I like to flatter myself and think I have a nice variety of interests. So do many others, and according to Ms Zelenka (whom I mentioned in the previous post), our non-niche blog content reflects our multi-faceted identities, which can help prevent communities from becoming too clustered.

This reminds me of an issue mentioned in school, about the phenomenon of fragmenting audiences contributed by the new media. One of the problems with this is that if people only seek out views complementing their own, it reduces their exposure to alternative views, which in turn does not foster constructive dialogue and open minds. Think, for example, of a person with racist tendencies. He/she probably wouldn’t bother visiting any sites which have anything good to say of that race.

But going by Ms Zelenka’s reasoning, there may be hope. Perhaps the said person would find somebody he/she respects in another field of interest, praising somebody of that race. Or even discover that that person he/she respects is of that race. Just my SGD0.02 worth.