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It’s much cheaper to scream at the outgroup than to invest in the ingroup.
The singularity is here. It’s just a virtue signaling singularity, happening in every community at once, including those nominally opposed to the concept of virtue signaling.
One underlying reason may be that status appears locally nonzero-sum but is globally zero-sum. That is, while an upvote doesn’t cost you anything, only one post can be at the top of the leaderboard. Hence any status-based network ultimately devolves into zero-sum competition.
By contrast, trade looks locally zero-sum but is globally nonzero-sum. It costs money to buy something, but over the long run a series of consensual economic transactions is globally wealth increasing. So a good trade network (like a 2-sided marketplace) should enrich its users.
Bloomberg Terminal chat is one example, but it’s surprising that there aren’t more examples of social networks that are also trade networks (like 2-sided marketplaces). Perhaps frequent trade could disincentivize polarization. People would be less likely to troll a key vendor.
So one idea is to combine social networks with trade networks. Another may be to scrap the idea of gaining reputation under a real name and instead build new kinds of networks focused on helping people create value under a pseudonym. Status from real contributions, not trolling.
