What we have is an internet that comes up with new cultural standpoints on an almost daily basis moving headfirst into a society that is historically slow to accept them. This is what has led to the so-called ‘culture wars’, with a youth that moves as fast as the internet on one side deriding those that don’t and an elder class (who are inevitably the ones with the most power and influence) that can be slow to accept change and derides anyone that nudges them.

Social media lies at the centre of this entire movement. Zuckerberg and co broke down the walls of the internet but never stopped to ask if they existed for a reason. The aforementioned tribalism is actually a positive, provided those tribes are properly segregated.

In Web 1.0 communities existed as guestbooks, forums and newsgroups. A user might have been a member of several of them but they very rarely if ever interacted with each other. Those small walled villages and towns were difficult to manipulate because nobody could see over the top, only travel between them.

If we brought down social media tomorrow, the Reddits and Facebooks and YouTubes, people would do what people have always done: improvise and build their own. Small forums on all sorts of niches would pop up. Moderation would happen automatically as the tribe naturally shuns outsiders. Even if the outsiders gathered to vent their fury, there wouldn’t be anyone around to hear them outside their echo chamber.

And we would have peace again.