Idiot or Naysayer?

Why the world would be better if we diversified our Instagram feeds

I harbor a general disdain for the internet: lies abound and critical reading skills are null and void. People who would be decent in person are horrendous online. Plus screens hurt my eyeballs and paper smells good. (My students call me Tree Killer because I make them print out their writing. I tell them there is nothing for which a tree would rather die than a poem painstakingly composed by a seventeen-year-old, and I believe it.)

In my last two posts, though, I confessed that the concept of an online platform helped me own who I am and what I care about.

Movements like #metoo and what I think of as “The Great Reckoning” are evidence that the digital age forces a new kind of integrity on public figures (which to some degree we all are, like it or not). (Side note: I love the word integrity. It really means being “whole and undivided,” which is to say, the same all the way through and everywhere.) In 2022, at least theoretically, one can no longer be a certain kind of person in a shady motel and another kind of person in a boardroom. Eventually Motel Man will collide with Boardroom Man, and the discrepancies will have to be reckoned with.

I have no motel persona (if I did, she would watch reality tv and eat KitKats in her underwear, very much alone) and zero time to live a private, second life. But all of us, intentionally or not, show up in varied ways depending on the spaces we’re in. If our online lives are different than our lived lives, one of two things will happen.

(a) As the result of hiding something or maintaining more than one persona, one or both of those lives will be shallow/incomplete (not whole).

(b) We will be outed. Either the friction between those two (or three or seven) lives will become unbearable personally OR, eventually, someone else will point out the differences.

So, as we’ve seen with the Harvey Weinsteins of the world, the online-ness of 2022 has its upside. (Unless you’re Harvey Weinstein.)

But in keeping with the newsletter’s theme (also my life’s theme), I’ll round out the social media mention by clarifying all the ways I think online living can be terrible.

1.     Social media as a time suck is, by now, a well-worn trope. (“Funny” memes about moms ignoring their kids for Instagram make me crazy. More about that another day.)

2.     Social media as a comparison factory is also well documented. It makes not just teens but adults feel worse about their bodies, their jobs, their spouses, their bank accounts. It makes people feel left out and always behind. I teach high schoolers and I can attest: they are very sad.

3.     And we know social media creates an echo chamber. We all agree we shouldn’t waste entire days on TikTok, but the problem of who we listen to online is not so straightforward.

There seem to be two takes on internet tribalism. One is of the self-help variety: eliminate toxic voices, ruthlessly block idiots and naysayers. Follow people who edify and agree with you. (Just today I saw a post by a pastor challenging followers to “unfollow three people whose posts ‘do not glorify Christ.’”)

The opposition points out that blocking everyone who doesn’t agree with you creates fertile ground for conspiracy theories, where everyone sees the world in the same way. While being surrounded by people who share your ideals may feel good, it does little to foster empathy or awareness for the millions upon millions of people who do not see the world the way you do. This is dangerous.

You can probably guess that I think the best practice lies between those two extremes, and only careful discernment can get us there.

I intentionally leave a lot of people in my feed who I disagree with. I also leave in people who look and think and behave differently from me. As a thought experiment: if I curated a feed of a bunch of other middle-class, mid-thirties white ladies with kids, I might be left with the impression that the pandemic has had little negative impact on children. That belief would then affect the policies I support. When we consistently expose ourselves to dissenting voices (especially by smart and kind people), we are made more empathetic and our own thinking is expanded and sharpened. A homogenous feed leaves me with the impression that not only are my views correct, they are also so obvious.

But I do kick lots of people out of my feed. I get rid of folks who talk incessantly about food/nutrition, exercise, fashion, or home décor. I don’t disagree with them; I just don’t want to be constantly reminded that I could be doing more, buying more, and eating less. I don’t want my brain hijacked by matters of secondary importance. I also tend to unfollow very angry people who benefit from fomenting despair.

The distinction that has to be made is between what feels threatening because it challenges my assumptions about the world (i.e. thoughtful difference and dissension) and what feels threatening because it is actually harmful (i.e. misinformation, rage, and silliness).

Dissension is not toxic. In fact, dissension is vital to a functioning civilization.

We tend to conflate the idiots and the naysayers. It’s easier to assume people who disagree with us are—using the transitive property and Newton’s Fourth Law of Motion—idiots. Who’s to say the naysayers aren’t wise challengers to our preconceived worldviews? An opinion that makes you uncomfortable is good for you. A person modeling an unattainable* lifestyle is not.

(*It is probably attainable in some cases. That doesn’t mean we should be made to want it.)

This idea—that our worldviews can and should be challenged—only works if you don’t think what you already know is all there is to be known. If you think you already hold The Key, well, everything else is a non-starter.

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Just to clear my conscience, here’s a quick list of other very real problems with the modern internet:

-       Companies and governments are using our data for AI and profit.

-       Algorithms reward negativity: anger, fear, anarchy.

-       Privacy is not really a thing anymore.

-       Keeping your favorite moments between you and loved ones can make those moments more meaningful. Sharing them can make them feel cheap, especially if there’s conscious or unconscious exploitation involved.

-       The loudest, most controversial voices are amplified. (Wise, balanced research doesn’t benefit politicians or companies.)

Here’s a good primer on what the New York Times dubbed “Digital Dignity.”