Group chats are a place to build trust with likeminded people, who eventually amplify each others’ ideas in public settings.

If an idea spreads too quickly, it might escape its original context; its meaning could become distorted, and pushback could be so strong that it destroys the idea altogether.

Because every taboo – regardless of its content – is an existential threat to the network, we must be careful about what we permit to enter its bloodstream. The rejection rate of taboos is high, but the payoff for patience is that when they do stick, their influence can be strong and enduring.

We had entered, briefly, the era of “memetic tribes,” a term coined by Peter Limberg in 2018 to refer to this rapid speciation of internet-first subcultures. Limberg defines memetic tribes as “a group of agents with a meme complex…that directly or indirectly seeks to impose its distinct map of reality – along with its moral imperatives – on others.

The short-term memory of college campuses works in favor of administrators on internal issues like tuition costs, management of the endowment, or campus conduct.

There is no wishing away the existence of the public online web. If we don’t like what we see, we simply have to learn how to engage with it more deeply and meaningfully. We must pick up a paintbrush, find a blank canvas, and paint the world as we wish it to be. Instead of hiding in our safe and quiet communities, we need to summon the courage to s

Scott Alexander called these “Moloch” problems, named after an Allen Ginsberg poem, in which “Every single citizen hates the system, but for lack of a good coordination mechanism it endures.”[75]

This strategy – presenting as individuals in public, while keeping group membership private – helps ideas spread in a Dark Forest landscape where the public is highly sensitive, and often hostile to, the tribes they don’t belong to.

Culture wars intensify when too many competing ideas are jostling for limited paths to change, which is why improving the speed and efficiency of institutional response becomes critically important during “(culture) wartime.”