Another Reason the Internet Sucks
The internet sucks for many reasons. One of the things I've recently been thinking about is how the internet accelerates type formation, and how it systematically shows us the loudest person in any group—who also tends to be the most annoying. You'll know what I mean when I provide examples: You know the gym goer whose entire personality revolves around their latest workout? The vegan who makes every conversation about animal cruelty? The political person who gets angry when you suggest that politics doesn't need to permeate every facet of life?
These people exist, but they're not representative. Most gym goers just enjoy their workouts. Most vegans just eat plant-based meals without lecturing anyone. Most politically engaged people have nuanced views and can talk about other things. But if your exposure to these groups comes mainly from the internet, you'd never know it.
The internet has this fundamental problem: it shows us the loudest person in any group, and the loudest person is almost always the most annoying. This isn't just an observation about online culture—it's distorting how we understand and relate to each other.
Being quiet gets you nowhere
The main problem is with our social media platforms, where reasonable, nuanced takes are boring. They don't make people stop scrolling. They don't inspire passionate responses. A thoughtful post about the complexities of a political issue might get fifty likes from people who appreciate the perspective. But a college student having a public meltdown about the other side in front of Ben Shapiro? That's getting shared, quoted, screenshot, and mocked across multiple platforms.
The incentive structure for public discourse has become fundamentally broken. Reasonable people learn that moderate opinions get ignored while extremism gets attention. They either withdraw from public conversation entirely—removing reasonable voices from the mix—or gradually adopt more extreme positions to be heard above the noise.
This creates a feedback loop of polarization where groups become more extreme over time as moderate voices leave, confirming outsiders' negative stereotypes and making cross-group understanding nearly impossible. Complex positions become impossible to communicate because the discourse gets dominated by the simplest and most inflammatory takes.
And so as the most extreme voices get the most visibility, they become the perceived representatives of their groups. Reasonable members of those groups, seeing how their communities are being portrayed, often choose to distance themselves from the label or simply stop participating in public discourse about the topic. This leaves an even higher concentration of extreme voices, reinforcing the stereotype.
Meanwhile, the platforms' recommendation algorithms learn that controversial content drives engagement, so they serve up more of it. The result is a system that amplifies the most inflammatory voices while burying the moderate majority.
The universal pattern
This phenomenon cuts across every conceivable group. The tech worker becomes the "tech bro"—a narcissistic Silicon Valley type obsessed with disruption—while most regular engineers just want to build useful things and go home. Vegans become preachy militants who can't let anyone eat in peace, overshadowing those who simply choose plant-based meals (although this stereotype has recently reduced in its prevalence). Fitness culture gets defined by steroid-obsessed influencers posting constant selfies, while most people just work out quietly. Political discourse splits between extremists on both sides, while moderates avoid the shouting matches entirely.
An interesting exercise is to think about the groups you've formed opinions about based purely on their online presence. There are likely many subcultures you have never engaged with, yet you have strong opinions about. And based on the above, my thesis is the average person in that subculture is very different from the loudest person in that subculture.
Meta-awareness paralysis
The long-term consequences of this dynamic reach beyond online annoyance. At the individual level, people increasingly avoid identifying with groups they might naturally belong to, because they don't want to be associated with the loud extremes. Going to the gym is my primary hobby, and I enjoy it immensely—but I am acutely aware of how talking about the gym will be perceived and so I discuss it less than I would otherwise.
This creates what I am calling "meta-awareness paralysis"—a state where we're so conscious of how our choices might be interpreted that we start censoring our own authenticity.
This paralysis has led us all to become a bit more faceless. Consider how we consume and discuss entertainment now. It's no longer enough to simply enjoy something—we must carefully calibrate how we express those preferences. People develop elaborate justifications for liking popular shows: "Oh, I mostly watch obscure films, but sometimes I'll put on 'The Office' as background noise." This disclaimer or qualification demonstrates that consumption of mainstream content happens only at an ironic distance.
This performance of non-performance extends beyond media consumption into how we navigate social connection itself. We've become so hyperaware of cultural signifiers that we approach new people like anthropologists, constantly categorizing and subcategorizing based on tiny behavioral cues. Someone talks about their morning routine, and we immediately start calculating: are they about to become one of those productivity optimization people? How long before they mention their supplements? Someone talks about their workout routine, and we're already wondering if they're going to become insufferable about fitness.
The contrast with previous generations is striking. They operated with broader, simpler social categories and weren't constantly cross-referencing every interaction against an internal database of stereotypes. Without today's endless proliferation of types and subtypes, they were freer to let relationships develop organically. Now everyone strives to be unclassifiable, yet paradoxically we've all become more faceless—so busy avoiding being "a type" that we struggle to be anything at all.
This same pattern plays out at larger scales too. When your main impression of any group comes from their most vocal members online, it becomes harder to take them seriously in real life. The environmental activist at your company might have perfectly reasonable ideas about reducing waste, but if your primary exposure to environmentalism is through viral videos of protesters gluing themselves to paintings, you're already approaching the conversation with baggage. The reasonable majority is still there—they're just not the loudest.
The stakes
The outcome of this dynamic might be a society where we're all increasingly isolated from each other, with our understanding of different groups shaped entirely by caricatures. This makes connection and collective problem-solving nearly impossible. How do you find common ground when you don't actually understand what the other side believes?
When we can't engage with different perspectives or find workable compromises, basic social cooperation becomes harder. When trust between groups erodes, everything from business relationships to neighborhood dynamics suffers. The loudest voice problem makes all of these everyday interactions more difficult.
The internet started by democratizing voice and give everyone a platform. Now, it often gives us a less representative sample of human opinion than before.
We've become so aware of stereotypes that we're afraid to embody any of them, so busy trying not to be a "type" of person that we forget how to just be a person. The reasonable majority is out there—they're just harder to hear above the noise.
