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I've been on white nationalist forums for years and I've made posts on group polarization.
The average first visitor to Stomfront is a young kid with mildly prejudiced views but is mostly curious. By the time he moves on to other forums such as Skadi and VNN he is a hardcore racist.
Agreed.
It is called Groupthink (insufficient critical thinking)
Group-think is a condition where a cohesive group of people come up with poorly considered courses of action and as a result make bad choices. A unit of people which have become afflicted with group-think are typically a group that tends to know one another well, is cohesive, friendly with one another and tight-knit.
This phenomenon often occurs when people have worked closely together for long periods of time. Over the course of time they develop a "like" manner in rationalization and thinking. Unfortunately this can lead to bad decisions because of the complacent nature that emerges in the affected group.
Cowards feel more powerful in groups...
and for a poster who mentions condemning actions but not speech,lol...
Hitler was not at first condemned by the Germans. He was considered their savior.
People just don't worry about being PC online. They tell their true opinions. Many people are just sick and tired of the PC rules society imposes on us. Some may call it racist. That's however just an subjective opinion on their part.
People just don't worry about being PC online. They tell their true opinions. Many people are just sick and tired of the PC rules society imposes on us. Some may call it racist. That's however just an subjective opinion on their part.
I'm sure they do but there is an army of trolls out there who will say outrageous things just to kick the hornets nest and watch the fur fly.
A mid-sized parody Twitter account that focuses on Philly sports called @FanSince09 then exposed these people to the world by retweeting them, and the whole thing went viral.
The next day, every major sports news outlet ran some variation of this headline, "TWITTER EXPLODES WITH RACISM AFTER HOCKEY GAME."
In the weeks since, some of the racist tweeters have been called into their respective principals office, and others have been kicked off youth hockey teams.
But the real story here isn't that people on the Internet openly fired off racist remarks at Ward after the Caps beat the Bruins. The real story is that people on the Internet are openly saying racist things 24 hours a day, 7 days a weeks, 365 days a year.
It's easy to think of the Internet as more-or-less a representation of the real world. But how can that be when the nature of racism online is so different than that of our day-to-day lives?
So Why is the Internet so Different?
Here are two theories that dance around the answer, but don't totally suffice:
1. Group polarization. It's a simple concept: a group of like-minded people will become more extreme in their opinions after discussing it with each other.
The internet isn't "racist". People who post on it may be but singling out one page with some racist statements on it and playing it up to show rampant racism on the internet is disingenuous. Such statements are an infinitesimal part of it.
Daily commentaries about any group (and I will even exclude illegal immigration since thats a whole other ball of wax)
are disingenuous. Just my opinion, but its not about "being PC". The MSM doesnt dictate what an educated person should write or say, but, common decency and civility should.
Anonymity. Most people would never dream about saying this stuff in person. AKA Internet tough guys.
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