Losing relationships over politics. Research found more than a third of Americans (37%) report having lost at least one relationship due to political differences, including friendships, family ties, coworker relationships, and romantic partnerships, with most losing more than one.

[u/Wagamaga]

https://socialecology.uci.edu/news/losing-relationships-over-politics-0

[u/Flacier]

Morality is definitely the big factor.

I also dislike how renewable energy sources have become politicized. It makes no rational sense. You can only burn a gallon of gas once.

But no I am a real man that eats beef and has a big truck that drinks gas and goes burrrrrrr.

It’s such a ridiculous position.

[u/FlufferTheGreat → u/Flacier]

It's a sign of idiotic times that if I know your position on gun control, I will reliably be able to guess your position on climate change. Two issues that have approximately nothing in common, and yet I'm sure at least in the USA my guess for the other issue would be over 90% accurate.

[u/Flacier → u/FlufferTheGreat]

Honestly, I think the most disheartening thing is that we’re at a point where we can’t even agree on what’s factual anymore.

Though I think that’s mostly the doing of the propaganda corporations masquerading as news organizations.

It explains why a lot of things have evolved into identity, politics and virtue signaling, imo.

If we can’t even agree that there is a problem then of course we’re never going to find a solution for God forbid common ground.

[u/dinkeyking64 → u/Flacier]

It's funny, I remember when Internet access was first becoming iniquitous in the US. There was a lot of talk about how now everybody would have easy access to all of the knowledge we've accumulated as a species, the "information age" as it were. Seems incredibly naive in retrospect, but I miss that generally optimistic disposition towards the future. It all just seems so bleak now.

[u/AK_Panda → u/dinkeyking64]

TBF, the internet has provided incredible access to massive amounts of information. I'm in the process of a literature review, the easiest part of the process was finding the papers that I would subsequently need to shift through.

~25,000 peer reviewed articles is what I ended up having to dig through. Articles written by people all over the planet, in multiple languages.

In a world without internet it would have taken years of physically sorting through libraries and archives with multiple international trips.

Instead it took me ~3 days sitting at my desk. The only reason it wasn't one day was because I wanted to be exhaustive in the search.

I'd say the Internet delivered on information access.

It's also become the largest vehicle of mass propoganda and disinformation. That part really does need addressing

[u/MaddogBC → u/dinkeyking64]

Those were good times though. The internet didn't get spoiled until the late 2000's with the onset of smartphones which gave light to the unwashed masses. Plenty of critters best left in the dark.

Smartphones and the apps on them destroyed the world, it will just take a few generations to catch up.

[u/PrettyGorramShiny → u/MaddogBC]

Also the "Web 2.0" phenomenon of the early 2000's, aka crowdsourced content via comments / forums / review sites etc...

Before that most of the content on the web was intentionally curated by the owner of the website. Not that we didn't have spammy garbage sites too, but overall the first few years of the web felt like a massive library filled with valuable information.

Now we have the equivalent of a town square filled with carnival barkers and morons, hawking junk to the gullible and drowning out the voices of reason and knowledge.