Caustic Ramblings

That second paragraph well describes the impetus for me gradually unraveling myself from social media over the past six years or so. When my own evolving positions on this or that issue require too much unpacking for a typical fly-by Faceplant comment exchange, I figured the juice was not worth the squeeze. Converting a few casual "friends" (that I only converse with online) to my own way of seeing things was just not worth it and would undoubtedly create more problems than anything in the way of mutual understanding. In retrospect I found myself drifting away from an old echo chamber. As someone who has always seen himself as an independent thinker, I would often forget that many other people are socially motivated by groupthink and conformity way more than I am. I learned the groupthinkers were suddenly no longer my "friends" the moment I no longer agreed with whatever the group-mind deemed to be the correct opinions. This is one of the central dysfunctions of modernity; the age of coherent family/clan structures has long passed; now people socially organize along the lines of abstract ideologies and consumer tastes.