An Explanation?
Stephan Dubner on the Freakonomics blog answering a question about why there seems to be so many ideologically extreme comments under the posts on their blog. I think his explanation is relevant to the posting/podcasting that goes on here as well. Or am I wrong?
Quote:
If you are the kind of person who wants his or her voice to be heard (as most of us are), there’s little incentive to playing things down the middle, for then your voice won’t be heard. Voicing an ideological extreme, therefore — whether or not it’s truly how you feel — is an exercise of narcissism, for you’ll stand out in a crowd. And considering how costly other forms of narcissism can be, spouting a super-ideological viewpoint in fact comes pretty cheap.
I also think that (we are) witnessing a spike in ideological chatter due to a long and heated presidential election. In this country especially, elections often come to resemble a slightly elevated form of Color War, wherein everyone’s a partisan, and the thrusts and parries are so predetermined as to be nearly comical. It is especially irksome to hear “average voters” in media interviews who parrot, nearly word-for-word, the political parties’ talking points.
|
__________________
"The Constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself." - Benjamin Franklin
"Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else." - Frederic Bastiat, Essays on Political Economy, 1872
|
Linear Mode
