The big thing with Cause-and-Adjacency becoming a dominant social logic, is that we dominantly meet online now, downstream from SEO and marketing algorithms. And there is almost no separation between grass-touch life and the internet anymore. So whatever you do in the 3d world, is going to have a feedback loop with the internet.
To extend the dumb example I used again, about "the railroad fandom" being an intersection of WWII Nazis, train autists, New Urbanists (many examples possible, but limiting the field for simplicity's sake):
In the 1980s, if you were in a third space dealing with Train Fandom as a topic, it was a *very different experience* from dealing with Train Fandom online.
(I was not part of train fandom, but I was part of other spaces this applies to.)
One big thing is that the third space in question may in fact be under Robert's Rules of Order, or have to default to the "house rules" of wherever it's being hosted. And there is a certain amount of stuff that people just weren't going to say right to another person's face.
You are also having participants in your space, in an in-person third space, sorted by area. (This has plusses and minuses. It's great if you fit into your area and it's terrible if you don't. But a big thing is that the more extreme people aren't actually going to physical spaces, where I live. Your Mileage May Vary.)
You meet the people you like, you leave with the people you like.
Modern internet interaction *isn't like this.*
Anything within the latent space of a thing you're into, will get spammed into your face. The only real surefire way to avoid Nazis for example is to have a rule about contamination; if Nazis even like this thing, it's not "safe." SEO will drive the Nazis to wherever you are if you like *anything* that shares a latent space with Nazis.
You either have to keep running until you find something they are categorically Not Into or you have to somehow learn to interact in a space that contains Nazis (which can include all kinds of strategies, but none of them will 100% remove Nazis from your existence.)
This is downstream of SEO and marketing silos, and is a massive failure mode of most of our life being online. Radicalization pipelines worked differently before the internet.
Web 2 has actually created a public world where nothing can even be engaged.
1980s talk shows' formats of doing hard hitting investigative journalism or interviewing Nazis or what have you, couldn't really exist in this context because we've come to see "sharing latent space" (being in the same room) as a broad social taboo and under the New Social Rules, even arguing is platforming.
But I think a chunk of this is downstream of SEO and of internet-first social interaction, because of how much post-Web 2 online interaction *does* require a bit of an eggshell walk.
Unfortunately, it means there is a massive amount of stuff that can't really be talked about in the open. And we have lost a half century of work done just to secure that very thing, to get people talking in the open about real problems. And for the most part, now, you just can't talk about anything.
Web 2 has turned every conversation into a contextless public square argument between people that, in the past, you could just... not invite to your space.
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