Interestingly enough, the Georgia Institute of Technology has actually done studies in regard to unpopular opinions people have. Using the data found (that was based on a popular subreddit called R/unpopularopinion), Dasom Eom, Linh Hoang, and Gerry Oei came to some rather interesting conclusions based on their study.
Their research heavily links to a social phenomenon called the spiral of silence. To understand this better, first, you have to know what the theory of the spiral of silence entails. German political scientist Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann developed the spiral of silence theory, which combines political science and mass communication. It claims that a person's desire to express their own beliefs is influenced by how they perceive the distribution of the general public's opinions.
The development of internet technology and online communication has recently prompted people to speak out and share their opinions in public online, shattering the barrier of the spiral of silence. Users can openly post and discuss socially undesirable opinions on the subreddit r/unpopularopinion. In this exact study, the forum was studied using the results from participant interviews and community observation. Then they also presented a descriptive analysis to demonstrate how the online space aids its users in overcoming the spiral of silence.
In conclusion, one of the issues with online spaces (especially Reddit) identified in the study is the recurrent re-uploading of similar viewpoints on the same subject. After a while, users may believe the viewpoint is common and widespread after repeatedly hearing similar unpopular thoughts, thus it becomes the popular idea in the end.
