I feel like I'm using pretty clear qualifiers to distinguish actual tribes from what Kurt Vonnegut would call granfaloons.
The point is that equating these ideologically polarized aggregations of strangers with tribalism is a huge stretch, and not really valid. They're two very different phenomena.
Yes, social circles are unique and inter-connected, and most people are simultaneously members of multiple "tribes", but this has nothing whatsoever to do with vast aggregations of strangers linked only by abstract symbolism.
I fail to see the justification for not considering this a (super)tribe. I wouldn't think of Cat's Cradle as the authority on social dynamics, but "granfaloons" refer to people that have no connection, whereas everyone in the supertribe is connected in a meaningful way.
What we are dealing with is a local community (for which I believe "tribe" is a perfectly valid use), which is directly and closely linked to nearby communities in such a way that, when combined with a binary and divisive choice, makes the whole network form a virtual supertribe.
With only two choices, so you are either 100% aligned or 0% aligned which makes it very difficult to have connected communities with differing opinions. Each individual is either aligned with their local community, or at risk of being ejected from it. With no connected communities of differing opinions, this in turn means you get ejected from all other possible local communities - the entire virtual supertribe. This makes it far less likely that someone will deviate than if it only affected their own direct connections.
If you had, say, 10 choices, you would be able to have a community that was only 70-90% aligned with its connected communities while still being tolerated, so no virtual supertribe would form.
> I fail to see the justification for not considering this a (super)tribe.
Call it whatever you want: tribalism may be an omnipresent manifestation of human nature, but "supertribalism" is something qualitatively different and not remotely as normal.
The point is that equating these ideologically polarized aggregations of strangers with tribalism is a huge stretch, and not really valid. They're two very different phenomena.
Yes, social circles are unique and inter-connected, and most people are simultaneously members of multiple "tribes", but this has nothing whatsoever to do with vast aggregations of strangers linked only by abstract symbolism.