#the discourse on TikTok i mean (which is screenshot everywhere else)

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

Also people can be introverts and awkward and come across as boring and those shouldn’t necessarily be seen as character flaws or cause of derision idk

[the-greatest-fool]

How do people use the internet still. Opening up tumblr or twitter to find deep amounts of misinformation ranging from ignorance about basic geography or economics to the classic “the media hasn’t reported about [x inflammatory issue]” (which I, a Newspaper Reader, know for a fact isn’t true) has made me pretty pessimistic about the future. If, as it looks to me, everyone gets their news from misleading screenshots on Twitter or Tumblr or some snarky TikToks where some rando talks to you from their bedroom, I really don’t see how we’ll ever escape the hyperreal hellscape of Alternative Facts. Facts aren’t a tool for you to debate with or manipulate towards your cause or identity. Truth has to be the starting point for any meaningful discourse, or we will be forever in the dark.

Having seen people fall into the alt right media ecosystem, it’s always disturbing to see people fall into similar patterns of fact denial, selective media consumption, echo chambers, and conspiratorial thinking (which as of late has caused an “unholy alliance” of left/right accusations about evil Globalists controlling the media—I think it would be good for people to read Adorno and Horkheimer’s argument about antisemitism being the “fool’s socialism”, whereby capital gets tokenized into a convenient racialized scapegoat to be banished by The People).

In this case, it’s not about your specific positions about policy or diplomacy. Specific debates about how the consequences of certain policies can magnify or decrease the risk or intensity or suffering are all well and good. But I am worried about a Manicheanism infecting young people who mean well, which could very well convince them that they are Good, but the ones who oppose them: They are Evil, They are Liars, They Hate You, They Control Everything, They Own Everything, They Must be Destroyed, etc. Such a nihilism—there is no hope, they control everything, we cannot trust anyone except for our own kind, we see apocalypse on the horizon, we must set fire to everything impure—is not conducive to being able to articulate reasonable specific courses of action for optimal outcomes. It is instead the basis for seeing the world in terms of angels and demons. The world may never see peace if the fever of forever revolution took hold such that we no longer wished for a better world, only to win and defeat our enemies, over and over until there is nothing and no one else to purge.

Then the world becomes a script for constant hermeneutics of suspicion. Read between the lines, we would say. Who knows what They are up to. They could be anywhere. It is how Naomi Wolf went from a decently known feminist writer into a full blown antivaxxer. Beware. Fake news is everywhere. The desire to subvert reality and bend it towards a narrative of justice that tickles our fancy is universal. We would do well to do what Naomi Klein did (in her book Doppelganger) instead and really consider if our doppelgangers on the “wrong side” are really any different than us, since I think what is ultimately at play is basic psychology and social interactions, and the consequences could be devastating if we don’t interrogate them. It should terrify more people that the basic truth is harder and harder to find in online conversations.