The lament of the hyper-online

The article Is It Time To Embrace “Opinion Fatigue”? by Kate Lindsay (Bustle) writes,

“In April 2022, creator Paulomi Dholakia had some thoughts about Disney. Specifically, she was upset the company didn’t seem to be promoting the Ms. Marvel series, which features the franchise’s first Muslim superhero, as much as it had promoted its other series, like Hawkeye. She first posted this opinion on TikTok, and after people agreed with her, she brought the same video to Instagram.

““It went viral in a very bad way,” Dholakia says. Instead of support, or civil discussion, she was met with comments like “F*ck you you clout chasing b*tch.”

““It made me feel so self-conscious, that maybe I don’t need to say stuff,” she says. Dholakia, who is 31 years old and aspiring to a full-time career as a travel agent, had been sharing more on social media to build business opportunities, but the incident exposed the challenges of virality. “I try not to mess up, try not to stir the pot, and that’s probably why I’m not going to get anywhere on social media,” she concedes. “Because if you don’t stir the pot or you don’t put yourself out there in a very raw, authentic way, then why are people watching you?”

“Dholakia grew up in an online environment that encourages users to share everything from their thoughts on politics to their takes on pop culture. But as the online landscape has grown into an all-encompassing digital town square, experiences like Dholakia’s have prompted her and other former social media power users to throw their hands up and admit “opinion fatigue.””

This is just incredible, really, a completely alien lifestyle—almost another culture or species. The degree to which people don’t understand how humanity works is astounding. They think that they have unfettered access to only positive feedback when they publish to the whole world at once on a very public platform. Just. Tell. Your. Friends. FFS. The Internet is not your friends.

I suppose it starts with a 31-year-old who “aspires” to be a travel agent as the interview subject. That an actual online magazine thought to interview this obvious dodo is astounding. That she is offended that the world doesn’t have overwhelmingly positive feedback for her opinions is icing on the cake. When she gets negative feedback, her answer is to “throw [her] hands up” and stop trying. That goes a long way to explaining why she’s still “aspiring” to be something that is no longer relevant today (a travel agent), at 31 years old.

““People feel like they finally have a voice,” says Linda Charmaraman, Ph.D., a senior research scientist at the Wellesley Centers for Women and director of the Youth, Media & Wellbeing Research Lab. “People want to feel validated. ‘Do you agree with me? What do you think?’ And just trying to keep up that engagement is a game in itself.””

Next is a Ph.D. from the “Wellesley Centers for Women and director of the Youth, Media & Wellbeing Research Lab”. JFC. Do I even need to go on? “People want to feel validated.” Of course they do. But is it useful for society to reward everyone for every goddamned thing that falls out of their undereducated heads? That’s what you have friends for: to help you figure out which opinions are bone-headed and which ones aren’t. Since they’re your friends, they might let you down easier (depending on what kind of friends you have). The Internet is not obliged to treat your completely unknown and anonymous ass in the same way.

For God’s sake, this is not rocket science. If you want to post something, post it on your own private site and don’t allow comments—or only allow moderated comments, or … whatever. Stop seeking the validation of strangers instead of people you know and love, is, I think, what I’m saying here.

Blogs were already the correct solution at the beginning; they’re the correct solution now. Stop trying to be viral and stop trying to figure out how to turn a single opinion of yours into a career. Just stop. Society doesn’t need your bullshit.

“[…] silence on a prominent political or social issue can be interpreted as complicity. It took Taylor Swift three years to disavow white supremacy after the Daily Stormer referred to her as “pure Aryan goddess,” revealing her status as an (unintentional) neo-Nazi idol. She told Rolling Stone in 2019 that she wasn’t aware of how her image had been co-opted and attributed her silence to a “sort of political ambivalence, because the person I voted for had always won.” For much of the public, however, this explanation was too little, too late.”

This entire paragraph is utter nonsense. This is no way to run a society. Why in God’s name are people so stupid and petty? Who cares what other people think? You have to officially come out against white supremacy now? Because if you don’t, people will think you’re totally for it. Fuck those people, then. They’re just karma-whoring on your reputation (especially TV shows in the traditional media, BTW). Do not give in to them and allow them to control how to waste your time.

Similarly, the excellent interview Susan Neiman on Why Left ≠ Woke by Yascha Mounk (Persuasion) included a few prima facie declarations that seemed jarring to me.

“The idea that there would be an African American intellectual sitting in the White House for eight years was just not something that anybody imagined at the time. Racism is too deep, long-lasting and, in some ways, systemic a phenomenon to be ended in one generation. But there was enormous progress.”

They just had to find a black man who would be a smiling, sadistic asshole like all the others. Which is why the question of class is much more important than race. Barack Obama and Clarence Thomas are what many would consider to be the right color, but they are members of an elite to which they pledge much stronger fealty than to members of the cohort defined by their shared skin color. That much should be utterly obvious.

As Kanye West said, George Bush doesn’t care about black people. Neither does Barack Obama. Barack Obama cares about himself and his rich friends. If they’re all adequately cared for, then he might have some empathy left over for members outside of his class, but that’s only a side-effect of the main thrust of his efforts, which aim to further enrich himself and the elite to which long aspired to belong, and to which he has belonged for decades. If he didn’t do this thing, he would never have become president.

“[…] if people agree with you on the main thesis of what you’ve been talking about, and they think of themselves as left-wing, and they’re in a milieu that is very left-wing, and they’re worried about making the points you just made to the friends and colleagues and so on, do you have any advice for how to speak up for those ideas without ceasing to be in good standing with your leftist social circle?”

What the fuck is wrong with people? They seem obsessed with pleasing blinkered idiots who are in their “social circles”. Why? Who cares what amoral fools think? Just say what you’re going to say and let them digest it. If they can’t? Reformulate. But don’t give in on your principles unless you think you got something wrong.

The opinions of strangers are more-or-less meaningless. If you know their credentials and respect their opinion, then go ahead and lend their opinion weight; otherwise, you can safely ignore the hysterical reactions of strangers online. It’s all just fake Internet points anyway.

And, maybe—just maybe—you could consider having discussions with a smaller circle than “the whole world”, where you don’t run such a large risk of reputational loss if an unrefined opinion should slip out of you. That’s what private discussions are for—to bounce ideas and opinions off of people you trust to give you the benefit of the doubt before you show the whole world.

People are skipping that step and are mystified why it doesn’t seem to be working for them.

“[…] speak up. You will find that many more people agree with you and will say things like “I was going to say that but I was afraid.” That’s happened to me many, many times.”

Or, if you address too large and anonymous a group, you’ll find out why those people were afraid to say anything. The larger a group you address, the more likely it is that you’ll get feedback from hypersensitive lunatics or lulz-seeking trolls.