Congratulations! You have decided to leave the walled garden designed to keep you in the echo-chamber and decided to listen and interact with opposite views. You carefully ventured into your opponents camp (be it subreddit, forum, group) and you make a reasonable comment and go to sleep. You are greeted with expletives and downvotes. You regret going there again and come back to your comfortable eco-chamber.
No! I think people forgot how to talk with each other and are getting more entrenched into their own social/political groups. Moderate opinions are dying and people rarely know why they are following a ideology or policy. One of the main reasons is we don’t know how to debate anymore. But how can you be a pioneer in this hostile environment? I will try to list my strategies in the context of Reddit (subreddit discussions).
You have your opinion that’s polar opposite to the subreddit. If you just post or express that opinion, you will be downvoted to obvlivion and just pushed down from the ranking. To me, that’s a waste. Your opinion deserves to be heard and the algorithm is exactly designed to push down these kinds of comment. A discussion would be more fruitful. You may want to ‘fake’ your enthusiasm by agreeing with the opposing view. However, this can be seen as concern trolling and is just ethically dubious.
You can engage more by:
- Asking a relevant question: the opposing view has faulty line. You ask a fellow how does it work for that specific situation and how does the supporter rationalize it. One side effect of the walled garden is everyone assumes that every other opposing view is insane. As you dwell more in the other camp’s walled garden you find everyone has reasons; they may be false, or they may be rooted in darker side of humanity. Be the psychiatrist, no one is crazy, find the root cause by asking. You will learn more about your views as well as other views.
- Try to find common ground and approach: you may actually have common ground with the other camp. State it as much as you can then your sprinkle your uneasiness on the top. You will be surprised how cooperative a seemingly radical hive mind can be. Everyone wants to be include new member in their clan; it’s in our DNA.
- Things can still go wrong. Just give up on that post, if you want you can even delete the post. At least you try and then try again.
What do you think? Do you have more tips? What do you think about this approach? Comments are appreciated.