When Worlds Collide: the Comment Section

On Wednesday, the New York Times published an article titled "Bernie Sanders, Eyeing Convention, Willing to Harm Hillary Clinton in the Homestretch". People freaked out.

New York Times articles about Sanders tend to attract droves of commenters, but this one managed to stand out; by the time the moderators closed the comments section there were 6,430. Why? The article's title was a little misleading. While one could certainly draw the same conclusion the headline expressed, this article was a news story, not an opinion piece. It was saying that Bernie Sanders' campaign had said it was fine with harming Clinton's, but its only actual quote was a senior advisor saying that he was "not worried about"the possibility of hurting Clinton this fall.

So many comments!

The difference between the quote and the headline was not a huge one, but it was enough to confirm a number of peoples' suspicion that the entirety of the media is conspiring against Sanders. It also gave one person a chance to warn against "the grand Clinton family traditions of giving everyone a free puppy while they ravage the economy" and another to remind us that "it is obvious that it should be a Bernie/Hillary ticket," with the former being the president and the latter his running mate. In fact, it seemed that for every comment criticizing the article's language there were another 4 stating the poster's opinion with no reference to another comment.

The comment section on this article, as well as just about every other political article by as big of an entity as the Times, shows just how differently people see the world, and how impossible it seems to be for them to communicate. Normally, the commenters who squabble with each other would never come into contact with each other, but online forums change all of that, and as a result vitriolic, ad hominem-filled arguments that could never have happened before take shape. However, I wonder if the internet does more to bring people of opposing viewpoints together than it does give people the support they need to become sure of the opinions they ride into battle with.

New York Times comment sections and those of other major news outlets may be vast, but they do not account for the majority of comments posted online. My forays into Instagram's "Explore" page have allowed me to discover a multitude of political accounts with relatively large followings who share pretty similar opinions. Some express opinions one could always find broad bases of support for, but others push beyond what would previously have been possible. Pro Bernie accounts can now bring together hundreds of people who think he will win 75% of California's votes, anti-Bernie accounts bring together people who think that he is an evil communist, and anarcho-communist accounts bring together lots of teenage boys who favor overthrowing the government and allowing the proletariat masses to seize the means of production.

In any given area, none of these opinions are likely to be widely held, but when you allow everyone with a cell phone and a shared belief to communicate, suddenly fringe opinions can seem not only right but downright mainstream. As a result, when one migrates from an area where debates feature two sides that the majority of the general population would disagree with and people generally agree with each other to an area where a sizable chunk of commenters disagree with one's basic principles, things get heated. The more you break up people within a certain group, especially large ones like Democrats and Republicans, the easier it is to forget that other large groups even exist, so coming into contact with them can be shock.