LinearPhilosopher, on 07 May 2018 - 08:08 PM, said:
Abyss, on 07 May 2018 - 05:00 PM, said:
LinearPhilosopher, on 07 May 2018 - 03:08 PM, said:
...
The internet definitely did play a role in that all these people who would usually be loners are meeting each other and radicalizing each other....
Counterpoint - a mentally ill person looking for a cause to fixate on is going to find one. Take away the internet and he'll pick it out of the newspaper, or posters on telephone polls.
A hate-ridden person looking for a reason to do something bad is going to find a justification on the same basis.
A mentally ill hate-ridden person... moreso.
There is probably a subset who one might reasonably say were spurned on by the internet, but on the balance i think the internet just makes the impact louder for something that was likely to happen anyways.
I call your counterpoint and raise you a counter counter point.
The majority of the people who are in these communities would never had met each other. Incels are a whole are disgusting but not every incel is out there driving trucks into people. Not every mentally ill person is an incel. Some i imagine are just terrible people who without the internet would never meet other equally terrible people. It came up during an episode of, i think it was as it happens? The fact they have these communities they are exposed to other vitriol and it just creates an echo chamber of hate which gets progressively stronger.
Before there were subreddits there were message boards. Before that, there were IRC groups. Before that, email lists. Before that, magazine subscriptions. Before that, mass snail mail mailing lists. Before that, travelling speakers and local chapter meet-ups at someone's house.
I mean, the topic and beliefs of incels and Freemasons are totally different, but they're both basically tight-knit and secretive fraternal organizations. Freemasons managed to organize and share ideas with each other across huge distances back in, like, the 14th century.
Remember when (I don't, 'cause I wasn't alive, but you know...) before home computers were a thing how the small number of widely distributed anime fans had phone and mailing lists, and would setup VHS "drops" of new imported and copied series that they would mail out to other fans across the continent?
The internet makes it easier for small, distributed population subsets to organize, but it's certainly not impossible without the 'net, and there's many examples of other groups with similar demographics organizing before there was the internet.
At most, I'd say the internet is an accelerant, as it lets them organize more easily and lets prospective new members join more easily, but at the same time doesn't the internet also make it easier for someone to join all the online communities that will promote positive, healthy thinking, or even reform a troubled individual that otherwise would have joined a toxic group?