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FORTY-THREE

ECHO CULTURE AND THE PERPETUATION OF DIVISION

How does echo culture perpetuate division?

It only shows you what will outrage you or align you. It positions you to pick a side, and then it reinforces your stake in “your” side with evidence……Did you pick your side? Or was your side picked for you? Have you considered you may not have chosen your position on many of life's greatest debates? Could this have been on purpose? Echo culture, a byproduct of echo chambers, plays a significant role in perpetuating division within society. By consistently presenting content that either outrages or aligns with our beliefs, echo culture prompts us to pick a side in various debates and conflicts. This process often leads to the reinforcement of our chosen stance through a continuous stream of evidence that supports our beliefs and fuels our emotional investment.

An unsettling aspect of echo culture is the illusion of choice. We may believe we have consciously chosen our positions on various issues, but in reality, these choices could have been heavily influenced by the curated content we consume. This manipulation is an intentional consequence of social media algorithms, not a result of the human tendency to gravitate towards like-minded individuals as one might think. The algorithm's job is to keep your eyes on the screen for as long as possible – social media platforms operate on an attention based model. Their only goal is to capture and keep your attention to trade it for dollars. Once it knows it can put you in a box that will keep you on the screen, you become locked in an echo chamber, and echo culture is then echoed back to you by everyone else in the box consuming the same one-sided ideas, opinions, and perspectives.

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