> A relatively small group of people with Need for Chaos traits can now inflict a lot of damage in society. I'd say that's owed to the degree web discourse bec

> A relatively small group of people with Need for Chaos traits can now inflict a lot of damage in society. I'd say that's owed to the degree web discourse becomes dominant over people talking in the flesh. If you have a circle of friends, and 5% of the time one of them is hungry and in such a foul mood they find fault with everything, would that shift the opinions of the group towards hating everything over time, or would it hone their arguments for how they generally feel and see things? I'll just guess it's not a problem. And the same if 1 out of 20 friends is always contrarian and finds fault with everything. The internet has extremely distorting effects, I think. Things hit different when we know who we're dealing with and how sincere they are. Body language, tone of voice, even pheromones can say so much. I'm not saying "the real world" isn't ever misleading; but it offers infinitely more signal to process, and we evolved over millions of years to process them. And then of course there's all sorts of professional shit stirring, which isn't mentioned in the article at all, e.g. https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2024/12/14/eu-needs-to-be-less-polite-in-resisting-russian-attempts-to-sway-elections/ https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2024/12/14/eu-needs-to-be... But generally, many people don't have a stake in society, because it was stolen from them. Call it what you will but most have fuck all so very, very few can have most. And that's getting worse at increasing pace, still. That's fertile ground both for organic dissatisfaction and wanting to see the world burn, but also for interference and subversion. Healthy people who are part of a community that respects them and where their voice is heard don't go around salting the earth so nobody else gets to eat, either, and can't get seduced into it either.