[otakucode]

I think it is a confluence of factors, but primarily it has become much more visible due to the rise of social media. And by that I specifically mean that social media enabled far more people to actively contribute and communicate online to wider audiences than previously. Most of the people communicating undesirable ideas have not formed them recently. They have held them and repeated them very often, they simply haven't been accessible to others, searchable, indexable, etc. All of the various notions about requiring platforms to regulate speech online and similar will, at most, return us to that situation. That would not necessarily be a positive step. As an example, two sisters from the Westboro Baptist Church have left the organization expressly as the result of one of the sisters having her mostly deeply held beliefs questioned, challenged, and refuted on Twitter. Were that communication not able to flow, that group would still have two more members protesting funerals, spewing irrational hatred, and promoting a harmful ideology.

Human beings have a natural tendency to wish to categorize things in a binary manner, and they deal exceptionally poorly with situations that feature an abundance of both good and bad. They feel compelled, really compelled, to decide to pay attention to only one of the two possibilities and to minimize the other so that the opinion of the matter can be held onto more tightly. I personally think this is a tendency of deep biological origin (down to the actual functioning of the brain level) and it is something we must guard ourselves from buying into.

Another large factor is simply number and breadth of people communicating online. Children, adolescents, and young adults are very active online now. They are learning social skills and as our society totally and utterly abandons them in this regard outside of the Internet, it is the only location in the world where they can even have the possibility of interacting with other people as equals. Beyond the bounds of the Internet, they are treated and spoken of very poorly by all segments of society, and they bring their bitterness over that with them online. Human society has problems, and our desire to hide those problems should be resisted in preference to wishing to see those problems solved. Talking about it, and attempting to find successful means of solving those problems without compulsion but with education should be an actively pursued goal, IMO.

[lovemenot]

>> Human beings have a natural tendency to wish to categorize things in a binary manner...

Assume you're human too. You've illustrated your point, whilst stating it.

My comment is flippant. Sorry for that. Important thing I wanted to say is: not all humans conform to that pattern. Indeed, many entire cultures do not. Including the majority of people in the place where I live now.

I suggest you get out more. You may find that the world is less fully specified than you imagine.

[otakucode]

I suffer no illusions that I am myself immune to any of the common pitfalls of being human. I imagine if you shared where you live now, either your community has learned to resist the tendency I describe (which I am guessing you misunderstood, that may be mostly my fault as I didn't go very deeply into it) or else they simply express it in different areas, perhaps demonizing the microwaves of wifi or the evils of certain chemical compounds and their tendency to give people 'unearned' happiness, etc.

I am curious, though... how is saying that humans have a certain tendency an illustration of categorizing things in a binary manner?

I would suggest you make fewer assumptions about the people you're having discussions with. You don't seem to be skilled at sussing out at least my own background. And of course the world is 'less fully specified than [I] imagine' or how you believe I imagine it. That's one of the reasons I studied philosophy, and why I continue to study different cultures, history, and current events. Even the most primitive cultures center their thinking around categorizing things, and they begin with two categories, then split them from there. It's practically the essence of human reason and even pattern recognition.