People exist in bubbles of opinion. What do I mean by that?
Well imagine that opinions are mapped onto a space, kind of like the political compass but with loads of dimensions, based on how close the opinions are to each other. If we make a shape that encompasses all the views a person holds and none that they don’t it will be roughly bubble shaped. Just with more dimensions - a hypersphere I guess.
People have a bubble of opinions but they also have a bubble of comfort, the range of opinions that they will tolerate and the bubble of exposure, the range of opinions that they encounter in everyday life.
There is a lot of overlap between the bubbles of comfort and exposure but they are not the same. When they are different we feel uncomfortable.
A lot of people think that these bubbles - the range of views people will listen to - are shrinking. I think there is at least some validity to this.
In their efforts to keep us on platforms for maximum amounts if time, social media and other content (i.e. youtube) algorithms are always guessing where our bubbles of comfort are and trying to show us only opinions and content within it.
It’s probably not just social media either. Given a choice most people will probably self-select being exposed too - reading, listening too, watching - content that they agree with. That falls within their bubble of comfort.
This might be made worse by the way that consuming media nowadays is seen not as a neutral act but as a endorsement of the opinions of the creator.
I think this is because of the lack of choice that people feel in being involved in terrible things - neo-colonialism, slavery and genocides (not just that one). What content we consume is one of the few places we can express our morals.
In my opinion, this all leads to a situation where people become more intolerant of views that diverge too far from their own.
But is this bad? I think most people would agree that not all opinions are of equal validity or should be listened to. Nazis and sexists aren’t worth listening to. Neither are anti-vaccine conspiracy theorists.
The problem is that we will never agree on who we should listen too. I find it obvious that “pro-life” anti-abortion activists fall into the don’t-listen-to group but ask over a third of Americans and they’ll disagree with me. Maybe you even disagree with me.
I don’t have a solution, not yet anyway. I’m working on it though so look out for a part 2.