I'd love to see literally any data that this "echo chamber" thing is real. A lot of people on lemmy in particular love to talk about it but in a vacuum, without any reference to what they mean by it.
A while ago on lemmy I stated a political position and someone told me "If you ever talk to anybody outside of your echo chamber you're in for a dangerous time", and I was like, okay, I'm talking to you, right now. Hit me with this dangerous knowledge. No reply. The whole time they talked to me the only thing they had to say was about echo chambers and no actual, substantial reply to anything I was saying.
So if anyone wants to explain what they actually mean by this concept with details and evidence I would love to hear it.
I'm doing it. I'm stepping out of my echo chamber and ready to hear the unvarnished truth from you brave iconoclasts. Oh god this is scary.
Because every space is an echo chamber to some extent. Mod = God gets abused way too often, so why talk somewhere you risk getting banned from if you can avoid it by staying in spaces that already support your views?
Lack of curiosity. It's exhausting to deal with political realities like 24/7 and perceive the world in a constant hyper politicized lens, without also becoming a schizo crazy person. The easiest way to prevent all this,but still be able to rationalize and make sense of the world in front of you, is to be able to slot yourself into a nice clean prepackaged category, where your information can be run through the filters for you, and you don't have to really rationalize new stuff or critically think.
This even extends to spaces outside the echo chamber if you do it long enough, because your language changes so much that your opposition is basically incapable of actually communicating with you. It's pretty easily witnessed in conservative echo chambers, where they'll say that, this or that is woke, this or that is communism, but the same also applies in reverse where people assume academic definitions to be "true", which is basically nonsensical as far as linguistics goes.
So, basically, it's easy, so it's default, and it's totally inescapable, both existentially and just in terms of the raw media landscape being totally comprised of polarizing hackery.
I think people expressing opinions to othet that they don't agree with makes people uncomfortable. People tend to avoid feeling uncomfortable. Also some people get angry when they get uncomfortable.
Its hard to have an meaningful conversation with someone who is angry.
I’ll tell you why I’m pretty liberal with my block button and cool with my echo chamber. There are people out there who want me dead for liking my same sex. My trans friends are being legislated against / threatened with violence not because of science or health, but because of feelings and religion. I have family that emigrated legally being exposed to horrific racism and the threat of violence.
Do you support human rights? Or do you support death to the “other” ? Makes my choices easy. Not to mention I prefer actual truth to my information sources, not tabloid fluff designed to keep me enraged.
I've always been fascinated by the idea that Americans define themselves by their politics. Where I'm from people will usually say, "I voted for X" but in the US it seems people say, "I am a republican/democrat".
Also the concept of registering as a democrat/republican. Is that just for being able to vote for your preferred party's nominee in the pre-selection phase? It seems like it would go a long way towards mentally committing you to how you vote in the actual election.
Regarding party selection, yes that's exactly right. It's for the primaries, which selects the candidates for that party, and people do tend to vote along party lines.
For a rather unsettling take, you may be interested in the concept of the digital panopticon. Because of the degree of surveillance that is possible in what media we consume, it's also possible that we are intentionally being kept in these echo chambers.
know that frustration type feeling when you are confronted with new information that might be true if you look into it? doesnt even have to be about politics, it usually doesnt.
thats sometimes the feeling of learning, when you replace estabilished but wrong ideas in your head with better ones. growing as a person can sometimes be painful, growing pains if you will.
Because arguing with idiots online is bad for mental health. And if you keep doing it, eventually some of your online haters might find out where you live.
Because the opposite echo chamber is filled with lying liars who lie? ;)
You can't take someone from an echo chamber, present them with facts, and change their mind. In fact, the opposite is true. They double down on what they think they already know.
One thing that keeps me in my echo chamber is people not coming to debate in good faith. I’m generally all for listening to me ideas and viewpoints, but I find that so many people I talk to just want to convince me I’m wrong.
Before the 2016 election when thedonald was in full swing on Reddit, I thought it would be good to get both sides and entertained it for a while. What I got were the most vitriolic, ignorant, and disingenuous headlines and comments clogging my feed. So ya, I blocked it. If a huge part of a platform is pushing horseshit I don't feel the least bit bad about blocking it.
Because self-reflection is hard and most people have been taught that it's equivalent to "hating yourself, your country, etc..."
Taking an honest look at your own faults is inordinately hard for most people, so they would rather double down on their own wrongness, regardless of evidence.