A few weeks back, I shared about a friend of mine that posts constantly about politics on Facebook, with the majority of his posts attacking others, and a good number of his posts being completely false information. While I don’t mind his point of view and can respect all viewpoints, I find his (and a handful of others) consistent volume of posts difficult to understand.
A recent episode of the “Hidden Brain” podcast tackled this idea, and gave me more insight as to why someone might post political stuff all day long. They call it “political hobbyism” and compare it to people that constantly post about their favorite sports team.
In both cases, their actions online almost never translate into real change. For example, you’ll have people post online about how “I could have easily made that field goal”, when we all know that’s not true. Katie Nolan made a fun video about that a few years ago, calling out some of those folks:
By seeing those political folks online as being similar to that, it’s helped me to understand why they post that stuff all of the time — it’s just a hobby to them, like sports is to others. That doesn’t excuse posting outright lies to support your “side”, but gave me more insight into why people might post political stuff all day.
If you have time, that Hidden Brain episode (“Passion Isn’t Enough“) is well worth your time to listen to.
