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I believe we are near the end of cohesive online community within our Church.

I suppose you could argue that things were never really that cohesive: pockets of different subgroups have existed for over a decade, and heaven knows people have been dusting their feet off at BCC for as long (some of you may not remember Jason Wharton). I’ve also been harassing commenters for as long.

I’m basing this all on my gut sense, so it’s entirely possible I am wrong, but I believe things are getting much worse. Facebook and Twitter are either endured in closed groups or by blocking entire swaths of people. Comment threads are typically either echo chamber agreement and acclaim, or vitriolic trolling. The posts themselves seem to be more divisive as well. I believe this divide largely tracks similarly widening gulfs in political viewpoints in the US and elsewhere. I also do not believe that the divide within our society will heal itself. We are all Very Angry Online, and that is the new status quo.

Put more succinctly: you can only post so many ‘truth bombs’, or call people vultures and wolves in sheep’s clothing or heartless nazis for so long, before those seeds of discord begin to take root and blossom. They are blossoming now. Those who disagree with us are no longer entitled to any presumption of good faith, and those who agree with us with less than full-throated enthusiasm are deemed suspicious. Unless we know the other person in real life (and sometimes even then!), we don’t treat others like they’re real people who deserve respect and patience.

Some critiques of what I’ve just said:

–You’re largely responsible for this divide in the first place! Perhaps I am. I’m not sure that invalidates my conclusion. If it merely means that I’m not qualified to be part of fixing the situation, so be it.

–Online church communities have been really good for me. They’ve been good for me, too, which is part of why I felt like writing this post. When you see the slow withering of something you love, it prompts some reflection.

–Things aren’t really that bad, you’re exaggerating. The best scenario here is that I am simply wrong. I would really like to be mistaken.

–Things aren’t really that bad in real life, they’re just bad online. I agree with this, but given how much we are online, I think it’s only a matter of time before these fractures filter into our real-world communities. It has already begun, in my experience.

–You’re diminishing the necessity of standing up for what’s right. I don’t mean to engage any particular issue or position here. I’m simply saying that we’ve lost the ability to talk to each other.

–Things were never cohesive; don’t pretend that there was some harmonic Golden Age. Nostalgia is a powerful distorting force, but I truly believe things used to be better.

–You’re not proposing any solutions; this is unhelpful. I don’t have a solution. I don’t think the situation is reparable. I believe that online Mormonism is akin to the situation in 3 Nephi 7:2 – total tribalism. That civilization remained hopelessly fractured until it suffered massive destruction, followed by the visitation of Jesus Christ himself. Will ours require such intervention?

[insert pithy conclusion]