Quantum Clustering: Divorce Clustering Within Social Media Groups
A divorce cluster is when a group of friends, co-workers, family members and/or extended family members begin to have more than one divorce at a time, possibly spurred by the first divorce in that social circle.
When a couple breaks up and divorces, the friends of that couple have options and choices. They can choose to be the friends of one or both of the persons in the divorcing couple, or pause the relationship with a couple until the divorce is over and new couples have formed. Married people should take caution to protect their existing marriages. When someone is getting divorced, people around them look at their situation and it can appear that the grass will be greener for the person getting a divorce. Getting divorced means talking about new things: talking about a new life, possibly a new place to live, a new way of living with new people. There will be talk about moving on, new relationships, and there may be clear proof that there is life after divorce. This may not bode well for happily married friends of the divorcing individuals. Those friends will be happy for the divorcing individual, but soon may feel that they have nothing in common with them, and that they had been a friend of the couple and not either specific individual.
For over 25 years, I have noticed that divorce clustering is a very real phenomenon. Recently, it has become more than apparent that divorce clustering is caused, if not fueled by, social media and the various groups within social media.
When people begin to search about divorce on the Internet, they will not, in all likelihood, be inundated with information on how "Not" to end up divorced and how to keep the person you love.
Internet search engines (Google, Yahoo, etc.) are looking for people to engage. Engagement means spending time on the computer clicking things and reviewing things presented by that search engine. Internet is free, for the most part, for end-users. When something is free, people should take caution. The end-user, or the individual using the Internet, is what search engines are seeking to obtain. The more users click and engage, the more valuable they are. Search engines are building platforms and giving them away for free because they are able to sell advertising time based on how many users they have and the level of engagement.
The long and short of this relationship between search engine and end-user has, for the most part, is a relationship of extremes. In divorce, the Internet is filled with "interesting" cases. That is not the norm. The Internet seems to crave more engagement with the content they post. Content that engages users is usually not basic facts and the general law. Extreme and sensational content is what seems to be attracting users. This should count for only 5% of all the content, whereby 95% of the content on the Internet would be far less sensational and there would be less direct targeting of divorcing people. A divorcing person is the best consumer. They make large purchases and shuffle assets. Clearly, a person going through a divorce is on the Web more than usual and is possibly looking for a new home, apartment, car, and shuffling money and establishing accounts. The divorcing Web surfer is the brass ring for search engines. If you are going through a divorce, I assure you that you are a very valued user, maybe even at the cost of your family. There is no solid text that is accurate and tends to simplify and not open up this process, with the exception of our Smarter Divorce process.
Users are being polarized to the opposite spectrums (extreme victories and or worst-case scenarios), and divorce itself is being sold. It is as if the algorithms of the search engines grab divorce and news about divorce and feed it to the population far more often than they would post content about normal happy marriages. Clearly, chaos is more entertaining. In print journalism, there is a saying: "if it bleeds it leads." Anything that is dramatic, sensational, or invasive, captures the attention of the Internet. This is similar to everyone looking as they drive past a car accident on the highway. When marriages fail, it is far more sensational than when marriages continue to go well. During the recent pandemic, there was an incredible amount of news on how the pandemic could cause more divorces. Over the years, the news has blamed many things for causing divorces. I maintain that divorce, like a virus, spreads in social circles. Viruses cannot spread through the Internet, but divorce can. Know when someone is making money from influencing you. Happy marriages do not divorce. However, a portion of the marriages that should have been saved, were not saved because saving marriages is not entertaining and chaos is.
For more information about getting divorced, contact an experienced divorce lawyer at Bryan L. Salamone & Associates.