[EDIT] - I decided to improve existing articles instead of writing new ones. This post was originally published in May 2023. In the meantime, humanity has lost billions of hours scrolling through videos of people breaking pineapples and watermelons with their heads, while my PhD supervisor tortured me into good English writing (Just joking, I was bad, and now I’m slightly less bad).
Micro-clusters
Our time online is growing exponentially, and because time-sharing between activities is a zero-sum game -there are only so many hours in a day- our time sharing information with actual humans is also decreasing at the same pace. One could argue that social media are an infinite source of human interactions, then a great potential way to improve our connection with fellow humans. Unfortunately, that is not the scenario unfolding before our eyes. On the contrary, we live in engineered, scaled solitude. We are hyperconnected yet isolated. We are lonely together.
Social media is not a digital replacement for physical space. Digital interactions differ not just because they take place online, but also because the environment acts like a dynamic, highly adaptive, personalized world that constantly aims to please and distract. Online spaces live, through algorithms, pieces of code recommending relevant content and likewise profiles. In fact, there’s no such thing as a uniform digital space. Recommendation engines, now coupled with generative AI, turn our digital world into a tailored extension of one’s conscious self. One’s online world is a faithful representation of what they share digitally, and for most of us, it is usually extremely accurate. Everyone lives in their hyper personalized own version of the internet. We used to share the same streets, coffees, bars, and physical meetings. We are now plugged into an individualized online world, as if the coffee shop where you are taking your almond milk latte had a different staff with a different menu for each client.
But none of us is a unique and totally original snowflake. Each of us shares,, at least until now, even in the darkest corners of the internet, common interests with at least a few other humans. When it comes to trivial content, the number of people is usually gigantic, and this is when content becomes is said to become viral. Thinking topologically, online profiles form multipolar networks, with a few hubs representing the largest communities online. These communities can be defined by the content they like and comment on. In simpler words, if I like tons of fishing videos on Instagram, I’ll be clustered with other fishermen and belong to the fishing hub, and the Taylor Swift hub is bigger than the bodybuilding Icelandic fishermen.
We are macro-connected to each other, but in such a way that we are micro-clustered with our peers, as the online environment we all interact in builds soft walls to ensure we don't hear what we don't want to hear, neither see what we may disagree with.
From micro-clusters to loud hubs
Social media function are networks with emergent properties, where the network itself can alter the behaviour of its components. For example, Instagram and TikTok are social network that can change their users' behaviours, turning some of them into fried-brain narcissist influencers unable to handle any conversation. You can recognize them by their ever haggard look, phone always in hand ready to snap, and inability to conduct a complex conversation, rather making a few generic statements interrupted with compulsive scrolling down.
Such behavioural alteration can, in turn, amplify the network's response, potentially leading to catastrophic real life effects. Let me give you an example. Let’s say you recently decided to empower your masculinity and end up following a personal development influencer. Reels, stories, and posts have to catch the audience’s attention at a glance, and it’s likely that the one you are quickly suggested are the most extreme. It’s actually quite intuitive—it’s like trying to stand out in a crowd of people wearing the same outfit: you have to do something totally eccentric or extreme. On social media, this means displaying hardcore, extremely polarised opinions and making sure to generate any reaction from your audience. In my masculinity example, it means you start liking some of Andrew Tate’s re-posts and thinking that mature men treat women like insecure boys1. Welcome to your new hub.
Such dynamics can create intense tunnel vision with dire consequences, especially when occurring on the scale of an entire society or country. Currently, many young men adopt hardcore views of masculinity that promote dominance and aggression as the only way to assert identity and power. This often involves treating women disrespectfully or dismissively, objectifying them. Echo chambers built around tightly connected online groups amplify these harmful ideas, creating an environment where harsh treatment of others is not only accepted but praised. This mindset leads to a dangerous collective belief that self-worth comes from putting others down and rejecting empathy2.
Micro-clusters, often small and seemingly isolated groups or ideas within online networks, have the potential to transform into highly connected hubs. This transformation turn them into echo chambers. As these clusters grow and gain more members, they can influence larger audiences and spread their ideologies or narratives on a global scale. In some cases, these ideologies may be harmful or extreme, leading to real-world impacts that can be detrimental or even dangerous.
Isolated clusters are not self-critical
Growing and improving societies are self-critical3. Successful businesses are self-critical. Achieving humans are also self-critical. However, entities operating on a broken feedback loop are bound to implode. History has shown that the most spectacular collapses often begin with internal failure, leading to collective delusion before implosion. Prior to being overwhelmed by the German army in 1940, the French military was considered among the best in the world. Contrary to common belief, it was not poorly equipped or trained. It was a modern, wealthy, and well-trained army, but it operated under such a strong tunnel vision that it ignored its own thinkers on new warfare paradigms. The German Blitzkrieg was partially inspired by… French military tactics books4.
Isolated clusters usually experience reinforcing feedback loops. They fail to encounter new ideas or engage with the embarrassing truths necessary for any improvement. They tend to exaggerate existing traits, just as inbreeding amplifies organism’s characteristics. For example, the Habsburg family developed exaggerated large jaws after generations of marrying between cousins and relatives. Isolated groups self-reinforce their most recognizable features, leading to extreme deviations that become the norm. Usually, when this happens, people talk about the normalisation of ____ (let’s say racism, supremacism, genocide) within a given group.
This is a worrying trait of modern networks. They are excessively dense and interconnected, yet only loosely and sporadically communicating with other clusters. Online social media and finely-tuned recommendation algorithms create this detrimental effect: extreme self-isolation, leading to localized paranoia and a total inability to think outside a box that is shrinking exponentially. Simultaneously, emerging micro online networks exhibit an extreme filtering effect. As recommendation algorithms tailor what they can see to a ever narrowing criteria, group membership become increasingly hard. For instance, to fit into the die-hard cryptocurrency-maximalist crowd, one is expected to proclaim that Bitcoin will inevitably replace all fiat currencies, insist that any form of government oversight is an attack on freedom, and dismiss non-decentralized projects as worthless.
Online bubble, offline busting
Social media and virtual realities will always fall short in fully replacing actual human experiences5. Yet, many decision makers and so-called influencers shape their beliefs online, where, as previously explained, information is excessively refined6. This can lead to entire countries, politicians, and military leaders surprisingly overlooking critical issues. The dynamics are shifting online, right next to their eyes, but what they see is a comforting, connected cluster of like-minded peers. In contrast, their interaction with opposing thoughts and external ideas is channeled through insults, misleading statements, and tweet-sized verbal destructions that fail to create any self-criticism7.
Being a social-media addict—whether the role begins offline or exists only online as self-anointed “influence”—is dangerously misleading. It can hide the truth only so long.
Which means, like trash.
Empathy is a direct victim of social media exponential usage, more on that later in the blog.
Thats partially what made the US so powerful, there were multiple self critical micro-clusters, willing to change some parts of the societies from the inside, by welcoming external feedback and ideas. A direct consequence : the percentage of immigrant-run successful businesses in the US is infinitely larger than - let’s say - Europe, where money flow through preferentially through heirs.
Ignoring every single unknown ideas is like not having ideas at all. Key French military ideas shaped German blitzkrieg tactics. The 1915 Note 5779 promoted infiltration through weak points and was studied by Germans for their assault troop manuals. De Gaulle’s 1934 call for all-tank divisions with air support influenced officers like Guderian. Late-war French offensives showed how short, intense artillery and rapid exploitation worked, inspiring German storm-artillery concepts.
Even though they increasingly ruin the actual offline experience. See people with their smartphone during a concert. Or people with their phone during 90% of the damn dinner. It kills the connection, man.
Information is refined and is simplified. Truth disappears in the process.
Polarisation is at an all time high in Western democracies where various political parties can co-exist.