A young man, who shall remain nameless as he reached out to me in confidence, expressed dismay upon learning that a pseudonymous twitterer, whose bio claimed to be a criminal defense lawyer, spewed some social justice idiocy at him and, upon his challenging the belief, dismissed him. How could a criminal defense lawyer, one who followed him on the twitters, perhaps liked or retwitted him, be such a dope?
Putting aside the issue of who was the jerk, as that’s not really an important element of this exchange, the question posed raises what was once tacitly accepted and understood to be the reality of social media. Just because you follow someone on the twitters, or friend them on Facebook, does not mean you know them.
How did we get from realizing that our “friends” weren’t actually friends, and could very well be serial killers for all we knew? We’ve become too invested in our social media world, as if it’s a substitute for real life.
Interactions on the twitters are, at their absolute best, as shallow as possible. Somebody likes something you’ve twitted? Woopie. That does not mean they are your BFF. That does not mean you know them. That doesn’t even mean they are who they claim to be. A great many seemingly nice folks on social media are complete frauds, carefully crafting a social media persona to obtain validation or business.
Years ago, Venkat Balasubramani noted the “cult of niceness,” that merely being nice to people rewarded one with likes, friends and followers. And these things would bring with them validation and happiness; it provided an online existence where you were popular and surrounded by friends saying nice things to you. But if you disagreed with people, they wouldn’t follow. You weren’t playing by their rules of happiness.
All of which raises the obvious problem: what if someone on social media says nice things, and you mutually “like” each other in the social media sort of way, and feel all warm and fuzzy, close and loving and it’s fabulous to be so popular. And then this same person, this dear, close social media friend whom you’ve never met, don’t actually know (not even their name) and can’t confirm is who they say that are, says something with which you disagree? Worse yet, says something truly stupid?
Your options are to ignore, to “like” anyway or to dispute it. If you disagree with it, your options are to do so in a way that doesn’t make your dear friend hate you for violating their trust in your loyal friendship, or call them out as a blithering idiot. And even if you try your absolute best to be gentle about it, you run the risk of their taking offense anyway, because people seem to take offense at everything other than, “Oh yes, you are so right. And good looking, too!!!”
In real life, you sometimes learn that someone you thought you knew turns out to be someone who you later came to dislike, distrust or despise. You don’t have a clue who your good friends are on social media most of the time. Another old joke should be remembered.
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It would be difficult to know someone from their tweets. They could be an online troll and nice in real life, or, as you point out, a real-life troll and nice on twitter. And many interactions and thoughts are cursory and trite.
It would be difficult to know someone from a few blog posts, especially if that someone is trying to cultivate an image with their posting, but if they post enough, a picture begins to emerge.
It may be a bit easier to know someone from the (longer than 140 character) discussion they engage in on blog post topics, but, especially if the discussion turns raucous, you may see mostly how they respond to certain kinds of pressure, which is interesting and important, but is not a full reflection of their personality.
But SHG posts (prolifically, a word he hates) zillions of interesting blog posts, he engages in discussion and arguments about those, and allows occasional divergences into off-topic things he or others find interesting, and engages with followers and detractors on twitter.
In short, I feel I “know” SHG much better than I do most internet personalities. He puts a lot of himself out there, and it’s fairly consistent, to the point it’s sometimes easy to tell that he’s having a good or a bad day.
But one of the things I feel I know about SHG is that I actually know less about him than I do about some of the others. That’s because he’s obviously a real, living, three dimensional person, who I would learn even more about if I met in person (but still not know completely), and many of the others are mere cardboard cut-outs, and I know them well enough to know that my opinion wouldn’t really change that much about that even if I did meet them IRL.
Your comment gave me pause to consider an interesting, but very disturbing, thought: is the shallowness of social media causing people to be more shallow in real life? If a person can game popularity online by vapid niceness or going along to get along, will they adopt the same IRL?
I am perpetually saddened when I learn that someone who appears relatively thoughtful online turns out to be a phony or worse (and there have been a few “or worse”). People used to hold meetups, then tweetups. I don’t see that much anymore. I suspect they were mostly very disappointing, and people greatly preferred to cardboard cut-out to the three dimensional person.
Generally (certainly not universally), I’ve been pleased with the number of folks who I’ve gotten to know fairly well IRL who I first encountered on social media.. Perhaps I’ve just been lucky, but the real peeps were more or less what I had hoped for based on whatever I read into their social media persona.
The good encounters would get a higher percentage but for Popehat.
Your personal experience is deeply meaningful. Thank you for sharing.
To the extent that happens, it’s probably more indirect than direct. A good example of things spilling over into real life is the anorexia “support groups” wherein people tell others things like “don’t listen to them; they just hate you because you’re beautiful.” That won’t cause a non-anorexic to become anorexic; but it sure doesn’t speed up the healing process.
Finding and living in any sort of online echo-chamber could give the affirmation needed to stoke the confirmation bias, and lead to an in-group/out-group dynamic. Again, this doesn’t necessarily make people less thoughtful, but it’s not helpful for making people more thoughtful, when all their “friends” are explaining how they’re right and whoever they are arguing with is wrong. In IRL, it’s harder to have as hard of an argument because of the face-to-face nature of it, and you don’t have fifty of your best friends right there, so you might actually be in danger of learning something and changing your worldview. Very unsafe.
Just because advice confirms your bias, or serves you ends, doesn’t mean it’s wrong. IRL it’s harder to tell someone they’re a moron. Online, it’s easier to ignore someone who tells you you’re a moron. Which is more unsafe?
IRL someone might not tell you you’re a moron, but you still might be able to feel it by their demeanor. Online, there’s no demeanor, just your echo group telling you that the guy calling you the moron is really just projecting.
“Your comment gave me pause to consider an interesting, but very disturbing, thought: is the shallowness of social media causing people to be more shallow in real life? If a person can game popularity online by vapid niceness or going along to get along, will they adopt the same IRL?”
Does that same shallowness of social media where people believe their online popularity and perceived importance carry over into the real world contribute to the self-centered, personalized agenda driven society we’ve become? Or is it just an indicator of it?
Answer a question with a question?
I don’t have the answers, but I”m looking for them.
I read your blog and follow you on twitter, and you seem to have a split personality. On the one hand, you appear to care passionately about defendants, who are largely black and poor. On the other, you ridicule social justice and the multitude of harms suffered by marginalized and vulnerable people. Are you the phony you’re writing about? You can’t be both of these personas.
I can and I most assuredly am. What appears to be dissonance to you is a product of your bias, that I can’t be the “good person” who fights bad things happening to defendants while simultaneously thinking social justice is untenable and hypocritical crap. My view has nothing to do with sad tears for “marginalized and vulnerable” populations. My view is premised on the Constitution and effective policy. This is either obvious or invisible to people, especially those who see the world through their emotional lens.
I offend people here and on twitter all the time, especially when they expect me to be their SJW ally because something I wrote comes out the way they want it to come out. But they look at ends. I look at means. While I (usually) don’t go out of my way to offend people, I sincerely don’t give a fuck if they’re offended. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, and they’ve got good intention up the wazoo. But it does not lead anywhere good.
Wish I’d gotten here earlier. Pointing out a false dichotomy in a fallacious statement is so much more satisfying if the argument hadn’t had the lid slammed on it by the authoritative source.
For what it’s worth, I too follow this blog and SHG’s Twitter feed, but I do not see any inconsistency in his statements. Stupidity is called out, malfeasance is detailed, consistency is maintained. No tummy rub, just reality through my lens.
Pretty much. SJWs don’t get me at all. Eventually, they all kinda hate me for being so horrifying and exhausting.
Normal people use only a fraction of their brain, and SJWs use a smaller fraction.
Annnndddd…. This seems to be one of the cardboard cut-outs I was referring to. The first clue is that they expect everybody else to be a cardboard cut-out as well. They certainly haven’t entered Piaget’s Formal Operational Stage, and sometimes comment as if they haven’t even mastered object permanence.
If one’s beliefs are fully satisfied with cardboard cutouts, why think harder (or at all)?
Your intrusion here has caused me deep emotional scarring. The searing pain that I feel is a violation of my right to be free from any stressors or unpleasant feelings. As such, you have failed as an SJW. It is only but for the grace of the Constitutional protections SJWs seem to loathe that I don’t sue you for my immeasurable psychological agony.
This is an empty threat unless you have at least 12 victim points.
EEK. I’m a cis-gendered white male. I’m SOL aren’t I?
Even if you were the accuser, you would be convicted.
It says a great deal about our society that people have come to see disagreement with their expressed opinion as an act of hostility. There used to be a long, boring parable about this sort of thing, along the following lines:
One day, a young bird, fatigued from flying in bitter cold temperatures, fell from the sky and landed in a field. As the bird rested there, still shivering with the cold, and barely able to move, a passing cow obliviously shit out a huge heap of manure upon him.
At first, the bird viewed this as the ultimate, compounding misfortune, but soon, he realized he was no longer cold. The fresh manure, though pungent, was warming the bird, and soon, the bird could feel his strength and vitality returning, and his mood so much improved that he began to sing.
The oddity of melodious birdsong in freezing field conditions soon drew the attention of the farmer’s cat. Upon scouting the situation, the cat swiftly discovered the bird in the cow pie, and, scooping away the covering manure, promptly killed the bird for dinner.
The lessons of this parable are threefold:
1) Just because someone shits on you, that doesn’t mean they’re an adversary;
2) Just because someone will take shit from you, that doesn’t mean they’re your friend;
3) When you’re warm and cozy in a big pile of shit, keep your mouth shut.
At least, that is the way I heard it, a long time ago.
That was nearly as boring as you made it sound. Lower expectations? Very tricky.
It’s like the reverse of a “trigger warning,” letting people know not to expect an over-stimulating experience. It’s why Aesop never hit the big time.
. . . but his cream is fantastic . . . i like to rub it over my genitals and have it with coffee while reading SJ . . .
And boom, we just hit bottom.
“On the one hand, you appear to care passionately about defendants, who are largely black and poor. On the other, you ridicule social justice and the multitude of harms suffered by marginalized and vulnerable people.”
And on the third hand, some people appear to care passionately about defendants, but on the fourth hand, prioritize sensitivity over obtaining a two-word verdict by any means within the law. One of the multitude of harms suffered by the marginalized is having to go to prison all the time, which I’d argue is at least as nasty as being referred to by the wrong pronoun. Pick your poison, I suppose, but as for me, call me whatever the hell you want and get me home…
You said it better than me.
The last person I met with so many hands was blue, and very dangerous, and kept sticking her tongue out.