Ben Rine

That's that's exactly right I really like that analogy and yeah I mean road rage is very similar to you know throwing a mean comment on someone's post and then but the funny thing is if you were to be upset at a driver and you pull up next to them and they roll down their window and they're apologizing.

you're probably going to feel a lot better.

It's like, okay, you know what?

This person means well.

If you're really angry, it might be too late at that point.

But once you get those social cues to inform your brain, oh, there's a living, breathing, feeling person on the other end of this interaction, that's exactly what helps us sort of relent in our aggression.

It's what calms us down and makes us understand, oh, I don't want to hurt this person's feelings.

They're feeling something too.

On social media, we really don't get that.

The data suggests that actually the person you're interacting with doesn't really matter that much in terms of like...

What their identity is and like who they are.

If it's a stranger interaction, you know, you go up to someone, you just start talking to them.

You're probably going to feel good regardless of who they are.

But the brain does have a very strong bias in favor of people who are a lot like us.

This is, you know, homophily is the term for this liking things that are like you.

And so.

What often happens, I think, nowadays is we have created a lot of identity factors that allow us to put a clean divide between ourself and someone else.

For instance, what religion do you follow?

Well, if it's different from the one I follow, then you are different from me.

What political stance do you take?