Labelling the sides as Red versus Blue is convenient (as in; people know what you mean) but boy is it damaging to simplify like this. It's not the authors fault at all, he's simply using the nomenclature of the time, but it makes me sad to see how polarized we've all become.
Ultimately I think the labels act as a screen that people use to bucket people in, and if you ain't in my bucket, I ain't going to listen. Which just perpetuates the polarization.
The author is hilariously non-self-aware about their own bubble-inhabitance. It starts out with a tone of ostensible I'm-above-this-so-I-can-analyze-it-objectively but doesn't take long to devolve into:
> Some of this alliance was expressed overtly, for instance by creating an "advisory board" to guide Twitter culture and staffing it with some of the most hateful of Blue leaders
> "shadowbanning" persons identified as Red by AI systems
> But there were also many on the Blue side angry that the Red side still had not been completely annihilated
When people adopt a behavior, no matter how damaging, it's because they get something out of it. What might people be getting out of such a polarized worldview? Maybe they'd rather ally themselves with half the world, and be the enemy of the other half, instead of feeling vaguely indifferent about everyone.
Ultimately I think the labels act as a screen that people use to bucket people in, and if you ain't in my bucket, I ain't going to listen. Which just perpetuates the polarization.