Thoughts on the sociology of Brexit
As someone with no horse in this race, I hadn&#x27;t been following the debate leading up to the Brexit but I did see the aftermath on Twitter, FB, mainstream media, etc. What I saw was really fascinating - an almost universal outpouring of scorn and derision for &quot;Leave&quot; voters: Ageism. Racism. Classism - &quot;Only uneducated old, poor, white people voted to leave&quot;.<p>It hit me then pretty hard just how much of a echo chamber places like Twitter, FB, and even the mainstream media now are and how poorly they sample and represent the views of everyone. Here was a democratically conducted vote for which &gt;50% of a population voted &quot;Leave&quot;, yet based on how one-sided the response has been you would think the votes must have been rigged.<p>I deeply suspect as well that the one-sidedness of presentation in the MSM is a root contributor to the massive divide that drove the Brexit. What you have here is a failure of empathy - as the article touches on, &quot;every smug, liberal, snobbish barb that Ian Hislop threw his way...was ensuring that revenge would be all the greater, once it arrived&quot;. Here are ridiculed and marginalised people showing you that while they lack representation in Twitter, MSM, etc, in a democracy their vote is just as powerful as yours.<p>In some sense I actually find it quite a satisfying outcome when viewed in this lense. A simple analogy might be &quot;A bullied child just threw a punch back at his bully even though he may have deep down known it&#x27;ll get him in more trouble.&quot;<p>And a part of me wonders whether the same daily outpouring of hatred you see dumped on Trump&#x2F;Trump supporters has also created a very large class of marginalized, ridiculed people who are going to let us know exactly what they think come time to vote -- and like the Brexit we may not even see it coming, because we live in the Twitter, FB, MSM bubble that does not accurately sample the people.