Facebook is the only social media platform I (reluctantly, occasionally) use, other than YouTube. Other than I guess providing a means for an old friend or classmate to contact me, it’s strictly for volunteering and some activism (basic info about when/where/what). Often I’ll only see a post if FB prompts me via an email: “so and so posted _____!” Even though these emails are annoying, I’ll occasionally see an event in time I wouldn’t otherwise. It’s far better than randomly going on and mindlessly scrolling which, from the beginning, made me feel spiritually half-sick. But even the prompts to see what a friend posted can cause trouble. Because their online personae and obsessions are not the person I know and like. Facebook, and other platforms I’m sure, turn people with certain biases and tendencies and vulnerabilities in real life, characteristics and attitudes which if they emerge in person, are at worst balanced and grounded by all of the other funny and absurd and compelling things people who actually know and like each other focus on when they get together. Online, in these intense echo chambers the very online inhabit, they post like at turns smug or brittle clout-chasing, posturing, pandering, aggressively toxic fanatics who are imbued with such rage-fueled, ignorant shallow faux-certainty they will take your head off and hold it up before their followers if you so much as slightly, mildly disagree. It’s as if you’re interrupting a performance on stage. You can clap and cheer adoringly and praise them for the brave vehemence in pushing even further what is in their online clique already the very most-approved opinions. But even accidentally introducing a bit of cognitive dissonance is treated like standing up in the audience with a loudspeaker hijacking the star performer’s show. I I wish I had never seen some of these friends posting online. I had one turn on me so viciously for daring to suggest cooperating with tech and media oligopolies and the most historically checkered of federal law enforcement and spy agencies to quash the speech and even the ability of political opponents to participate more broadly in civil society was not only illiberal in principle but very risky empirically for actually independent and marginalized and unpopular but important voices they might support. I was algorithmically nudged into a seeing another friend post hysterically and credulously in response to the then supposed racist attack on Jussie Smollett, “no justice, no peace!”. Little of either of their building SJW identities and increasingly unhinged assumptions and conclusions which they posted and reposted and shared on and on (especially how outraged they are that they know their black friends can’t so much as walk outside without a realistic chance of being met by a hail of gunfire from racist fascist cops - and you’re as horrible a person as has ever walked the earth if you quibble or question this even slightly) were things that came out in one and one interactions, especially in person. No doubt Covid lockdowns (which of course they vehemently supported and angrily judged critics of) and even more time at home, online made this worse. In person, when I’m around a group of people whom I know share more typically uniform progressive or even identitarian views, comments are always milder, if they even come up. People seem more attuned to the possibility they might not know everything or others might disagree somewhat, while still being good people.
Facebook is the only social media platform I (reluctantly, occasionally) use, other than YouTube. Other than I guess providing a means for an old friend or classmate to contact me, it’s strictly for volunteering and some activism (basic info about when/where/what). Often I’ll only see a post if FB prompts me via an email: “so and so posted _____!” Even though these emails are annoying, I’ll occasionally see an event in time I wouldn’t otherwise. It’s far better than randomly going on and mindlessly scrolling which, from the beginning, made me feel spiritually half-sick. But even the prompts to see what a friend posted can cause trouble. Because their online personae and obsessions are not the person I know and like. Facebook, and other platforms I’m sure, turn people with certain biases and tendencies and vulnerabilities in real life, characteristics and attitudes which if they emerge in person, are at worst balanced and grounded by all of the other funny and absurd and compelling things people who actually know and like each other focus on when they get together. Online, in these intense echo chambers the very online inhabit, they post like at turns smug or brittle clout-chasing, posturing, pandering, aggressively toxic fanatics who are imbued with such rage-fueled, ignorant shallow faux-certainty they will take your head off and hold it up before their followers if you so much as slightly, mildly disagree. It’s as if you’re interrupting a performance on stage. You can clap and cheer adoringly and praise them for the brave vehemence in pushing even further what is in their online clique already the very most-approved opinions. But even accidentally introducing a bit of cognitive dissonance is treated like standing up in the audience with a loudspeaker hijacking the star performer’s show. I I wish I had never seen some of these friends posting online. I had one turn on me so viciously for daring to suggest cooperating with tech and media oligopolies and the most historically checkered of federal law enforcement and spy agencies to quash the speech and even the ability of political opponents to participate more broadly in civil society was not only illiberal in principle but very risky empirically for actually independent and marginalized and unpopular but important voices they might support. I was algorithmically nudged into a seeing another friend post hysterically and credulously in response to the then supposed racist attack on Jussie Smollett, “no justice, no peace!”. Little of either of their building SJW identities and increasingly unhinged assumptions and conclusions which they posted and reposted and shared on and on (especially how outraged they are that they know their black friends can’t so much as walk outside without a realistic chance of being met by a hail of gunfire from racist fascist cops - and you’re as horrible a person as has ever walked the earth if you quibble or question this even slightly) were things that came out in one and one interactions, especially in person. No doubt Covid lockdowns (which of course they vehemently supported and angrily judged critics of) and even more time at home, online made this worse. In person, when I’m around a group of people whom I know share more typically uniform progressive or even identitarian views, comments are always milder, if they even come up. People seem more attuned to the possibility they might not know everything or others might disagree somewhat, while still being good people.