The Sound of Silence
People are starting to realize (en masse now), this is the downside of permitting group identity-based &quot;discussions&quot; to flourish. Whatever you say, people are going to try interpreting it against the group you are perceived to belong to, eagerly pouncing on things that are in &quot;conflict&quot; with their own group identity. I put conflict in quotes here because this ultimately empty conflict is what actually drives both sides. Facts and open discussion are utterly irrelevant in this process, instead your words just get parsed for trigger phrases.<p>There is an argument to be made that internet discussions have always been at risk, and I think it&#x27;s indeed a known pathology. However, subjectively, it seems to me this has escalated in a massive way within the last two years - to the point that important issues have effectively been taken off the discussion table because the participant pool is entirely made up of people fighting content-free meme wars.<p>In my opinion, the only way to combat this is to violate the rules of these meme wars and start talking about content again. But I wouldn&#x27;t recommend it for high profile personalities whose job entails getting along with as many people as possible, because the fears of backlash are absolutely justified even if you <i>might</i> garner more respect this way in the long term. Worse yet, once a discussion has been taken over by mindless reactions like this, it becomes very difficult to form your own opinion rationally because it involves separating what the memes want of you from whatever the facts and your internal thoughts say.<p>As a rule of thumb: if both parties are angry at you, you&#x27;re on the right track.<p>Personally I think the current state of things is either unsustainable, meaning the group identity thing is going to burn itself out over time, or it&#x27;s a new low-energy state as far as human thought process goes which means it&#x27;s going to be permanent. Either way, at least some influential people need to fight this, even if it means you&#x27;ll be perceived as having rough edges.