Social media and individualism result in increased isolation, as it tears apart the social fabric of our societies. For many there is not much interaction beyond the family circle. Even neighbours are just strangers. This ultimately will undoubtedly lead to major disruptions and social unrest. How do we go about breaking that cycle and build real communities again?
A great example of what this Lemmite said is the fact that they got downvoted without a response.
In a face to face setting, the downvoter would need to interact with the speaker out they’d have to bad-mouth the speaker behind their back. Those are more social actions:
Interaction with the speaker would make it easier to find common ground.
Badmouthing the speaker would open the downvoter to criticism from other people in the conversation.
Or they take their friends and walk away in silence. Then less people listen to the original commenter because why would anyone listen to someone that’s talking to nobody who’s listening?
I can’t say that my face-to-face interactions with people on contentious issues have been much better than my online ones, honestly, even when I am making a genuine effort to treat their concerns as reasonable and find common ground.