Truth Tribes: How We Reshape Reality
Examining how online groups develop their own ways of deciding what’s true, and why it threatens societies.
You pop in and out of various social media apps daily perhaps. Reddit forums, Facebook groups, TikTok and Instagram groups. In each one, you are experiencing a different reality, various forms of truth, half-truths and lies disguised as truths. Today, pixels have become as powerful as pulpits. We are creating different truths.
This is both exciting and terrifying. Truth-making is one of the most important elements of how we form sociocultural systems. How we figure out what the world means to us and how we cooperate as a species.
When we understand the importance of truth-making and how truths evolve in online communities, we can build roadmaps to navigate this never before experienced terrain. We can counter misinformation and we can find a way to ease our divisions.
All online communities build their versions of a truth and that’s not necessarily bad or wrong. It’s how we organise and connect. Each online community builds its own epistemological frameworks and models. They determine what evidence means and is accepted, who the leaders are and their powers and how they’ll produce what is deemed as knowledge. What stories and myths are acceptable to them. They’re building parallel reality systems.
This is a primary reason that it’s so challenging to deal with people who have become deeply entrenched in their view of the truth. From toxic masculinity to conspiracy groups like “Q” and all the others.
It is also a large part of why we live in a time of truth wars. The more “truths” that are created, the more divergent realities become, the harder it is to find broader societal consensus. Thus we are seeing so many differing political outcomes. To get to a plurality, to some global agreement of a reality will, in the shorter term, become increasingly difficult and continue to cause fractures in sociocultural systems around the world.
This will be especially so in highly individualistic societies, especially the United States. More socially oriented cultures like Nordic and Asian ones, will find it easier, but not without their own set of challenges.
These groups have created an entire reality that also informs and guides their real-world lives. It is constantly reinforced thorough participation and engagement in the communities they have established. Over time, they become so absorbed in that reality that any who threaten it, are not allowed in and in some cases, may be threatened or taken more dangerous actions against. From doxxing to online and real-world abuse.
For people who’s whole identity has absorbed these truths, it is almost impossible to counter their truths and beliefs with facts. So fact checking these people won’t work. When facts become politicised, the realities change. In discourse, power takes over from evidence.
For some in more radicalised or ideological online groups, certain information sharing rituals emerge. Sharing memes and other peoples content that aligns with or supports the truths and myths, becomes ritualised and it can be less about the content and more about social signalling.
As an example, we might consider the GameStop stock phenomenon of 2021. The r/WallStreetBets community developed their own memes, language patterns and cultural signifiers. They created their own criteria for investment decisions. Key to this was brining together traditional metrics and social factors. They would often value community members over financial experts with decades of experience.
An oft heard refrain from conspiracy groups and others of similar ilk is “do your own research” as a statement that all the evidence you need is just a few taps away. But when they say this, they mean you to do only the research they want. Because it is all information that that reinforces their version of reality and the truths that support their views.
This isn’t limited to conspiracy groups either. It happens with all kinds of groups, such as car fanatics for a certain brand, hunting communities. All employ the same methods of creating truths. The degree, risks and dangers can vary widely. Most are relatively harmless. Outsiders may find them odd, but most are close enough to the real reality that they aren’t harmful.
This cultural behaviour has been around for thousands of years. Even cave paintings were a form of stating a reality and defining truths. It’s just that today, we have technologies that have enabled us to collapse time and space and speed up the creation of new truths. Humanity has never been here before.
So with all that said, how do we, as a species, deal with this? Algorithms are largely useless. This is not a technology problem, it is a human problem that needs human mental models and frameworks. Technologies are simply tools.
These are issues too, that cannot be resolved overnight. They need long-term approaches, from early on in the education system through to post-secondary and broader education across society. There are many reasons that social groups create their own truths and thus, realities.
It is, as they say, a whole of society challenge. We can neither take a short-term view, nor can we see technology as a saviour. Something we do too often in this age of rapid technological advances.
The better we understand how these knowledge and truth-making systems work, we understand the persistence of misinformation. This enables us to become more resilient and capable to lessen the divisions these systems create.