Polarization in the U.S. didn’t rise gradually. A new machine-learning study shows it surged after 2008- but why?
“Study shows why XYZ…”
Comments: “I don’t need your damn study, I already know why!”
(Tbf though, the study shows more “how” than “why”)
Key milestones in Facebook’s rise to popularity include:
- 2004 (Initial Buzz): Launched for Harvard, then expanded to top US universities, hitting 1 million users by year-end.
- 2005 (Expansion): The platform grew from college-only to include high school students and international schools, hitting 6 million users.
- 2006 (General Public & Features):Facebook opened to anyone 13+ with an email, introduced the News Feed, and expanded to 12 million users.
- 2007-2008 (Global Dominance): Surpassed Myspace, reached 50 million users in 2007, and doubled to 100 million by late 2008.
- 2012 (Milestone): Reached 1 billion monthly active users.
(This is ai fyi need to check numbers)
People here are blaming racism and Obama and that is part of it, but another bigger factor is 2008 is the year neoliberalism died. And unlike in 1932 there wasn’t any reckoning with it, holding anyone to blame or charting a positive vision for what might replace it. Obamaism ended up being a bunch of empty platitudes and the attempt to just bandage things up and keep rolling. Bernie tried to name perpetrators and chart a positive vision (back to the 1930s at least) but he was ratfucked. So ever since we’ve been living in this hypernormal world where everything sucks, everything’s getting worse, nobody believes in anything and an increasingly fringe set up carnival barkers are the only people with any resonance.
Look, I know everyone here thinks Obama broke racists brains and shit went crazy post 2008. But the REAL reason shit went off the rails after 08 is imo, actually:
The '08 financial crisis + Occupy Wallstreet.
Remember Occupy Wallstreet? Isn’t it odd no one talks about it now that the Epstein files prove that 08 issues never got fixed, and the can just got kicked to now?
Basically, Occupy Wallstreet plus the online MeToo movement proved that social media could collectively and effectively unite individuals into pursuing their billionaire leaders into responsibility for the crimes they committed.
MeToo got Harvey Weinstein arrested for rape and was a thread that was getting pulled harder and harder that would have eventually lead to Epstein. And later the files that now prove a decades long financial circle jerk that was US politics and Wall Street.
Occupy Wallstreet was about as close as this country has ever gotten to holding their oligarchs accountable, and it was immediately turned into a joke by the paid media. Then more of a joke by paid online propagandists. Then more of a joke by paid celebrities and influencers.
Eventually, oligarchs discovered that the class consciousness that was forming over social media could be easily disrupted through control of that media.
Cue the following decades of billionaires buying up social media platforms and using their firehose of bullshit to destabilize our entire country into one that only talks about stupid pre-approved critiques.
Occupy Wallstreet spooked our oligarch leaders into polarizing the internet against itself so any further social consciousness movements like MeToo could never gain enough ground to threaten them again.
The racist bullshit Obama got was just the start of this. The point was to create seperate realities no one could join together on. Obama wasn’t born in the US according to half this country. Now, vaccines are seen as dangerous to half this country too. So mission fucking accomplished.
Reality is now whatever billionaires want it to be on social media, as our lizard brains can’t distinguish between our actual environment, and what social media we’ve surrounded ourselves with.
The reason they’re going all-in on AI is because the first Billionaire that reaches AGI can use it to basically warp reality through social media to their favor forever. So we’re currently in a race to see which billionaire Oligarch gets to control the world narrative, and therefore the world, through AI and social media. Something most Americans are financing with their tax dollars and don’t even know it because of how removed from reality they are.
Hmm I wonder what significant thing happned in 2008 that broke racists brains?
My parents before Obama: your regular run of the mill uninformed apolitical bigots
My parents after Obama: your regular run of the mill uninformed hyperpolitical bigots
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_social_media
I remember 2008. That’s when my classmates got into social media.
True, 2010-2012 was when people thought you were weird for not having a Facebook account.
Bingo. I was in high school, so right in the jaws of all of that.
Racists gonna racist.
Social media and rural Internet access. The country dumbass should have stayed offline.
also, a black man was elected president. I think the rural racists without Internet still heard about it.
