How Subcommunities Shape the Whole

It was only very recently that the whole “American Dream” of having a family, good jobs, and a nice house in a nice neighborhood all took a drastic 180 degree turn for the worse. If we were to assign a particular event to this, it would likely be the housing market crash in the early 2000s. With this event many people were displaced or hurt in one form or another.


In the first couple of chapters in Sampson, and in a prior blog on it, I recall mentioning how Sampson argues that there has been a long standing history of people, especially in at the time industrialization began to take place, whom feel that the neighborhood is falling apart of becoming worse with time. Back then this meant, at very least, the black smog that billowed from the large, roaring factories and the hustle and bustle of city life not yet fully adjusted to the large number of people whom were traveling hither and tither.


Life back then was scary; so too is life now. While the whole factory thing seems to be dying off for an age of intellectual service rather than physical, life is, more or less undeniably, getting more complex. I won't go into globalization and how this is so, I have already done that in a prior blog, rather, I will discuss what may or may not become of collective efficacy, as it seemed important enough to have an entire chapter on it. I would like to illustrate this with the use of current media events regarding police officers and the technology of the internet, in particular, Reddit.


The internet has allowed people to communicate on a scale herebefore unseen; and people are taking advantage of that. The website Reddit is one such example where it sees internet use “onpar with Tumblr at 6 percent (and also with a skew to adults aged18-29).” On Reddit, as with the age differentiation, there is a somewhat clear cut “majority” jokingly called the “Reddit hivemind” by Reddit users. While they joke of the hivemind, it is also real and visible should you watch closely...


The Reddit hivemind in particular adheres to a very liberal viewpoint, the legalization of marijuana, atheism, a hatred for authority (especially so now), etc. The “neighborhood” of Reddit seems to have a great collective efficacy, but my point of bringing it up is that the Reddit community regarding current issues mirrors the viewpoint, or moving viewpoint of actual society.


One such example is that of marriage laws regarding homosexuality. Just as the plight of black people was always around and, probably quite suddenly for the people of that time, the push for equal rights to homosexual marriage was always happening, you just didn't see it. It is here that I would like to restate that knowledge and awareness are equivocal. Meaning, you can't know of an issue unless you are aware of it such as how the push for those equal rights were (mostly) always there they just weren't known by the mass. The internet helps communicate with the masses. It seemed quite suddenly that there reached a critical mass, if you will, where equal rights for homosexuality was suddenly pushed. By all means, such large laws being passed in a few years rather than decades is just about unheard of. So what happened?


Well the “collective consciousness” of people seemed to find something that should be so and pushed for it. Most people don't see the critical mass until it reaches that point, that is why it seemed so sudden that everybody was up in arms.


Onto the issue at hand, the intense dislike for police officers. Being somebody who reads Reddit myself on at least a daily basis I see and saw as the issue came into play but was certainly always in play. It's been shown that there is a longstanding disproportion in how minorities are negatively effected by police officers and this wasn't exactly a quiet issue, but it wasn't until the recent videos shows or news stories came about that the fight, and inevitable climate that will result in new laws, consciousness, and society will come about.


I can't personally say what the first major incident was, but the first I heard of was the shooting of James Boyd by the Albuquerque police. Boyd, a homeless man, was camping on top of a hill where he was asked to move from. The altercation lasted 3 hours according to the source until a police officer in the back, with the camera, opened fire upon Boyd. (Save yourself the aneurism and stop watching after the incident is over).


If you observe the video, it is pretty clear regardless of your viewpoint, that the officer whom shot Boyd did so on his own will and without a feeling of immediate danger. The other officers didn't say anything, in fact, they were pretty close to Boyd, the officer who fired simply decided for some reason to shoot him.


Another video showing the shooting of a man running from police  occurred a mere week or so ago. I believe in this scenario the man, after running from the officer, grabbed his taser and shocked him then preceded to run until he was shot down. And, reasonably so, people were and are furious demanding the officer be found guilty of murder. But there is actually dash cam footage of the officer stopping the man showing that there was no premeditation to murder this man. It seems that the most this officer will get will be manslaughter.


My point in stating this current issue is that the hivemind, or one might even call it the collective efficacy of Reddit, often pushes this kind of issue into the mainstream at which point change happens. The law works to a large extent, it's just normally very slow in doing so, except when issues like this arise and a large enough mass of people (in this case the internet subcommunity) push for change in policy regardless of it being right or wrong, only as per their ideals. Guilty, innocent, justified or not, it will be interesting to see the ramifications to follow.



http://techcrunch.com/2013/07/03/pew-reddit-used-by-6-of-u-s-online-adults-putting-it-on-par-with-tumblr-but-far-behind-facebook/