[bmelton]

> Try dressing different from the norm in the 1990s before people even had cellphones in class and you'd definitely end up ostracized

I think that's a part of OP's point. After that, if you wanted, you could go away to college and buy normal clothes and reinvent yourself completely.

Nowadays, if you're a person who agrees for whatever reason is a shitheel, you're that same shitheel forever, and the inertia required to overcome that is greater.

You're right in the sense that the internet also allows to find sympathetic others, but that doesn't shake the stigma, merely exposes it to more people. (Which has the added benefit of contributing to polarization.)

[hgsgm]

Why do you think that? Most people don't have the energy to keep track of people they disagreed with once in the past.

[bmelton]

If I ask 100 people who Gary Johnson is, most of them will remember him as "The Aleppo guy." If I type "Gary Johnson" into Google (even incognito), the first auto-complete is "Gary Johnson Aleppo." Nevermind that he's an accomplished politician, mountain climber, author, etc., he's broadly defined by his one big public gaffe.

Howard Dean's political career was ruined and is largely defined by one poorly timed on-air scream after it was mocked by late night comedy hosts.

If you remember Lindy Chamberlain at all, it's probably as the "Dingos ate my baby" lady, whose name was dragged through the mud and went to prison for years before it was revealed likely that dingos had almost certainly eaten her baby.

Chris Jeffries was questioned in the murder of Joanna Yates.

Richard Jewell. Fatty Arbuckle. Bruce Ismay. Rebecca Black. Kevin Carter. Monica Lewinsky. The McDonald's Coffee Lady (Stella Liebeck). If you remember any of these names, it's almost certainly for something bad they were accused of doing.

I've seen studies that show that because our brains are our foremost self-defense mechanisms, they're constantly looking for bad patterns to avoid, so we remember the bad things about people much more readily than we remember the good. That we do so for faraway people with whom we'll never likely have any contact is likely low on the utility scale, but we mostly haven't adapted to avoiding it.

Actors who manage to land parts doing crime scene reenactments for true crime docudramas tend to regret them, because people at the grocery see the actors and forget they were watching television and assume he's a serial murderer.

We rely on our intuitions so much when meeting new people, and our brains hold onto negative impressions so strongly that even though you think you don't have the energy to keep track of it, the brain actually does. Perhaps not just over a disagreement, but if you form a negative connotation around a picture of someone internet infamous, cognitive bias ensures that you'll likely dislike them if you ever actually meet and they'll have to actively work to overcome that negative preconception despite us having formed that preconception based on perhaps as little as 10 seconds of their life portrayed out of context.

If you do not dislike anyone that you haven't met (e.g., a politician, or polarizing celebrity like Logan Paul or Joe Rogan or Elon Musk) then congrats, you're in the (presumably) low percentage of people who don't have this affliction. But I think it's a pretty big stretch to say that "most" don't.

[red-iron-pine]

> Howard Dean's political career was ruined and is largely defined by one poorly timed on-air scream after it was mocked by late night comedy hosts.

Amazing to think that Donald Trump could make gaff after gaff and still, inexplicably, be considered electable. Dean made one dumbass howl and got shit-canned. MSM in action.

Also, a shame about Fatty Arbuckle, dude even got an apology from the court but still got his career ruined.