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Notes -
An extremely good and rarely made point. The proportion of Muslims radicalized at Western mosques (eg the one in Berlin connected to a number of the 9/11 attackers) in 1998 was perhaps not vastly higher than the proportion radicalized today online (although the latter is a much larger absolute number), but the propensity to commit a real life terror attack seems much much lower in the latter group.
There is still Islamist terrorist violence done by men who have been fully radicalized online, of course, but when you look at the total number out of the tens of millions of Muslim men (at least) fed extremist, violent anti-Western, antisemitic and so on propaganda on social media it’s a very very low proportion who actually leave the house and do this.
Modern online leftism, which lacks the physical real world presence that conservative Islam (or any major religion) still obviously has is even more telling. Millions of people cheering that guy Luigi, wishing violent deaths on capitalists, insurance executives, arms firm executives, finance people, and yet (thankfully!) copycats seem thin on the ground.
I'd say most of the cases that get interpreted as online radicalization, online bullying / cyberbullying and online stalking/harassment / cyberstalking in mainstream media are in fact real-life phenomena, and the extent to which they have an online component is of secondary importance. That is, the victim/target is normally affected by the actions and words of people he or she personally knows, and interacts with in real life.
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