[jayspell]

I agree with you to a point, but it's not my experience that speakers gain credibility and respect by giving good advice / showing good judgement / making accurate predictions. This would be true in traditional discourse, but not online. Online it feels as if speakers gain an audience by demonstrating their world view as loudly and as viciously as possible. It's like a group of children where one has learned that the way to get attention is to scream louder and longer than the others. I also have this feeling that social media is ruled by those who are willing to spend their time and effort to elevate a particular point of view no matter how unpopular it is.

[SamPatt]

I know of many specific examples in my field where the most thoughtful people who operate the most frequently in good faith have nowhere near the following of bad faith loudmouths.

I assume it's entertainment. People enjoy watching drama. Social media is their drama hit, and genuine communicators are frankly more boring.

[deadpannini]

The dynamics you describe are real, especially on the big social-media utilities like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok. "Boo outgroup" is the easiest thing to sell in the attention economy, the louder and more viciously, the better.

But "building an audience" is a different than building credibility, trust, and respect. If you just aim for the most eyeballs, you find yourself vulnerable to what some people call audience capture, where your audience controls you, rather than the other way around.

For example, Trump has a huge audience, but that didn't stop an audience from booing him when he recommended getting vaccinated. [0]

The best most of us can hope for, if we're careful, is influence on a small group of people.

[0] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-booed-al...