How we fail ourselves

Writing about how the press wasn't coming through for us yesterday, I thought today would be about ways in which the readership isn't coming through. It's also us!

I mean, yes, The New York Times and The Oregonian are behind paywalls now, and that is more frustrating when you consider how often their takes are bad, and yet QAnon-themed conspiracy theory videos are free and easy to find. The more you click, the deeper the algorithm will take you.

So, that is a problem, as is the increasing profit-chasing conglomeration of news companies. However,it is also the public.

Just this morning I saw a link to piece I had heard about, by a woman who put down a dog that kept biting people, after using muzzles and trainers and identifying stressors and not finding any re-homing options.

I read the article and empathized; it sounded like a hard but reasonable decision. It appeared in my timeline because the many people slamming the author for her decision included someone I follow. 

That is an emotional issue, and I get people having strong feelings about it, but there were two problems with it. Many of the criticisms seemed to not have read the article or paid attention. There were criticisms for not trying things that she did try and for feelings that she did not have. 

Did they not read the article? Were emotions so high that they could not take in some of the information?

I don't know, but the other problem was a remark saying that all of the supportive responses were from corporate accounts or blue checks (verified Twitter accounts, usually high follower counts). That was also not true, but it was used to invalidate anything other than criticism.

Next week I am probably going to want to write about the pandemic. I remember a while back reading about the countries with the worst responses, and the thing that was fascinating is the leaders of those countries had also run very similar populist campaigns.

(I can't find the article now, but I believe it was Trump, Putin, Duterte, and Modi.)

Populism is often remembered as the little guy taking on the big guy. The starting wealth and influence of some of the key populists is often brushed aside, and certainly in these last few years, the "them" includes a lot of marginalized people. However, maybe none of that is as important as the fact that it is an ideology based on enmity. 

Maybe this is how compromise becomes a dirty word.

I am sympathetic to that; there are some things that should never be compromised on. For me, that is primarily equality, and the humanity of others. The way I get there is not by dehumanizing those who disagree with me; then I am losing what's important.

(Also, I like to think that acknowledging the humanity of others and the need for equality is a strong enough argument that it doesn't require dehumanizing.)

This is my long way of saying that maybe the reason that reading comprehension is not working out is that too many people aren't interested in it if they interpret it as the words of an enemy.

(Let me just throw in that Sanders is also very much a populist, and that we had two populists on opposite sides has exacerbated everything.)

Two books come to mind, and maybe I will just keep recommending books this week. I will list them below, but one is about conspiracy theories: how they take hold, and their appeal. That's something worth thinking about now. 

The other is about online harassment, by someone who faced a lot of it, and now helps others.

What impressed me most about Quinn was the humanity that they allowed to online abusers. It would be easy to write the abusers off as pathetic and evil, and certainly not interested in the truth. However, having created a villain in their mind, in their minds they become heroes for that harassment. A person has become a symbol of a problem, and then is eligible for abuse.

Literally dehumanization. The opposite is empathy.

I have kept Quinn's book on my desk for over a year now. Mostly that is because I keep meaning to go through and examine my own internet hygiene and vulnerability, but also because of that reminder. I keep the book there for when I am dealing with people who are being loud, obnoxious, wrong, and maybe even abusive, but that I must remember are still human.

"By dubbing them 'those people', we are also explicitly setting ourselves apart as if we aren't one of them and thus can't be part of the problem. Therein lies the most common trap we fall into when trying to make the internet a safer place: framing it as a war of good people versus bad people instead of looking at acceptable and unacceptable ways to treat each other." (pp 175-176)

As much as I actively work to be a good person, I also know it is an oversimplification.

Recommended reading:

Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History, David Aaronovitch, Jonathan Cape, 2009.

Crash Override: How Gamergate (Nearly) Destroyed My Life, and How We Can Win the Fight Against Online Hate, Zoë Quinn, PublicAffairs, 2017.