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
I don’t know if these people are really “outliers”. Many thought that an extreme outlier would not “win” the 2016 election, but it turned out there were 62 million who supported and loved his extreme outlierism.

>>winter+UQ
Or rather 62 million preferred him enough to the alternative to vote for him in the national election. Among that 62 million were probably very many genuine supporters, but I think that a lot of them chose to read what they wanted into his rhetoric. So it's a bit more nuanced than that.

On the other hand part of the reason he seemed like such an outlier might be because the consensus he seemed to deviate from was itself driven by outliers.