Altered States

On a blog post from earlier this month, Kevin Drum gets at something I've been thinking about off-and-on for awhile. It's the contemplation of whether there are truly more "extremist nutballs" today than there used to be, or if it only seems that way because now they have the megaphone of the internet -- specifically, social media -- with which to share their ideas.

Without conducting a special sort of census, there's no true way to get numbers for the aforementioned notion, however, after careful thought on the matter, I tend to think the number of political and societal cranks has remained fairly steady over the years. Granted, there's probably more extremists now than there were in, say, 1985, but that's because there's 3 billion additional people on the planet. As a percentage of the population, we're probably looking at approximately the same number now as compared to the past few decades.

Such a conclusion will probably cause some people reading this to shake their heads and mutter (or shout), "No, Matt, you're wrong! Things are worse now than they were." Fine, maybe I am, and perhaps they are. But I think we need to be careful here of our perception. I truly believe that lots of people, for a very long time, believed certain things and just didn't talk about them publicly very often (if at all). Privately, or maybe at friend or family get-togethers? That's a different story. Now, however, anytime a thought or idea comes to someone's mind, they can just open their Facebook or Twitter apps and, boom, type it out for all to read.

Of course, this leads to a different issue, that of what sharing so much of our random thoughts does to society as a whole. I'm guilty of it, as well, but I'm also not out there promoting vaccine conspiracies, or giving ugly nicknames to presidents or politicians (which people on the left and the right seem to do with abandon). While there may not necessarily be a greater percentage of angry extremists out there than there used to be, the fact that we are inundated with their stream-of-consciousness on such a constant basis is definitely a newer issue. I'm not sure what to do about that, aside from what some of the social media platforms have already done by banning certain users. Despite what some will rant about regarding such bans, they are not infringements on Free Speech as, the last time I looked, the government doesn't run Facebook or Twitter.

Getting back to Kevin Drum's piece for a moment -- the gist of it is that social media actually isn't as powerful as people think it is. Sure, sometimes their CEOs will be hauled in front of Congress to be lambasted about some of the aforementioned issues in this blog post, but that's likely a combination of fundamental misunderstandings, and circus-level performance art. No, the emperors here really have no clothes. A lot of it is so much gloss and sheen.

Real life doesn't really resemble the false, Matrix-like reality found in certain areas of social media. People who dwell for too long (your mileage may vary on how long "too long" is) on those platforms are bound to have a skewed of how people and society operate. Out and about in corporeality, neighbors with different political beliefs still, for the most part, talk with each other, lend a hand if needed, and share produce from their gardens. People of all walks of life attend concerts in the thousands, brought together by their love of the same band or musical artist. People will go to the theater and share a laugh or enjoy the drama of a play or movie. We go outside and exercise, nod and smile at passersby, sit around strangers at restaurants and enjoy our meals, and overall just get on with our lives while living with our fellow human beings.

I'm not saying that social media has zero influence. That would be folly. Of course it affects us, to an extent. I just don't think it's as important as some make it out to be. In the last year, we've had several momentous events, from the pandemic, to the George Floyd protests, to the US presidential election, to the withdrawal from Afghanistan. Some folks feel the need to comment on all of that on social media and, if others do not, they are called onto the carpet for it. And to that, I can just stress, again, that social media is not real life. If a tree falls, and no one online mentions it, the tree has still fallen.

Look, social media has been a boon for some. For folks with certain conditions, such as Agoraphobia, then the connectivity of the internet has provided a way to interact with people, and see a certain version of the world. And places like Facebook have proven useful for staying in touch with friends, family members and even people we knew from high school (does anyone even use Classmates.com anymore?). But the danger with those platforms is confusing them with real life, and with allowing them to warp our perceptions of the world around us. So, stop reading this now, close down your electronic device, and talk with someone, for real. We can see each other in the matrix again later.