only 5% of Americans would object to their children marrying a member of the other political party; by 2010, 49% of Republicans and 33% of Democrats would have objections. That is a substantial increase.
A result of this polarisation is evident in controversial democratic results, like the narrow election of Donald Trump or the narrow victory of “Leave.” Most politicians in those positions would accept that they had a limited mandate to rule, and would aim to construct a consensus from the political centre. However, the current political climate has seen the opposite view take hold. There is no longer an incremental scale of political consensus. There is only a binary. There is only “win” and only “lose.”
There is something to be said for the contribution of the internet and internet culture to this increased polarisation. Studies in Science have determined that face-to-face interaction is more likely to moderate extreme positions, and to encourage empathy with other viewpoints. It makes sense that interacting with the world through a computer screen would have the opposite effect, exaggerating extreme positions and discouraging empathy for others.
More than that, the democratisation of media has led to unintended consequences. Without the mainstream media to serve as gatekeepers, people are encouraged to search the internet for news sources and opinions that validate and reinforce (rather than challenge or confront) their views. The internet offers people both vindication and analysis of their views, but most people when browsing choose the former over the latter.
The internet has undoubtedly contributed to the spread and mainstreaming of various conspiracy theory subcultures. For example, the anti-vaccination
movement has gained considerable traction in the twenty-first century; looking at 1,789 cases of measles in the United States between 2001 and 2015, scientists determined that 70% of suffers were unvaccinated.
The internet puts the entire world at a person’s finger-tips, but people are more likely to actively seek out information that conforms to their world view than to sample opinions that differ from their own. Some of this happens unconsciously, through filters on Facebook or Twitter, with feeds tailor-designed to line up with the user’s world view. Warren Buffet argued that “what the human being is best at doing is interpreting all new information so that their prior conclusions remain intact.” The internet has simply made this easier.
This applies as much to criticism as to any other form of media. It is not merely that online audiences tend to gravitate towards critics with whom they agree and take umbrage at those with whom they disagree, it is that those binary scores become an all-or-nothing game. Once again, Rotten Tomatoes serves as a focal point for this broad democratisation of internet film criticism. It serves as a nexus point for how the internet perceives criticism as an artform, and its relationship to broader discourse.
For its all short attention spans and constant churn, one of the more interesting aspects of the internet is that it has a memory. In The Social Network, the characters grapple with the implications of this new technology and this virtual world. One of the most cutting comments comes from an outsider, the character of Mark Zuckerberg’s ex-girlfriend Erica Albright. Calling her ex-boyfriend out on his decision to berate her online, she advises him, “The Internet's not written in pencil, Mark, it's written in ink.”
As transient as the internet might be, it is also engraved in stone. Anything that has ever been online is traceable, if a user is willing to look hard enough. Every past mistake or indiscretion, ever ill-advised opinion or awkward hat take, is stored for posterity. The internet might move quickly, but it remembers. In particular, it remembers its opinion about films.
22 CinÉireann / December 2017
Irish Times critic Donald Clarke