Tag Archives: social media

The inverted political bell curve

We no longer have an opportunity to be centrist. Extremes on either side make this challenging. Being centrist is too hard, hated by both sides because if you aren’t way over here on ‘our’ side, you lack the merit of being associated with ‘us’, so you belong with ‘them’. Rather than being seen as partial to common interests you are lumped in with everyone else that is not on ‘our’ extreme.

Examples: Liberal minded but worry about immigration? Well you may as well be fully right wing conservative. Believe in equal opportunities for gay marriage? Well then you might as well be a bleeding heart liberal, no matter how else your views may be conservative.

There used to be a bell curve where most people were not on the extremes, rather more centrist, more in the middle. That curve has inverted and flattened. Less people are ‘in the middle’ and more people are veering to the extremes. And it’s not getting any better because any political candidate who appeals to the center is not appealing to the masses. The once peripheral minorities are now a divided majority.

There is no room for nuance. No debate, just argument. Dichotomies, not a spectrum of ideas. But global issues are not well defined into clearly opposing views. Electric vehicles can be a net good while the environmental cost of dead batteries pose a problem. We can provide rights for some without taking them away from others. We can have strong border policies, and be both discerning and compassionate. We can disagree and not vilify, argue and not attack, debate facts and dismiss logical fallacies.

We can… but will we? Or are the propaganda machines too powerful right now? Are we entering an era where truth is elusive, and biased AI created videos constantly exaggerate perspectives? An era where fact checking is a requirement before accepting information? Throw in ad hominem, personal attacks, and intentional foreign interference focused on deepening polarization, and anti-social social media, and I’m afraid to think about where we are headed.

The bell curve majority of moderate thinkers have dispersed to the extremes, and these extremes are dragging everyone out of the middle. It’s 2024 and I can go on social media and watch a live debate between a scientist and a flat earther, and despite the evidence to the contrary, no flat earther is going to change their mind. I can find a bible prophecy that ignores wild extrapolations and factual inaccuracies, and no countervailing points will be accepted. I can find intelligent people arguing biased and counter factual points, and putting their intellect aside blindly to support a point, a belief, a perspective, or even a political candidate.

I’ve come to the realization that we are just monkeys. We are not civil, we are tribal animals, playing at being intelligent. We are more likely to solve disputes like other animals than we are as humans. We admire bravado, we look down on the meek, we beat our chests and vie for attention. Winning is more important than playing fair. I am safer when my tribe, my group, my monkey troop, is stronger and other troops are dominated.

The bell curve is gone, only warring tribes remain, and the fighting is just going to get uglier.

The cost of a photograph

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Back in July, 2019, when I started writing daily, I wrote ‘Photographs in my mind’. In it I spoke nostalgically about the era of print film and the unknown of if I got the shot I thought I did, until after photos were developed. I also wrote about the photos I ended up not taking, and how some of those are more memorable than the ones I did take. Here is the end of the post with one particular shot that came to mind today.

There was the shot I lined up at Pike Place in Seattle, of an older man sitting on the hood of a parked car enthralled in a book, while cops on the street behind him tended to a fender-bender. I can still see the image that I did not take, feeling like I was invading his privacy.

We seem so much more free to take photos now, always having a camera in our pocket, and not a concern of the cost of taking one more shot.

But of all the shots I didn’t take, the photographs that still linger in my memory. These come to me from an era when film was the only option and the cost of the next shot lingered in my mind.

Today I thought of a different kind of cost, not financial, but maybe social, cultural, or personal. I thought of the potential photo I didn’t take above, and how I felt that I would have been invading this man’s privacy, stealing a moment from him. This made me think of children having photographs and videos shared on social media by parents. Precious moments, but also embarrassing ones. I then thought of photos shared without permission, voyeuristic images shared in confidence then reshared in anger, more often than not by a vindictive, jilted, or just plain mean ex-boyfriend.

I thought of photographs that perpetuate stereotypes, or promote cultural exploitation. I thought of videos that show people at their worst going viral and how they typecast a person on the bases of a single act, one transgression, an embarrassing moment memorialized as the defining of a one-dimensional character.

We don’t live in the film era anymore. We live in an era that is not just witnessed, but fully documented. And I wonder, what is the price? What costs are we paying for the free availability of endless videos and photographs?

Disposition over position

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Listen to this wonderful quote by comedian Jimmy Carr:

“Disposition is more important than position”

I’ve only ever known Jimmy Carr as a one-liner comedian. His podcast with Steven Bartlett on Dairy of a CEO has changed my mind. There are so many gems that he shares and it’s worth taking an hour and a half to listen.

It’s fitting that wisdom like this comes from an unexpected place. Even with Steven’s glowing introduction my bar of expectation was still low and I was very pleasantly surprised.

Yesterday morning I listened to the last 30 minutes while on the treadmill, and when Jimmy said this it really hit me.

“You are not the worst thing you’ve ever done.” ~ Jimmy Carr

How many people are measured on social media by the worst thing they have said or done? I’ve written around 2,000 blog posts since I started sharing online 18 years ago. I think I have a pretty decent record of being a pretty decent person, and yet I am keenly aware that I’m one careless sentence or one unpopular opinion away from potentially being ‘cancelled’… of being attacked as rude, biased, or some other derogatory adjective.

I’m not famous and it might not be that big of a deal to others, but it would matter to me. I remember years ago when I was attacked in a comment for being racist. It was very upsetting. Ironically it was on a post that I still consider one of my favourite things I’ve ever written, and to this day it’s the only non-spam comment I ever deleted. But before I did, I checked with people to see if I was off base. I really questioned myself and my perspective. I found out later who wrote that comment, even met him, and I believe changed his mind, but that’s a story for another time.

Going back to the podcast, I enjoyed listening to this enough that I’ll probably end up listening to Jimmy’s book. He really is a fascinating guy and I think I have more to learn from him. On that note, take some time to listen to the Diary of a CEO podcast. Steven interviews some fascinating people and he is an excellent interviewer.

And finally, back to the quote above about disposition, I am reminded of another quote, “It’s not what happens, it’s what you do that makes the difference.” I learned this in an NLP class over 30 years ago, but it actually dates back to Epictetus: “It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.”

We all have an incredible ability to create our own reality… to take what happens to us and frame it in a way that is positive, that teaches us, that helps us grow.

“Disposition is more important than position. ”

Attention and distraction

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Do you ever look at the length of an article or a video before deciding if you’ll bother reading or watching it? Do you ever stop what you are doing to read an incoming message or notification?

How many notifications do you get in a day? How many times is your attention on a task taken away by digital distractions?

After years of these interruptions, how are our brains being re-wired? However much the distractions affect us, they are distracting our younger generations more. I have many notifications turned off on my phone, and I’m not using apps as a means to communicate with friends regularly. Teens today are in constant contact with friends, and even parents, and the interruptions are continuous.

I recently had a lunch at a restaurant with family and no phones came out the entire meal. This is normal for us, but not what we see around us. My daughter mentioned a dinner we had on holidays in Whistler, where a family of a mother and three girls sat next to us. The youngest had headphones on and barely looked up from her iPad. Another was glued to her phone. The third was drawing and had one earphone in. None of them had a single conversation with their mom that any of us witnessed.

I have to wonder, are our attention spans shrinking? Are digital distractions affecting our ability to hold continued focus without interruption? Are we no more than Pavlov’s dogs, salivating at the sound of the next notification?

This isn’t new. TV used to interrupt our shows for commercials. Kids shows like Sponge Bob don’t hold the same camera angle for more than 4 or 5 seconds, giving constant stimulation even when nothing is happening. So, interruptions aren’t new, but they are exponentially worse on unlimited data, social media packed phones.

We are, as Neil Postman suggests, ‘Amusing Ourselves to Death‘. We are slowly destroying our ability to sit focused and uninterrupted on a single task. More than one notification came up while I was writing this, so I’ve obviously not figured out how to reduce the distractions myself. How many years of these distractions before we become incapable of staying on one task for any extended period of time?

Fear to share

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I’m pretty honest when I write here. I have written about challenges with my headspace, about how hard it can be to write every day, and when things haven’t necessarily gone well for me. I’ve even ranted a few times about things that drive me nuts. But if you were to look back at my 1,600+ blog posts since I started writing daily, I think you’d see that I’m a pretty positive person.

And still I find myself struggling to share that today was a crummy day for me. Nothing bad happened, I didn’t get any bad news, I just had a crappy, unhappy day. I was in a funk and I couldn’t get out of it.

I recognized it enough to ask a friend to connect with me after work, and he gave me some good advice. So I stayed off my phone other than listening to a podcast in my hot tub. And I’m in bed at 9pm writing this so that I can set it to publish in the morning and sleep in a little later.

It bugs me that I wanted to hide this melancholy feeling and pretend that everything is ok. I am thinking about the problem with the happy lives of Instagramers, who put only the happiest, most perfectly posed photos on their stories, and who hide every blemish, ever disappointment, and every mundane experience or feeling. I don’t want to replicate that. I think it’s ok to say, ‘today sucked, I’m not feeling like I’m in a good place,’ without making people worry about me, or question my happiness at work or at home.

We stigmatize sharing mental health challenges and simultaneously glorify our best lives on social media. No one wants to be seen as ‘broken’. So a simple bad day gets tucked away. And a selfie with a pet and a smile goes online.

Today was not a good day. I’m privileged enough to be able to say that because I have 1,600 other things I’ve written that normalize me and don’t make me look fragile or weak. But how many people hide it? How many smiling Facebook and Instagram posts are masks hiding darker, unshared feelings? How many people would benefit from sharing but don’t have a friend or partner to rely on, or a space to share their feelings and feel safe rather than vulnerable and exposed.

Tomorrow will be a better day for me, I know this already. I’m lucky, I have good coping mechanisms figured out and I’m told by many I have an ‘even keeled’ disposition. Those who know me aren’t going to be concerned about what I’ve written.

But what about those who aren’t ok? Who don’t have good coping strategies, and who have a fear to share? How hard is it for them to see the happy, smiling social media posts, oblivious that some of those posts mask the same feelings they have?

Not everyone is as fortunate as me to be able to share a crappy day and not feel judged.

The digital wall

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What is it about the internet that gives people permission to be awful and mean to others? I follow an astrophysicist on social media. She’s brilliant, and makes great content. She also posted a rant about all the misogynistic comments she gets from men commenting on her rather than her content. I’m not sharing any more details because it looks like she took the video down.

This is just one of many examples of people behaving badly from the safety of behind their keyboards. Many don’t even hide behind an anonymous profile, no they are just openly rude, mean, and/or sexist. I don’t understand the desire to do this? I don’t understand how a digital profile somehow creates the permissions to do this?

Would these people say the same things if they were physically in a crowded room with the person they are actively being inappropriate with? In most cases I would guess not. But somehow their keyboard acts as a digital wall separating them from their bad deeds.

I wonder what these people would think if someone was saying the same rude things they are saying online to one of their family members? Would that be enough to stop them? Would they think it was ok if a person spoke like them to their daughter? What would it take to make them realize what jerks they are being?

I’m pretty sure Neil deGrasse Tyson doesn’t face the sexism the female astrophysicist I mentioned above does. I bet the internet is a very different place for these two people with similar jobs. The inequity is magnified on the digital, social media front. The blatantly sexist and rude comments of yesterday-year are still alive and well on the internet.

I’m not the one getting the worst of it, so I don’t see it that much. Yet it still bothers me. I’d hope to see a change for the better soon, but I’m not terribly optimistic. In fact, I think it will likely get worse before it gets better. I hope not, but I think so.

Intolerance for bad faith actors

I have always been a pretty strong advocate for free speech. To me it’s the underpinning of a robust democratic society. We don’t have to like what someone says, but they have a right to say it as long as it isn’t hate speech or harmful to someone. We shouldn’t allow racism, threats, and doxing, but we should allow differences of opinions and even angry rants when they are not threatening to a person or group of people.

But I’m struggling with the lack of good faith that I’m seeing. In our country, I see a lot of protests and anger towards our Prime Minister. I believe people should be allowed to protest and share their concerns, but when I see articles like, ‘Attack on Trudeau unsurprising, experts say, warning of future violence against politicians‘ stating that he was “pelted with gravel while at a campaign stop in London, Ont.” Or I read that he was heckled so loudly that he couldn’t continue a speech… Then that is going way too far. This isn’t protest, it’s fascist, it is intolerant and oppressive.

There is a difference between voicing concerns and harassment. There is a difference between protesting and threatening, there is a difference between peaceful, civil behavior and what seems to be happening today.

If I was to describe my politics, I’m definitely left of center. And while I fundamentally disagree with many things Ben Shapiro thinks and says, I get upset when I read articles that he can’t even speak at a university because of safety concerns… And that was 6 years ago! Things are even worse now. Much worse.

When I recently read, “The presidents of three of the nation’s top universities are facing intense backlash, including from the White House, after being accused of evading questions during a congressional hearing about whether calls by students for the genocide of Jews would constitute harassment under the schools’ codes of conduct.” I am deeply concerned. Should students be allowed to protest? Absolutely! Should they be allowed to promote genocide of any person or people as part of their protest? Absolutely not.

It’s an easy line to draw. Absolutely not. That’s acting in bad faith. That’s undermining our democracy and our freedoms.

We need to differentiate how we handle protests and free speech by people who are acting in good faith from those acting in bad faith. The very rights and freedoms we are given in a free and democratic society depend on us doing so. When we give those freedoms to people that abuse them, we subvert our own liberty. We diminish our freedoms and allow others, with harmful words and actions, to impose less civil values on us.

When free speech is misused, it harms us all. When violence is advocated or permitted; when protests prevent civil conversation and debate; when harassment is permitted; we all suffer. We can’t let people acting in bad faith weaken our civil liberties. We can’t just expect people to act in good faith, the minority who don’t will be too disruptive. We need to squash the bad faith actors. The trick is that we need to do so with legal actions. We need to have zero tolerance for intolerance, and we need to create laws that clearly restrict and penalize threats, hate crimes, and malice.

This is known as the paradox of tolerance, “The paradox of tolerance states that if a society’s practice of tolerance is inclusive of the intolerant, intolerance will ultimately dominate, eliminating the tolerant and the practice of tolerance with them. Karl Popper described it as the seemingly self-contradictory idea that, in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must retain the right to be intolerant of intolerance.”

Instead, what I am seeing is things like this happening:

People who have caused over a decade of harm to others do not deserve a social media platform. That’s not censorship, that’s prevention of further malice, pain, and suffering to innocent people. As I contemplate leaving Twitter, news like this makes me lean towards shutting down my account. But I don’t pretend that will have any meaningful impact beyond my own peace of mind.

The acceptance of bad faith actors has been building over the past decade, and we are deep into the consequences now. Free speech should only be a right for people who act in good faith. There can be disagreement, there can be discourse, there can even be civil arguments and protests. What there can’t be are bad faith actors and activists using free speech as a mechanism to promote harmful ideas, hate, violence, and disruptions to public discourse. For this we need zero tolerance.

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