everything is politics. from vaccines to lgbt matters, politicians have leveraged the things conservative americans donāt understand to stoke fear and confusion.
this isnāt anything new. what is new is the algorithms that reenforce those fears. comment sections weāre told to treat like real conversation just flooded with faceless accounts saying their most vile inside thoughts. itās easy to want to interact and easier to just read it all and be mad. but every second spent engaging is another brain scrambling distraction.
these sensationalized posts and comments do nothing for education, understanding, or empathy. even on the left, slacktivism actively hurts the cause. theres an idea that someone who holds ignorant beliefs is *bad* in all politicized fields. but letās be real, just because uncle jeff is pissed about tuck underwear it doesnāt mean heās a climate change denier. generalizing people is exactly what politicians want from us.
social issues are important and politics arenāt going away from that any time soon. but social media is a slippery slope and i personally refuse to engage. when it bleeds into my real life (āparents just WANT their kids to be transā) i try to engage in conversations that get to the root of the issue. whereās this info coming from, why do you believe that? these are the kind of questions strangers wonāt ask them on the internet.
misinformation is a sickness that weāre all plagued with. to find some truth and understanding we cannot be having these discussions on platforms like facebook or instagram or twitter. if we do, weāre just giving these tech ceos and politicians what they need: engagement and fear
