Is it just me or is the way we receive information becoming similar to religions?
In that I mean, we find what we believe and gravitate toward places that fortify those beliefs.
Before we start, let me emphasize that this isn’t an attack on religion, it’s an attack on nonreligious ideologies taking on aspects of religious belief, particularly some of the darker aspects from its history when those religious beliefs were twisted and used to whip people into frenzies in order to do bad things.
With that being said, let’s move on.
Look at our major news outlets and their audiences. There are certain groups who gravitate toward Fox News and others that gravitate toward CNN, each believing they “have it right.” This effect applies to other places, especially the web, where virtual communities coalesce around the interpretations of current events they want to hear.
“Want” being emphasized.
It’s a different world than just 30 years ago, where Americans largely got their news from the evening newscasts and newspapers. It’s not that we didn’t have news outlets that catered to certain ideological dispositions, but usually, magazines and talk radio filled those voids. But the difference was that the majority of Americans received the same information. Sure, we still had the…
