The effects that networks have on people are statistical; for every individual who self-radicalizes there are many more who are merely made more irritable and paranoid (the diffuse forms of “fight or flight”) than they would otherwise be. Researchers have detected an unprecedented level of “negative partisanship,”8 meaning that people no longer vote for anything, but against other groups of people; indeed when ideas or plans are at stake, there’s an emerging new norm of “no to everything.”
