The world we live in shrinks every day. We may not be running out of physical room on this place called earth, but we ran out of room in this place called society long ago. It feels like I grew up in a, if not the era that most quickly vacuumed up all of that free space, thanks to the internet.
Thanks to the internet, we can be close to more people on a minute to minute basis than people 20-30 years ago could even dream about. Dream about it they did too, imagine how lonely you would be without the internet, imagine the sacrifices you would have to make to your current lifestyle of other people weren’t fingertips away. It’s a fascinating time to be alive, watching society evolve at a rapid pace right in front of my eyes. It’s a terrifying time to be alive, watching society evolve at a rapid pace right in front of my eyes.
It’s amazing watching people come together and share their hobbies, their passions, collaborate on doing projects for the good of humanity and the good of personal growth alike. Expectedly, this of course comes at a cost. Not just our privacy and self worth, not just the unprecedented access full fledged criminals and(or) corporations, it comes at a cost of not being able to hide from those you quite simply and otherwise harmlessly do not agree with on an ethical level.
Part of the good of being so connected, is that it gives those in society with harmful intentions a really hard time being secretive about it. Mostly because they are too ignorant to know how connected society is in the internet age is. When the author of famous books in the pre internet age got famous, they got famous for the books they wrote, they did tours and shook hands, signed books and collected their checks. They were a prominent public figure for their work, not so much their personality. Sure the entertainment magazines may have dug for some scoop to catch your eye at the news stand, promising to let you get to know the real them (or the fake them, if it sold well), but for general society, the relationship ended there. But now, everyone that gets any notoriety in society for doing anything at all, being an author, a football player, a chess champion, walking the farthest distance in a video game game, gets a larger societal platform than the average population. Not just larger, immense. Unless that person is incredibly nuanced at living a strictly closed off life, their true personality, opinions, beliefs, ethical grounds, and spicy uneducated not thought out hot takes, are out there, for the masses.
Basically if you’re a shitbag, other shitbags are going to know you’re a shitbag, and it’s going to make you have an even higher standard in their pecking order of their view on society. It’s also going to make non shitbags, put you way down their pecking order.
AND ITS A FIGHT!
If you are in the market for something to get angry about in the year 2023, market futures have never looked better. In many ways, I find that to be a great thing. I’m sick of people that only want to see other people suffer gaining fame and living the life of luxury. In some ways, its exhausting.
This is where I diverge from public opinion, it feels. We know so much more about who people and organizations really are now, and we know so many people are at their core, living their lives to the fullest extent and anyone that stands in their way can be tossed aside. Even people that have zero impact on their lives, if they don’t live to the ideologies that they want, they are in their way, they need to either be “fixed” or disposed of. The good news is people have the ability to stand up against those people now, they aren’t helpless individuals, they can group and form allies to help protect themselves and others. This is where it gets messy.
AND ITS A FIGHT?
Have you ever been around a bar fight? A mosh pit turned ugly? A sports team brawl that sweeps the whole team? Do you ever notice it always starts when a person does something that wrongs another person? Where does it go from there? Do the patrons of the bar all rally around the person that got wronged and beat down someone? Does the team rally around the wronged player and settle it? No. It’s a brawl. Anyone associated with that person, is going down, on both sides.
That’s where we are at now. The internet has taken that fight from the bar, and spread it across all of society. If you have ever associated with a person that has gone from being a public figure, to a public enemy. You are now either with them, or against them. You picked your team, and its time to fight. Even if you don’t share a single ideology with that person, you made your choice. You will fight, or you will shut up and hide.
That in itself, not really a challenge. It can be stressful and sometimes even dangerous, but there’s normally a way out, you just stop associating with anything involved with that person. But what about if what that person did, was create a *thing*. What if that *thing* becomes its own organism outside the realm of that person’s existence. Does that organism bear the responsibility of its creators wrongdoings? If that thing brings joy to a person, and continues to do so, does that said person have to abandon this *thing* in order to be seen as not supporting the person that created it? What a mess.
Let’s go back to the bar. That fight is still going on, but you’re just there because you want a pint. You go up to the bartender and ask for a drink, and the whole swarm of people fighting turns to you and exclaims, whoa, how can you just support the person that caused this fight like that? That would be pretty unacceptable in our society, right?
Enough hypothetical, lets get personal. If you know me, I am a person that has pretty steadfast beliefs in letting people do whatever they want to do, as long as it does not harm innocent people. It’s a pretty basic set of beliefs, founded by me. I do not follow or practice any religions, I am not an activist in any groups. This does not mean I sit by idly and let people that I see causing others personal harm get away with whatever they want, I don’t just turn a blind eye. I will not, however, attack an individual on the fringe of an issue, in order to try and get to the root. The association of a person does not mark their identity. I have had to fight with this dilemma my whole life.
I grew up in a mostly liberal leaning family, I grew up in a family that did not particularly put much direction towards religion. I grew up believing I should treat others in the way that I would like to be treated. This is not the mass ideology of the people that make up the area I grew up, or even currently live. That does not mean however, I shielded myself from everyone else. I didn’t, I made friends. There are friends I would call my family, that have massively different ideologies than me. Even ideologies that are at the core of what I feel strongly against, such as Religion being the foundation of government, the rights of a man over a woman, the rights that any one person can dictate how another person decides to represent their body. I am not proud of them for their beliefs, they disappoint me with their lack of respect for human kind. I have talks and debates with them, even arguments. But you know what I still do at the end of the day? I respect them. I respect that their lives brought them to a point that they feel that way, and I respect that I am but one small ripple in their life. All I can do is hope that my small ripple, one day causes a wave for them, and maybe they will start to see things differently. That isn’t going to happen all at once, it wont happen overnight. If I spend my days trying to tear them down, cause them mental harm, push them away from the things they love, that wont make my ripple grow, its just going to cause my ripple to be tainted with distain. I might as well have done nothing at all. I know that if I was in trouble one day, and I needed their help, they would be there for me, even if we do feel differently about something that is near and dear to me.
Everything changes though, when its a stranger. When a Ram 3500 with a 8″ exhaust tip, a blacked out American flag window sticker and P45 mud flaps cuts me off, flips me the bird and rolls coal into my window, what stops me from hunting them down and giving them a piece of my mind? It’s not *just* that I don’t want to get shot, its that I know that the ripple of me minding my own business is way more powerful than creating a big ripple of distain. This is a person I will never interact with again in my life, the only interaction they ever had with me was that they were rude to me. They left a ripple of distain on me, but I gave them nothing. I’m not giving up the fight, I’m just picking to battle in the areas that might actually help make a difference.
I take the same stance on the internet. If a stranger or acquaintance posts about support of something I am against, I might strike up a conversation if they seem reasonable, but in most cases, I’m just going to let it go. Trying to change that one persons stance on society, singled handed, is never going to happen. I’m nobody to them, they are nobody to me, neither of us are going to make a ripple worth remembering. When a friend of better acquaintance says hey I’m using this *thing* that terrible person 69 originally started, I’m not going to get up in arms with them about it. *thing* terrible person 69 started probably brings them joy. What do I do then? Nothing? Just let terrible person 69 continue to reap the rewards of their creation? In the short term? Yes. In the long term? No. I’m going to keep having reasonable and responsible conversations with people I care about to help change their view on the things I feel strongly about. I’m not going to hinge my relationship with them on the success of those conversations. If they spin out of control and move from passive support to active support, I’m going to drop away. I’ve done it before, I’ll do it again. I know the longer lasting effect than combating with them one on one, is them coming to the realization that they lost a friend because of their actions, and their actions alone. Odds are that will not effect them, but for me anyway, It’s been a far greater success than any other form of personal activism.
So ask yourself, for me, if you will. Ask yourself the next time you are about to get up in arms about internet person 420 saying they are using *thing* that terrible person 69 made, are you about to make a positive impact on shifting society away from the things that made terrible person 69 a terrible person, or are you just going to dig the ruts in deeper on both sides by adding in another layer of distain between each side.
The internet scares me now, the only thing that people are interested in is digging in. It feels sometimes like people don’t even care as much about actually helping the causes they care for. They are just living for the fight….I don’t want to fight. I have weak ass bones and can’t make it far without my inhaler. I just want people to be treated right…but I know that isn’t going to happen over night. It’s up to the people that care to shift societies feelings, over time. I’ve seen it happen, it can happen, but we have to stop breaking bottles first.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.