Extract – The hysterical society | The trivialized confrontation

Social networks have changed the boundary between public and private space. Individuals disseminate and promote their identity, beliefs and values ​​more than in the physical world. This can be experienced as a form of invasion for others and, conversely, provoke hostile reactions.

Social networks play a major role in the polarization and hysterization of our societies. They have radically transformed the modes of expression within the public space by trivializing confrontation.

Polarization first. By their operation, subject to numerous algorithms and a system of cognitive bubbles, our information feeds correspond to our research, and therefore to our tastes and opinions. By cumulative effect, the vast majority of us receive information that supports our ideas. We no longer confront opposing ideas, we no longer rub shoulders with them, we are no longer even aware of them. We are spared the inconvenience, however fundamental, of considering opinions that are not ours. A huge gap is widening between the citizens, each group remaining in its silo, with no point of intersection, reinforced in its own way of thinking and exempt from contradiction. This is how contemporary societies are becoming more and more polarized because of social networks. Polarization that clearly appears in an American documentary on Netflix, Behind our smokescreens, by the American Jeff Orlowski, interviewing pundits from Silicon Valley. We can clearly see the mechanism at work of the radicalization of society, to which the networks contribute through their formidable algorithmic logic. In ten years, the gap between Republicans and Democrats in the United States has greatly increased, each entity reinforced in its cognitive bubble by the information thread offered in line with what it wants to read, hear and see. . Global heterogeneity has disappeared; the homogeneity of the two groups is now very powerful. And they especially tend to move away more and more from each other.

Hysterization then. In the same way that the networks give us access to information in line with our opinions, we are also offered repulsive and caricatural information which, by a ricochet effect, further consolidates our vision of the world. I consider the opposing camp as more and more delusional compared to my own ideas. This is how two camps find themselves face to face, looking at each other like faience dogs, incapable of communicating except through invective and aggression. Networks can divide. Rather than connecting and networking, they can cut bridges that previously existed, pitting populations against each other. It is not a question of denying access to speech, the facilities for communication, emancipation and expression that have been created, but also to become aware of the seeds of division that have been sown in our societies. So much for ideological hysteria, that which opposes ideologies watered down on both sides by threads of monothematic information which enclose each other in an autistic enclosure.

The hysteria on the networks is also manifested by pack hunting. Under cover of anonymity, hidden behind his screen, we go after a group or a person. The virtual world of networks is not the real world. It is meaner, more abrupt, more violent.

“As long as wickedness has not matured, it is ready at any moment to turn into hysteria”, writes Alexandre Blok in Notebook. The immediacy of the networks lets the wickedness speak first. Associated with anonymity, it wreaks havoc. We say that everything is allowed there.

The hysterization of exchanges has become commonplace there. The violence of words has no borders, it can develop in the virtual world of networks and materialize in the real world. It is here hysterization as a crowd phenomenon that manifests itself. Collective, it exceeds the sum of individual drives. Uncontrollable, anger and hatred spread en masse. We have seen that the wars of bands of very young populations, in France, in 2021, took root well on the networks, with confrontations upstream by interposed exchanges. The virtual exchanges and the upstream preparation unfortunately had very real tragic consequences.

Hysterization is therefore well defined as a group syndrome, which develops the collective feeling of threat through rumors and fear. Unlike the traditional psychiatric definition, collective hysteria is a phenomenon of contagion, the product of social interactions. This phenomenon has been observed by psychologists for centuries (the witch hunt in the Middle Ages is a very documented case); however, it seems to have taken on an unprecedented form due to the advent of new media, which have modified the modes of interaction in the public space through a series of channels.

The new media are indeed the source of a sharp increase in violence and aggression, both verbal and physical. Social networks are often the starting point for an unprecedented contagion effect of violence because it is not local. The Internet has created a phenomenon of imitation of the most extreme violent behavior (the mass shootings resulting from social networks) to the most banal (virtual bullying, a new phenomenon of bullying that affects nearly 40% of young Americans).

Online anonymity is also one of the main factors in the aggressiveness of opinions on the Internet. This elicits a feeling of increased disinhibition from users, which leads them to behaviors and speeches that they would not have had face to face. Philosophers like Plato or La Rochefoucauld have well described this privileged role of anonymity in our behavior. Plato, through the allegory of the ring of Gyges (The Republic), asserts that if we had an invisibility ring, many of us would not resist the temptation to act with impunity. Plato deplores the fact that we often submit to moral duty, not by choice, but by constraint from the gaze of others. La Rochefoucauld also subscribes to this line: “We easily forget our faults when they are known only to us. »

The hysterical society

Jonathan Curiel

Dawn Editions, 2021

134 pages