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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Campbell" data-source="post: 8165097" data-attributes="member: 16586">There's definitely more to it. Increasing tribalism and virtue signaling is a big deal culturally. None of us are really immune to it.There's also that fact that online culture and the culture of message boards in particular are deeply seated in a type of debate club mentality. Rhetoric in the sense of providing a superior argument is substantially overvalued. Some recent studies have shown that these types of exchanges are more likely to calcify viewpoints than to get people to consider new perspectives regardless of the strength of the arguments. This point and counterpoint online culture encourages a sense of sides and opposition even though people usually do not really fall under clear ideological lines. The sense of being responsible for commentary made by people who have the same overall position on a given topic, but differ dramatically in their reasoning and overall preferences sure does not help.</blockquote>