There's nothing like social media to bring out the judgmental parts of ourselves, the parts usually held in check when we actually consider Newton's law that says for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. In other words, if we make snide, cutting remarks in person, the equal reaction may be a bop on the nose or some form of future social isolation.
Since most social media sites base what little censorship they have on a series of trigger words that are fairly easy to learn or anticipate, commentors aren't generally hampered by the rules. In fact, it's quite possible to come up with a list of current hot topics that attract passionate distractors and supporters in equal measure. And I emphasize passionate.
It took the Prince Harry brouhaha for me to register what was happening. It seemed that everyone wanted to decide who in the royal family wore the white hats and who should be hissed as the villains--sort of a participation game. But, to someone British who has only to open her mouth and be spotted as such, listening to Americans talk in these personal terms about a foreign royal family that owns most of Britain seems--well--rather bizarre. I had to wonder who was Harry to Americans that people should become deeply embroiled in discussions of his royal family responsibility, his freedom or lack of it, and his presumed betrayals (as if society's rules applied to aristocrats--these are the people with the history of killing off family members who opposed them)?
Perhaps because I was educated in British schools, I have a very good idea how aristocrats work. They don't much value ordinary people. They use them to serve them, farm their fields, and fight the endless wars that mark British history. This means I wonder why ordinary people in America--the people who pitched tea into Boston Harbor--would be so suddenly concerned with their betters, as the aristocrats would assume themselves to be. It would hardly work the other way. Wouldn't Americans find it strange if British readers got caught up in angry debates over whether Ivanka and Jared were being suitably loyal to her father or were just in it for the money? Maybe? For me, I would think that British readers might comment on the Trumps in passing, but to have them fill pages with angry debate--well, that sounds even more bizarre.
Being a good academic with a tendency to over-think everything, I can't resist looking for a theory about passionate debates that rely on the safety of the computer screen. That means I wonder how to connect anything to anything. No Guarantees.
But could it be that we are bored, isolated, and, perhaps, lonely? Has social media become our substitute for living: come home from work, grad a bite, turn on the computer, and go for it? Is our political life so far removed from our daily lives that we are looking for some way to feel connected to one another: after all, the group that squabbles at least is talking to one another? Are the friendships made on line our new form of community?
But just asking those questions begs another. What makes people click the button and participate? Is it because there's nowhere else that we can discuss things like politics and religion--the two areas that have most engaged our ancestors and seem the most fraught right now? Is it that we can't we talk with one another without an intermediary technology? Are we scared of one another? Do we really need foreign aristocrats as a proxy for any conversation at all?
It's strange that this isolated privacy should be so. Silence and polity have not been America's history. Would Benjamin Franklin or Thomas Paine have avoided talking about politics when they met upstairs at the Old Tavern? Why are we so worried about having an opinion about important things? Why is it offensive to call a conspiracy theory the paranoid fantasy it is? Has our ideal of equality become the ridiculous claim that all ideas are equally good? Shouldn't we, for example, be able to say that cannibalism is not good without having someone try to claim it as freedom of religion?
There is no way that one blog or one entry on social media is going to make much of a contribution to the discussion. But perhaps I can partly answer my own question as to why people comment on social media (me included). We are at least expressing a thought or sharing an experience. It's still a bit risky, but not usually dangerous. Social media allows us to experiment, think out loud, and get feedback. It also allows us to get a read on how others are thinking, even if one doesn't get clicks of approval (yes, I succumb to temptation and do look).
I still find it very strange that people still click on Prince Harry, though.
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