There have been more than a few, rather lively, academic debates taking silicon valley and social media to task for their role in the awful state of our public discourse. A conversation I welcome. I don’t doubt many of their founding members had nothing but the purest of intentions when creating their networks and mobile communication platforms. Jack Dorset waxed poetic about the virtues of Twitter, declaring that he intended, “to simplify complexity” to “simply our basic human interaction” to distill it down to its most basic level. Ignoring the absolute naivety of that statement why would that be anyone’s goal? Humanity’s communication has evolved to be complicated. We need that complexity to help us explain ourselves to one another with nuance. When everything is distilled to about two paragraphs, the context takes a back seat to the emotion of the statement or idea. It’s got to pop! It’s got to grab you, it has to be witty, concise, and bold but complicated thoughts don’t usually lend themselves to 140 characters of snark.
Most of us that grew up on the internet developed the skills to filter the static to find the truth. We learned to spot the chain letter, suspicious banner advertisement, “the risky click” but our parents? Their parents? They never developed those skills. They are the prey of nefarious characters pushing falsehoods and inciting rage with memes and shares. Society began to fall apart when adults who lacked the filter we developed as teenagers waded into the water of the social network. Facebook has become a mess of manufactured rage at the other and outrage at the imagined persecution of the self. How do you explain to a 65-year-old adult that the image and by extension the message they just shared isn’t real or is out of context? “It wouldn’t be there if it wasn’t right. People can’t just say or do anything on the internet.” Unfortunately, grandpa, they can, and they do, and you might as well be a wounded gazel in the Serengeti. If it isn’t a college student in Macedonia creating websites pedaling fake controversies or “news” so he can drive ad revenue and make a buck, its state-sponsored. It might even be your neighbor, a member of a violent political fringe group. Controversies drive membership and membership drive donations and donations, well? They make someone a buck or two. I guess, sometimes people just really want to watch the world burn.
I’m not letting my generation off the hook either; I still see lots of people in my age bracket that should know better. Sharing articles on “essential oils” or that “vaccination causes autism” or just other blanketly untrue statements pulled from lunatics spreading misinformation, again to drive revenue to their “superhealthnewsone” blog. That type of share is equally as dangerous. It might not cause the next school shooting or skinhead to drive his car into a crowd, but it will and has caused once eradicated childhood diseases to return. But what do we do? What can we do? We can unplug, we can ask more of our families, our neighbors, and our friends. We can ask more of ourselves. Pause before you share that political meme or that too good to be “real miracle herbal suppository” check it for validity. Don’t be a tool. I mean that in the most literal sense. We can’t count on facebook or twitter to police the feed, they are beholden to shareholders, and when a dollar is involved, it’s better to let the raving lunatics rave. Ask more of yourself and those around you. We can disagree without hating; we can silence the fringes. Don’t share it, don’t read it, don’t “like” it. If it becomes unprofitable, it will go away.
Shell Beach 