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On the making of an echo chamber (beehaw.org)

submitted 1 week ago by luciole@beehaw.org to c/chat@beehaw.org

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The widely held belief of the echo chamber has been bothering me for a while now. I don't question the phenomenon itself. It's happened often enough; I totally agree this is a thing. What bugs me though is the idea that the root cause is members of a group agreeing too much.

Agreement is good wtf. Consensus should be a welcome occasional checkpoint. How are you even supposed to build healthy communities if you don't share some common ground, like say equality for all. Sealioning is not a vaccine against radicalization. If anything the constant bickering from contrarians has the opposite effect.

Diversity may be a better sign of healthy community. Diversity of age, origins, gender, whatever. I don't believe such a community turns into a radicalization timebomb for being like-minded. We need shared values to build upon, lest loneliness swallows us all.

Nevertheless I feel that obsessing over the homogeneous aspect of an echo chamber is mistaking the symptoms for the essence. My intuition is that the danger is in the discourse itself and to a certain extent in the platform used. I can't say I've made up my mind on the specifics though.

What do you think? It's OK if you disagree lol 🤪

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[–] jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 6 points 1 week ago

I think sometimes people just throw out the accusation of "echo chamber" because their ideas are bad and the community rejects them.

Someone will be like "I don't think we should have child labor laws but the eChO cHaMbER won't even consider it"

Sometimes this gets said even when the alleged echo chamber responds with facts and history about why their take is a bad one.

Ultimately, here and in like all other human endeavors, emotions are primary. People feel a thing, and then reach for words to justify it.

Someone's ideas being rejected by the group? Feels bad. Is it me? Am I wrong? No, that feels worse and the ego won't accept this. It must be them. But why? Must be an echo chamber. Cool. Now I don't have to feel bad about myself. I don't have to change my beliefs. I can just blame them and move on.

So someone saying it's an echo chamber has only very tenuous relationship to reality.

To your actual point, there's also the "jaq'ing off" and "for me it's Tuesday" problems of community management and health. The first being someone asking questions in bad faith. The latter is similar - someone in good faith is asking really basic questions that the community has seen a thousand times before, and people respond with exasperation. From the new person's perspective the community is unwelcoming. From the community's view, this is the third guy today that's stumbled upon the idea that "maybe capitalism is bad" and walking them through that journey is tiresome.

Community is hard.