The widely held belief of the echo chamber has been bothering me for a while now. I don’t question the phenomenon itself. It’s happened often enough; I totally agree this is a thing. What bugs me though is the idea that the root cause is members of a group agreeing too much.
Agreement is good wtf. Consensus should be a welcome occasional checkpoint. How are you even supposed to build healthy communities if you don’t share some common ground, like say equality for all. Sealioning is not a vaccine against radicalization. If anything the constant bickering from contrarians has the opposite effect.
Diversity may be a better sign of healthy community. Diversity of age, origins, gender, whatever. I don’t believe such a community turns into a radicalization timebomb for being like-minded. We need shared values to build upon, lest loneliness swallows us all.
Nevertheless I feel that obsessing over the homogeneous aspect of an echo chamber is mistaking the symptoms for the essence. My intuition is that the danger is in the discourse itself and to a certain extent in the platform used. I can’t say I’ve made up my mind on the specifics though.
What do you think? It’s OK if you disagree lol 🤪
“Everything in moderation.” Too much of anything is bad. Including agreement.
Any group with similar ideas inevitably moves tward the most extreme form of that idea over time. Without people who disagree, that are able pull on the Overton Window preventing it’s movement too far, the group will become out of touch with reality.
So yah, echo chambers breed extremist views. And are a bad thing. Disagreement and debate is an important part of mental health for everyone.