Comment by zahlman
1 day ago
The thread started with your reasonable observation but degenerated into the usual red-vs-blue slapfight powered by the exact "elite shaping of mass preferences" and "cheaply generated propaganda" at issue.
> Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
I'm disappointed.
I'm pretty much always disappointed these days reading online discussions, and I sometimes think about how intentionally devolving most online conversations into petty slapfights is one of the very effective astroturfing techniques. It's basically signal jamming anything substantive or cooperative because people get tired sifting through all the noise and get mad reading all the bad takes. Though I have no doubt that many of them are still 100% genuine foolish humans.