Asklemmy

All the factors. I think this is more likely not a discrete case

“A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it.”

— Agent K, Men In Black

I see it just as extension to "cancel culture" in IRL society. Nothing complicated just same stuff pushed from media comes to the web. Much helped by algorithms that are supporting it.

It is not only reddit, whole public internet is just an echo chamber, with no critical opinion allowed.

Every topic in current society (at least Europe+North America, I don't know what's happening in the rest of the world) is either black or white and no in between. Very scary place we are in currently. And people put you in some category just based on one sentence, one though, one idea.

I don't see anything special here or on reddit that is not happening in other parts of our society.

Maybe fediverse is so clean you can see it happening live, just look at any defederation request and what they think of different opinions. Different opinion is forbidden. I never thought we will ger to this point, I believed internet will give us freedom of speech and freedom to discuss. But so many topics have become dangerous.

In group/out group dynamics are fueled by insecurity and ignorance. Reddit (the internet/humanity) is full of people who are scared of being outcasts and do not know themselves well enough to be confident. Often for good reason because there are swathes of people who will punish them for not going along with the group. The punishments are almost always disproportionate to the transgression, and continually escalate as the in-group feels completely justified in their actions due to confirmation bias.

In the case of reddit's main demographic these are young, typically nerdy men who have experienced being outcasts, and not a whole lot else - who now relish the thought of finally being part of the in-group. They will go far out of their way to prove they belong, even if it means handling themselves in a hypocritical manner and giving up their unique interests to mirror the majority of the group. Those who do not either leave, get labeled as contrarian (and summarily dismissed) or actually go fully contrarian (not like the other girls~~)

The entirety of modern social media being built around Trends™ is all you need to see how weak people's identities really are. It's part of why people who are authentically themselves (Trump, Walz) are viewed as strong depending on which side of the divide you fall on. People are so busy faking it to fit in (in fear of real consequences), they've outsourced their entire being to the trends of the group they mostly identify with.

It's fully baked in to small town American identity, and even those who can see how absurd it is will still be forced to choose between unjustified torment, conformity, or leaving. One of those options is safe, the other two are risky or outright dangerous. All three options reinforce the belief of the in-group that their choice is the way it's meant to be.

In short: people are really weak and we live in a culture that has preyed on this for centuries under the threat of violence.

Political correctness leads to hivemind 100%, because people are afraid to be ostracized.