Have "likes" and "kudos" polarized our society?

[CapnAwesome]

Obviously I'm not the first one with this idea, but is this common social media format part of what's responsible for the divided in our society?

You join a social group, and get addicted to the stimuli of people liking your stuff. Then the more liberal or conservative or atheist or religious or whatever your little niche group is, the more likes you get, which socially engineers your opinions to line up that way also. Hence everybody ends up living in political or religious bubbles because of basically getting stuck in a loop of positive feedback.

The more I've thought about it, I think this is probably the number one reason that our society is so divided right now, people don't even want to venture outside of their normal comfort zone because there are no "likes" to be had for them out there.

Also I've noticed that on here one of the easiest ways to get kudos is attacking someone who co mes in with an opposing opinion. I'm sure it's the same on every platform. This spills over to real life, you get conditioned to attack opposing opinions.

Are the machines programming us?

Thoughtful replies appreciated.

[Ravenshire]

We've always been a species that thrives on the acceptance of others. Likes and kudos are likely nothing more than an extension of that. People have always conformed to their in-groups.

[LastPoet]

I usually put kudos in for the effort of a well written post, or as a way to saving me the time to post that I agree with said post. Or I found it fun.

In Mafia, I usually kudos people when I want to change their opinion of me. Usually when I am scum to get town cred. Its a thing.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Give me a kudos and I'll answer the question. 

Boru

[RoadRunner79]

Obviously I'm not the first one with this idea, but is this common social media format part of what's responsible for the divided in our society?

You join a social group, and get addicted to the stimuli of people liking your stuff. Then the more liberal or conservative or atheist or religious or whatever your little niche group is, the more likes you get, which socially engineers your opinions to line up that way also. Hence everybody ends up living in political or religious bubbles because of basically getting stuck in a loop of positive feedback.

The more I've thought about it, I think this is probably the number one reason that our society is so divided right now, people don't even want to venture outside of their normal comfort zone because there are no "likes" to be had for them out there.

Also I've noticed that on here one of the easiest ways to get kudos is attacking someone who co mes in with an opposing opinion.  I'm sure it's the same on every platform. This spills over to real life, you get conditioned to attack opposing opinions.

Are the machines programming us?

Thoughtful replies appreciated.

While I'm sure that you can get into the nuances and the subject is a lot more complicated, I'd basically agree.  It seems to me, that since social media, there appears to be a lot more polarization within society.  I think that it makes your fringe groups stronger and louder.  It also does seem like attacking a person, as well as fake news (or real news, but blowing it out of context and out of proportion) is much more acceptable.

While there are benefits of social media, I don't know that overall, it will be a good thing for society.

[henryp]

It's not politics or ideology, but I've loosely followed 'jokey' twitter for around 7 years. And in the beginning, everybody was doing their own thing. But slowly, as people recognized which formats/topics/audiences/etc were getting the most likes/retweets/follows, people began to homogenize to the point that now most accounts are indistinguishable.

I think a secondary factor, is that the standard practice is to mimic success rather than create it. And really that's just practical in our times. If you have the 2nd best widget making method in the whole world, you're behind only the guy with the 1st best, and the 200,000,000 people who watched his youtube tutorial on widget making.

I was thinking how this relates to music as well. The bands with staying power almost always have a lead singer with a unique voice. Because that's the hardest thing to replicate. Steven Tyler, Billy Corgan, Geddy Lee, Axl Rose, Eddie Vedder, Springstein, etc... The commonality is that their 'sound' is tied to their voices, and their voices just aren't easily mimic'ed.

Contrast with the turnover in say rap music. Or female pop. Or whatever that hipster banjo pop/rock stuff is. You're only hope is to use your brief period in the limelight to Kardashian your way into pop culture, because artistically, they've already got 100 new you's being cranked out of the machine. The ability to manufacture what people want, is pretty neat/scary.

I think this trend certainly applies to your analysis on forum sameness and behavior rewards as well.

[KevinM1]

Eh, echo chambers have existed long before the gamification of social media.

[Minimalist]

Another red-letter day when I agree with RR.



It is an addiction for many and actual face-to-face communication is becoming passe.

[henryp]

What's interesting about this forum environment, is that there isn't really any practical purpose to want to collect kudos/rep. There isn't a chance to go viral. And with such a small community, it's not like someone is going to become famous in any way because they got 10 kudos on a post, or hit 50 rep. Everybody is a pretty known commodity.

In this specific situation, I think maybe the kudos/rep is a loose reflection of the responses one's posts receives, which is where the echo chamber effect takes place. So a kudos is a substitute for "I agree with Kevin" rather than posting "I agree with Kevin." So it serves as shorthand more than anything? But what it's shorthand for is the stuff about positive feedback.

[J a c k]

I don’t know. It’s interesting to think about, though.

Could it be that humans have always been influenced this way by approval, but now it’s logged by social media? Maybe it has always been this way, but now it’s just easier to keep track of because we have the internet to make it visible. Also, before we had to develop social skills that allowed us to interpret feedback through face expression, verbal communication, etc. Now a kudos or a like sits there and can be interpreted as anything.