Deconstructing a Viral Article

In mid-March 2016, Robin Weis’ article “Crying” went massively viral, getting hundreds of up-votes and comments on HackerNews, as well as many shares elsewhere. Rather than focusing on the subject of the article itself, I’m going to focus more on the meta-narrative: why the article was so popular and what its popularity says about post-2008… Continue reading Deconstructing a Viral Article

Ingroup/Outgroup Dynamics

Ingroup/outgroup dynamics are a topic of much interest to both the ‘alt right’ and rationalists. From Wikipedia: In sociology and social psychology, an ingroup is a social group to which a person psychologically identifies as being a member. By contrast, an outgroup is a social group with which an individual does not identify. For example,… Continue reading Ingroup/Outgroup Dynamics

I Can Tolerate Anything Except Factual Inaccuracies

This story is going hugely viral: Economist Removed from Plane for Algebra The outpouring of sympathy and firestorm of righteous indignation, similar to that observed after the Ahmed Mohamed clock story, is more evidence we’re in an era of the ‘STEM celebrity‘, of which economics is part of. Had an obese snoring passenger been removed… Continue reading I Can Tolerate Anything Except Factual Inaccuracies