There was an item on the breakfast news this morning about how divided society currently seems to be, and about how an upcoming television drama, apparently set around Gareth Southgate, will address the issue. This is a subject which troubles me very much: we only have to look at what took place in London on Saturday to see the extent to which society is now very much riven into two mutually opposing camps. It’s not just happening here but in the USA and all over the world, and is frankly becoming frightening. Thinking about it during my shower earlier, I started to think about what could be causing this division: Class? Language? Education? The issue soon started to appear very, very complicated, and would probably require a PhD thesis (at least) to look into. But then it occurred to me that the answer might actually be rather simple and obvious: could it just be that society has always been this fractured, but the advent of social media has simply made the fractures more visible? We’ve always placed ourselves into various camps, but the web has simply brought those camps into open contact with one another. The result, unfortunately, is the intensification of social rivalry and open intolerance.