Motto:
Aaaa la-lai-lai-la,
Votez pro-Europa,
Nu pun botu' la vrăjeală,
Știu ce-i bine pentru țară
For what it's worth, I respect Dani Mocanu, and for multiple reasons. That is, not only because he's somewhat of a veteran who so far has demonstrated a keen ability to repeatedly break barriers in his field, but also because he's a real hustler in his business irrespective of his political views and ties; but most of all because he knows how to spin a turbofolk track with a clear message in record time; in other words, because he keeps on working it, and it works! Other than that, I'm guessing that everyone knows who he is, and even if they (or you) don't, I'm not going to waste my time going into details about some manele singer or the other. I'm just making a point which you're free to dismiss based on your own ignorance.
Having said this, let's proceed to the subject: in short, the bubble is a metaphor for any social construct that comes about into existence via the usual process of osmosis.
Now let's take a moment to unpack this definition. For starters, all market segments are bubbles: for example, most sane people don't explicitly identify themselves based on what food they eat or the software stack they use, but the supposedly weird thing is that some of the more insane ones do. Folks who eat at Wendy's will mention that indeed, they do that as a matter of habit, just as you do; and as a result, both of y'all will have joined the Wendy's bubble, which is the whole point behind the "Wendy's" brand/symbol, without any regards to the substance behind said brand. But what say you about, say, Windows users, Mac users, or the worst of them lot, Linux users? what is the substance behind that? I mean, what if I use all of them, does that make me part of all three bubbles?
Unfortunately for me, the answer is that yes, this makes me part of all of these among others, mainly by my ability to decode what, say, "Windows" means and by interaction with other "Windows users". Moreover, whenever I meet my techie friends, I exercise my agency within the techie bubble, and whenever I go home to see my folks, I enter my family bubble, which technically speaking is more than a bubble by mere virtue of blood ties. Anyway, the point is that, to be more precise, bubbles are formed or otherwise built through semantic osmosis1. At some point T in time, some member of some particular bubble will introduce some new symbol which may not even denote something in particular; but either way, that symbol will, as they say nowadays, "go viral" within the group, up to the point where its usage becomes widespread.
"But Lucian", you'll say, "this phenomenon looks natural, it's not like this hasn't been happening since like forever". And I'll readily agree, but I'll add that with the proliferation of democracy and with the advent of virtual environments, bubbles have taken somewhat of a bizarre turn during the last one to two decades.
Take the Romanian shitshow for example. One day, no one was saying anything in particular; and suddenly overnight people divided themselves into "pro-Europeans" and "sovereignists". Before that, the possibility hadn't even occurred to me that some Romanians may be "anti-Europe", whatever the fuck that means, least of all Romanians from Spain, Italy and other expats who've decided to vote for Georgescu, and now for Simion. I mean sure, back when I was growing up people had political preferences and I thought that indeed, this is what this whole democracy deal was all about, so... whatever, people would vote for whomever struck their internal chord; most folks would vote for the archetypal communist Iliescu, and then some time later they'd go for Băsescu. But about the time KWJ first entered the presidential race, things got fucked really badly, because not only people were voting for someone -- they were full-blown fans of the particular figure! So now they have to make a choice between two folks with similar and even intersecting paths, except one of them is a great mathematician while the other is a great thug. Great!
But if you ask the pro-mathematics bubble, they couldn't say for sure what makes their candidate such a great mathematician, and how that's even relevant to presidency. Sure, the mayor is an ex-Olympic medalist and he even has a PhD in mathematics, which granted, makes him... a mathematician. Other than that, he's just about as great in mathematics as I am in the computing sciences; my papers have more citations than his, so if we adjust this for the general inflation of "citations" in the field of computer science... well, that kinda gets us to the same point, doesn't it? And I wouldn't trust myself to run a presidency, so how the fuck could he, based on that alone?
Similarly, if you ask the anti-thug bubble, they couldn't say for sure what makes the other candidate such a great thug. Sure, he's probably quite well connected with the underworld; but for one, so is the pro-European Dani Mocanu, and so is likely the mayor himself; while for the other, my own judgment goes in quite the opposite direction, namely that having connections with the underworld can only be helpful nowadays, seeing as how in public diplomacy nobody seems to give two shits about Romania anymore.
Then quite similarly, if you ask the pro-thug/anti-mathematician bubbles about either of the candidates, they'll spew whatever propaganda their side taught them: that one of them is the providential leader schooled (?!) by none other than the saviour who got canceled, while the other guy is an autist and autists aren't fit for presidency. Seriously, you folks had a tall closet as a president for one whole decade, and now you're going to complain about the autist?
Having reached this point, it's quite clear to me that... well, bubbles usually overlap2 to some degree or another, and when the overlap reaches a certain point, this makes the whole notion of the metaphorical bubble moot. But when they go the opposite way, when they diverge -- oh boy, you get the precise shit that you're in today! The even sadder part being that yes, I do understand each of their particular semantic trees and I can even speak the speak; but I've been struggling for years now and I couldn't find a way to use their speak to demonstrate the inanity of their narrative; because that's precisely how those fucking speaks were built in the first place! Stupid me for trying for so long, eh?
TL;DR: Bubbles are just another name for tribes and y'all have just been unknowingly living in the dark ages for the last decade or so.
Oh, I forgot to mention that bubbles are, fittingly enough, also another name for positive feedback loops.
[...] merely in degree, not in kind. And you're heading that exact path, irrespective of whether you're a mega-mathematician or a "dumb ape". "Idiocracy is not a movie, it's a documentary", they said, and fuck me, they were [...]