I think people are actually, writ large, less insular, as shown just by their shit-flinging at each other on websites/forums like that. It's just blatantly obvious they don't want to change their mind and will look for what fits their narrative because it's so much more out in the open.
There's a better way to put this. And to use our GAF thread and our own disgusting selves, are we insulating from GAF when we talk about it in there, I'd say no, we're actually more engaged
about GAF than we would be posting on GAF.
And sorta the same thing here, sure they run back to their in-group and get more of the "right" answer or talk about how they demolished someone on the global warming hoax, but they've engaged themselves, and at least two communities on it. Even if nothing has changed for them. We shouldn't expect it to have, that's not how discussion and debates work.
I don't think anything would have been different in the past. I'm not sure people didn't believe any less crazy stuff then.
But then I've mostly grown up with the internet. I remember before the internet, before forums/BBS, but not before Rush Limbaugh really. Hell, not before weird conspiracy theories and stuff, like D&D being a gateway to Hell (okay, that one was true since it happened here, and Tom Hanks even proved it was true) or the child care Satanic molestation hysteria. So on. I have no idea what I'm saying I actually lost my train of thought in the middle of this post and now I'm trying to somehow put it back on track by just rolling with it until it fixes itself or derails totally. I know, how about a dubious Mark Twain quote, that always makes people seem smart, this one about how the hundred million Americans untrained as tailors would never dream to cut their own suit but have a strong opinion on policy regarding a waterway in some other state or what to do over some island in the Pacific.
