Why friendship is bad for the Serial discussion

In response to u/alientic's post about whether there are friendships being formed on the guilt-leaning end of this discussion and to my non-surprise, it turns out there pretty much aren't.

In contrast to the innocent-leaners, with their year of secret subs*, warm interpersonal friendships and promotion of "civility" and goodwill games, the guilt-leaners have remained staunchly unsociable.

Why is this? And is this a bad thing for guilt leaners?

My response to the post started to get rather long after repeated edits, and it's a subject I feel rather fascinated by, so I thought I would create its own post to see what y'all thought:

1. Guilt leaners are a cynical old bunch of trolls and just want everyone to stay in jail no matter what and in general hate joy, kittens and friendship /s

2. Innocent leaners are a group of bleeding heart stay at home mothers that want to share recipes and bond by giving support to that sweet innocent boy Adnan in between tweeting misinformation about vaccinations /s

3. But srsly. Guilt leaners came here because the podcast somehow didn't add up, so wanted to independently explore facts, satisfy their intellectual curiosity, and once confident Adnan was guilty stayed out of horror watching a slow jailbreak occur. They were drawn here for more cerebral than emotional reasons perhaps.

4. Innocent leaners as a collective is a cult that draws people into its ideology by promoting an "us against them" "evil vs good" "we can win this" doctrine, giving redditors a sense of power and belonging and identity.

5. Believing Adnan requires a trusting, caring, sensitive and maybe inexperienced person, who is therefore more likely to bond with apparently like-minded people and value "niceness" and "friendliness" highly

6. Guilt-leaning people are possibly more worldly, possibly skew older and are suspicious of others and do not take them at face value. This would discourage striking up random friendships online.

7. In my opinion believing Adnan is guilty just seems obvious (to me) and you don't need support for obvious things - there may be a flat-earth society, but there ain't no round earth society

8. People with the conspiracy theorist mindset (which Rabia clearly has) are more likely to behave in conspiratorial ways. This would involved secret powerful cadres, handing out misinformation and propaganda, levels of "access", and denying documented history. They are simply behaving as they see the world. Emotional manipulation through wielding social acceptance and allegiances would be part and parcel with this paradigm. They probably imagine police interdepartmental relationships, or legal professionals also behaving in this way (highly unprofessional and unethical as it would be).

9. When something is true you are direct and simple about it. When something is a lie you weave a narrative around it, create a web of emotions and try to establish a dynamic with the person you are lying to. When mass delusion occurs it relies on the "stickiness" of the cohort to work. If people feel free to question or detach from the cohort without causing pain the mass delusion loses its potency. Therefore the idea of friendship (with the threat of excommunication hanging over everyone's head) becomes currency to support the structure of the propaganda and the mission to be perceived as a groundswell of support for Adnan's innocence.

10. Guilt leaners, the more vocal ones at least, tend to be those annoying argumentative types that don't leave well enough alone and will call out someone for being wrong even in inappropriate situations, ie your aunts funeral, your meeting with clients, etc. Thoughts of friendship and niceness are put aside until the argument is won.

11. The relationship between Sarah Koenig and Adnan Syed set the tone for the "innocent leaning" discussion. Those who trust SK and AS to both be genuine may see their casual, friendly banter as an appropriate way to conduct a discussion centred around a murdered teenage girl

12. people bond over something negative to feel better about themselves. However negativity-based friendships are often short lived or almost unbearably toxic.

13. While some might feel that the friendly, supportive-seeming nature of the innocent side points to it being a more open-minded and reasonable stance, for me personally it points to it being the more emotions- and personality-based viewpoint.

14. We simply do not look as objectively at the actions and opinions of those we are friendly with. In a complicated and fraught discussion such as this, the more we can distance ourselves from being influenced by personality the closer we will be to objective truth.

Edit: it has come to my attention that there are almost 100 documented subreddits devoted in some way to Serial (thanks u/serial-mahogany!) and many of these are secret guilt leaner subs, which I did not know about in my naivety. In any case, from my subjective standpoint any touchy feely friendliness that may exist has not seeped into the open seas and does not form part of the guilt leaner "way" of interacting in this discussion.