Social media outrages in context

OK, so in another Washington Post column which I will gift my readers, Megan McArdle writes about the recent on line controversy over an American chain restaurant offering plant based meat (as well as their regular meat menu),  and some MAGA types reacted on social media that this was outrageously "woke" and they wouldn't eat there again.

McArdle argues that the problem is that social media amplifies crank voices - what used to be a stupid opinion never used to have such a public profile, and we could all ignore easily:

Before social media, these people mostly had to share their crankery in person, unless they could get a local newspaper column or a segment on “60 Minutes.” And Americans knew how to deal with it: We nodded and smiled while Uncle Walter explained that he was never going back to Second Federal Bank because the new bank manager was German, and he hadn’t fought World War II to do his banking with a Nazi.

Then we turned to Aunt Irma and complimented her on how pretty her Jell-O mold looked.

We ignored these explosions because when we had to endure these tirades in person, we had a sense of proportion. Yes, Uncle Walter had crazy opinions. But everyone else we knew chose their bank based on where it was located, or who was offering the best interest rate on savings accounts.

Social media concentrates all the Uncle Walters in one place, where they start to seem like an army. But in fact, their numbers are still insignificant, relative to the 325 million people in the country.

This is true, and something worth remembering.

But I reckon her "calm down everyone" attitude leaves out a couple of things:

*   it's a pity she pitches it towards encouraging people to just ignore some extreme MAGA types, as if it is only liberals who over-estimate the number of nuts on the other side of politics.   For example, Right wingers get off on "Libs of Tik Tok" as if every gay teacher on there is representative of teachers as a whole.  Also, as someone said in a comment following the article:

Ok, so if a few dozen students protest a speaker at their college campus, then Megan will exercise the same sense of proportion and won’t claim that these people are threatening the very foundations of democracy. Right?

I think we know the answer to that.

*  More importantly, I reckon she's ignoring the effect of social media in the reinforcement of extreme views, because people who hold them readily a community of the like minded.   And they probably do what McArdle warns about - overestimate the size of that community - but that hardly matters, and they are not likely to be convinced of their overestimate anyway.   What's important is the mutual support in their nutty views, which help entrench them.   That's the bigger danger of social media free speech, especially in the USA, where you also have a media universe devoted to perpetual demonisation of Democrats and liberals.  This was also noted in a comment:

What happens when the cranks are on major media sites like Fox News, OANN, and they are accusing the president and the DoJ with a conspiracy to get Trump? We have a problem in this country of people who can't think in anything but in terms that the opposition is pure evil and their side is purity and light. Meanwhile, that "side" thinks of itself as purity and light is spreading lies and misinformation 24/7.

Indeed.