[dougmwne]

I have an odd image that I think provides a good mental model of this. Bear with me...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWR0AS2rW48

These metronomes start out tick-tocking in their own time, but each affects the other until they are all locked in perfect sync.

This is what global digital media culture is doing to us, subtle nudges to conform to a single global monoculture, so gradual that it's hard to see it happening until it's happened.

[bicubic]

For the most part, social media doesn't change people's opinions or beliefs. The beat of individual metronomes is not changed, instead social media acts as a filter that only lets through the loudest views, where loudness is a function of how many people hold a given view, and how strongly they feel about it.

The people that don't share those views? They continue not sharing them and get increasingly frustrated by social media platforms drowning them out.

This is a key aspect of the widening political left/right divide. Every meaningful topic is divided into two opposing categories, and then the people who hold the less loud view are drowned out. Voat.co was created when moderate/right leaning abandoned reddit. Now it's a bastion of the alt-right.

[mercer]

I wish I shared your optimism about the 'fence-sitters'. Unfortunately I've seen first hand how people in my surroundings ended up essentially parroting those 'loud' views and radicalizing before my eyes (in various ways).

It's true that this isn't the case for everyone, but unfortunately the loud voices often have a disproportionate effect on reality.

[cirgue]

> For the most part, social media doesn't change people's opinions or beliefs.

Maybe not, but it certainly does influence which beliefs people choose to talk about. It also influences the range of beliefs people think it is possible to hold, which I think does influence people's beliefs and opinions over the long term.

[antidesitter]

Very cool demonstration!

You might be interested in this interactive demo of social networks: https://ncase.me/crowds/. It explores how the connectivity structure of social networks impacts the spread of ideas.

[spin]

Thank you for sharing this demo (and to the GP for the video with the metronomes). Very interesting; very cool.

[jhwhite]

What field of study is this?

[esfandia]

Social Network Analysis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_network_analysis

[stardek]

I expect it's covered in several areas but the field of opinion dynamics often investigates these sorts of situations.

[prince005]

This was such a good demo!

[chestervonwinch]

That demo is just so neat!

[brokenmachine]

That was an awesome demo.

[PavlovsCat]

I think that's the perfect image actually, and it also can explain how all sorts of groups can "conspire" without ever having to formulate or agree to it. And I mean that very broadly, from super evil to very benign or even awesome.

One obvious negative example I think is mobbing. In most cases, it's not preceded by a bunch of people all agreeing "let's be mean to this person". Things like timing, tone of voice, choice of words, and body language can be more than enough. Maybe the people who engage in mobbing have a similar history, but never talked about it, they "just like X", and "just can't stand Y".

The rationalizations come after the decision, and that's much more potent when the involved people cannot admit their subsurface reasons to themselves. Because then projection usually enters into it, and any resistance against that projection (like showing the absence of a quality they projected) makes people feel threatened even more by what they sought to get rid of by projection. I think projection is both an overused word (by me), and an underrated concept (including by me). It drives the hatred of the vulnerable and poor, it drives so much.

And if one is so scared of something, even when it's at rest, that they "have to" throw at it at someone else, who then throws it back with velocity (i.e. now it's no longer at rest), that can escalate quickly and extremely just between two invested people, even more so between invested groups.

A global monoculture, or many distinct monocultures, are both bad for the same reasons IMO. And even groups that ultimately are very similar can end up as sworn enemies depending on how things develop. Be it because they already carved up territory and want to control a medium pie rather than be part of a larger pie, or because they're just so invested in the projection of their own ills on the enemy group (which likely does the same to them).

> [Hitler] can’t say that two and two are five, because for the purposes of, say, ballistics they have to make four. But if the sort of world that I am afraid of arrives, a world of two or three great superstates which are unable to conquer one another, two and two could become five if the fuhrer wished it. That, so far as I can see, is the direction in which we are actually moving, though, of course, the process is reversible.

-- George Orwell

And while I posted this quote too often, it's too relevant to the subject of cultural monoculture to not repeat it here... I actually wish I hadn't posted it before, now that I saw your comment!

> From a philosophical viewpoint, the danger inherent in the new reality of mankind seems to be that this unity, based on the technical means of communication and violence, destroys all national traditions and buries the authentic origins of all human existence. This destructive process can even be considered a necessary prerequisite for ultimate understanding between men of all cultures, civilizations, races, and nations. Its result would be a shallowness that would transform man, as we have known him in five thousand years of recorded history, beyond recognition. It would be more than mere superficiality; it would be as though the whole dimension of depth, without which human thought, even on the mere level of technical invention, could not exist, would simply disappear. This leveling down would be much more radical than the leveling to the lowest common denominator; it would ultimately arrive at a denominator of which we have hardly any notion today.

> As long as one conceives of truth as separate and distinct from its expression, as something which by itself is uncommunicative and neither communicates itself to reason nor appeals to "existential" experience, it is almost impossible not to believe that this destructive process will inevitably be triggered off by the sheer automatism of technology which made the world one and, in a sense, united mankind. It looks as though the historical pasts of the-nations, in their utter diversity and disparity, in their confusing variety and bewildering strangeness for each other, are nothing but obstacles on the road to a horridly shallow unity. This, of course, is a delusion; if the dimension of depth out of which modern science and technology have developed ever were destroyed, the probability is that the new unity of mankind could not even technically survive. Everything then seems to depend upon the possibility of bringing the national pasts, in their original disparateness, into communication with each other as the only way to catch up with the global system of communication which covers the surface of the earth.

-- Hannah Arendt, "Men in Dark Times" (1968), in the essay about Karl Jaspers

And not just the national pasts I'd say, also the past and present of individuals. The people and nations as they actually are, with the messy details... not the memes they repeat or the things they "support". I think the danger is that when people are not standing for themselves, but referring to something they consider unassailable, or an abstraction they cannot even explain, just use, while being convinced that's better than standing for oneself (than "merely having an opinion")... then they quickly unlearn standing for themselves, and unlearning thinking follows from that.

To "conceive of truth as separate and distinct from its expression" is something many seem to consider desirable and noble, as best practice and highly scientific. And of course we all depend on trust and expert knowledge; but there's a difference between knowing that, and outsourcing oneself completely and for good. We learn a lot of things based on more or less blind trust as children, but then it's still good to doublecheck those things as adult.

The opposite of that would be boiling down everything into stuff that can be counted, memes that replace thought, etc. Voting instead of arguing is one example, judging things purely on financial gain or how many people agree is another. It sometimes makes sense, it can be very practical, but if it reaches the point where, as Ralph Waldo Emerson put it, "Things are in the saddle, And ride mankind.", if the tools use us rather than the other way around, then that's too much. The extinction Arendt warned of might very well come about, but "just" as the extinction of human individuality and thought.

> It can be hidden only in complete silence and perfect passivity, but its disclosure can almost never be achieved as a willful purpose, as though one possessed and could dispose of this "who" in the same manner he has and can dispose of his qualities. On the contrary, it is more than likely that the "who," which appears so clearly and unmistakably to others, remains hidden from the person himself, like the daimon in Greek religion which accompanies each man throughout his life, always looking over his shoulder from behind and thus visible only to those he encounters. This revelatory quality of speech and action comes to the fore where people are with others and neither for (the doer of good works) nor against them (the criminal) that is, in sheer human togetherness. Although nobody knows whom he reveals when he discloses himself in deed or word, he must be willing to risk the disclosure.

-- Hannah Arendt, "The Human Condition"

We're now kinda saying no, we don't actually have to "risk the disclosure", and nobody can expect from us to disclose ourselves, nor to face others as the actual people they disclose themselves as. Adopting what the group thinks or what we consider "objectively true", labeling statements to deal with the label and not the statement, labeling persons to deal with the label and not the person, those might all be symptoms of the same inability to stand for oneself, which comes packaged with the inability to let others stand for themselves. The lights are on everywhere, but many houses are empty.

"of course, the process is reversible" :)

[I proofread and shortened this a bunch of times, sorry for it being still long and probably still containing many errors.]

[selestify]

I really enjoyed reading that, even if I don't think I fully understand yet.

What exactly is the problem with a monoculture? Loss of individuality? And since you say the process is reversible, how do you think we could reverse it?

[PavlovsCat]

> What exactly is the problem with a monoculture? Loss of individuality?

Yeah, though I can't say for sure if loss of individuality causes monoculture, or the other way around, or both. In the extreme extrapolation I would we wouldn't even be all the same humans, but simply not humans anymore. More like conduits, marionettes of each other.

As for reversing it, I think that begins with the individual, with reclaiming oneself if you will. And that in turn starts with granting oneself the right to do that, wherever one feels comfortable and good about it. By that I mean, just because we're all so deep into something that might have been going on for generations, and can't just instantly "fix" everything, doesn't mean we can't take small steps and consider those meaningful.

It's a bit like someone might refrain from using product X for ethical reasons, even though they use a lot of other products with bad ethical implications. So, IMO it starts by rejecting the pervasive idea that little decisions matter. At the least, they always matter for the person making them. We don't have to be "proud" of such decisions, but we should not belittle them either, and should not mind when people belittle them.

> Let no man imagine that he has no influence. Whoever he may be, and wherever he may be placed, the man who thinks becomes a light and a power.

-- Henry George

> Think deeply about things. Don’t just go along because that’s the way things are or that’s what your friends say. Consider the effects, consider the alternatives, but most importantly, just think.

-- Aaron Swartz

And you know, I don't even think "just think" is a simplicistic answer, it may be the best. Because what that means in practice is different for each person, and that's kinda the point.

Yes, what you do may not right away stop others from going crazy on social media, but you never know from what little thing good changes may come. Just like nobody would have thought a little website to rate the hotness of students would turn into what Facebook is now ^^

> You have to remember that in democratic societies citizens talking with each other is very important. We've lost a lot of that with the mass media. Now we have an opportunity for citizens to create their own communications with each other. So when these big deals with the big companies and the big governments carve up this new territory, I feel it's very important that we keep a kind of "social green belt", that we keep the ability for citizens to talk amongst each other.

-- Howard Rheingold, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_o8gerare0&t=22m14s

When I came across that, it made me sad because of how it all developed from such optimistic beginnings, but I'll never say "that ship has sailed". If it has, make another one. We can still do that, we still deserve it.

But it requires confidence. To stand in for yourself, even against "group think" which can be very motivated, you have to be a good, honest friend to yourself, and maybe to people you don't want to become prey of the group. That's easy to say, being one's own friend (without that meaning delusion) can be very hard, just like "have confidence in yourself" is easy to say, and very frustrating for someone who doesn't know how. Just draw the rest of the owl! But, have confidence in yourself :)