zlacker

>>unquot+(OP)
Most of the comments here are either elaborating on the OP, or justify lurking. I am a mostly-lurker myself, but I felt the need to comment here, since I was hoping to see the discussion go into a different direction.

The OP uses the word "insane", not outlier. It's clickbaity, and used in jest, but I think it better captures a subtlety of this phenomenon: The prolific commenters are molding every discussion in their image. They might have an interesting angle on the story, or they might just be saying trivial things with beautiful prose. In any case, there is a lack of diversity in general -- discussions are driven by the worldview of a few.

That would be an argument for lurkers to make an effort, even if, like this comment, it's just a barely-formed idea.

Edit: "molding the discussion" -> "molding every discussion"

>>gniv+pB
A related phenomenon I've been thinking about is the impact of traditional entertainment media (TV, Movies and Music) and the inherent bias in the sample of worldviews that the people who work in those businesses espouse.

In other words, we only hear and watch stories from those people who chose storytelling as their career, and if you assume we are inevitably influenced by their views then we're effectively taking advice from them. This means entertainment shapes the viewer-listener's interpretation of reality to better fit the model of reality to which storytellers subscribe, but I'm pretty sure that's not a desirable outcome in the long run.

In a recent interview, Michelle Obama said we only ever tell young people about the good parts of marriage. We hardly ever explain to them that it has its ups and downs, that it isn't "broken" if suddenly the lust isn't there like it was in the beginning. She presented the argument in a much more cogent manner, but in any case, if you believe her to be right, then this seems like a specific (important!) example of this broader trend.

There are countless others out there who go on to live perfectly happy lives with perhaps much more useful advice to us, and who would arguably be a better influence overall – you just don't hear about them.

>>airstr+jO
It certainly feels plausible and yet we have that issue. All our media tells us we should all carry guns and shoot people and yet gun violence is down.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/12/03/weve-...

We have some of the sexyist media around telling us we should all be sleeping around and yet apparently sex is down too.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/12/the-sex...

Are we sure it's any different for other topics?

Also, as for media and marriage I feel like more media is about bad marriages than good ones. A common theme might be falling in love and getting married but a movie about people already married seems rarely about things going well. Or maybe I just have a selective memory.