels, but still the vitriol they receive at times is often astounding and mostly unaccountable.
Originally published at crimesagainsthumility.tumblr.com.
