Online
discussion increasingly feels like it has only one purpose, as a
terrifying dynamo for generating emotion. This isn’t a profound
observation, indeed it’s something we can feel intuitively.
After-all, the algorithms know us better than we do. Emotion
generates engagement, it stirs you into action, leaves you itching
and burning to furiously clack away at your keyboard to get your
point across to all those strangers on the internet who are just
deeply, fundamentally wrong about whatever topic of the day is doing
the rounds.
For
a long time I’ve had this weird obsession with comment threads. I’m
not normally one to wade into the deep-end myself. I had some early
burns as a teenager, jumping into a forum for one of my favourite
bands and unleashing my uneducated and ill-thought out opinions for
the whole community to deftly ridicule. I was a sensitive teenager,
and took the rejection and criticism far too personally.
I’m
still quite a sensitive adult. So now I rarely post, instead I’m a
lurker, a voyeur, a connoisseur of comment threads. Some kind of
morbid curiosity moves me to scroll right past the text of an article
and dive straight into that putrid comments section. What simplistic
war of words will float to the top of the toilet-bowl this time? Sometimes
I play a game, trying to guess the tired back-and-forth that will
predictably play out when I click the ‘view replies’ button.
Or
another game, guess the proportion of ‘likes’ to ‘laugh
emojis’, indicating the relative affirmation or rejection afforded
to any given post. Facebook famously rejected the proposal for a
‘dislike’ button, but that stupid little laugh emoji seems to
function so much better. Not only do I disagree with you, but I
actively find your position laughable.
I’ve
gotten quite good at playing my games, I guess things correctly most
of the time. Yet they aren’t very enjoyable to play, and I still
don’t really understand why I play them. Of course, politics is the
perfect fuel for this reactor, and it draws out all the emotion like
some greedy, bulbous leech. All-of-a-sudden, I find that every other
post on Facebook appears to be some sponsored political piece, each
one overflowing with its own raging battleground of simplistic
opinions and insulting rebuttals for me to fawn over. All of this
leaves me with a really bad taste in my mouth, and a harrowing
disdain for the human race as a whole.
Ageing
has been kind to me thus far, and its main symptom has been an
increasing self-knowledge. Of course I know that all of this lurking
really isn’t great for my mental health, and I can easily chart the
pattern of mood that it burrows into me. So while I quietly fight my
own laughable battle for self-control, let this beleaguered voyeur
depart some home-grown wisdom...
Take
a break from the news when you need to. Uninstall the apps.
Deactivate Facebook. Get up and have a respectful conversation with
someone you disagree with. Watch youtube videos about the stuff that
inspires you. Find something else to do while you’re sitting on the
toilet. Raise your head above the cesspit. Trust me, you’ll feel
much better for it.
And
with all that said I’m going to take my own advice and watch some
random physicist talk about the likely proportion of earth like
planets in the Milky Way galaxy.
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