Against the Discourse

The world, and the internet, is in flux.

While Twitter was once a subversive stronghold for opinions that are not often enough given the credence and the attention they deserve – minority opinions, in particular – it has, especially under the ownership of Elon Musk, devolved into something else entirely. Thoughtful, well-formed arguments no longer rise to the top as they were once meant to, but rather the coarsest, most “controversial” (i.e. hateful) opinions now get all the attention, often bought and paid for. Not only that, but circuitous squabbling and hyper-specific policing over meaningless topics, within groups of people who should be working together based on their expansive common ground, have become the norm.

I, for one, am tired of it. And done with it.

Friendly conversations about shared interests and hobbies are all well and good, and fine fodder for Threads, but for real, reflective discussion of important, society-shaking ideas? I believe Twitter and similar social media “discourse” has long begun eating its own tail, and no one is accomplishing much anymore.

I suggest a fairly simple alternative (but one that takes effort): If you are a writer, bring your ideas to thoughtful, long-form writing rather than casual social media conversations that cannot bear the weight of your precious ideas any longer. And if you are a reader/commenter, learn to increase your attention span, to engage more deeply with ideas, and to think before formulating your own response – whether that be in a comment section, or preferably, on your own website / a zine / a local reading / or any of the other endless options that exist outside of Twitter and social media. Put more of that energy into community work outside of your computer and outside of your home. And stop playing into, or demanding, the instant, fairly useless gratification of a social media argument.

I don’t mean to insult anyone, but I can’t help but think you are wasting your time, and valuable energy that is vitally needed elsewhere, by viciously debating, say, the degrees of polyamorous representation in the latest season of Bridgerton and whether they are a) essential to validating polyamory as a relationship choice, or b) the downfall of society as we know it. Particularly with people who are largely online only to be contrarians, to rile you up and laugh as you jab away at your keyboard, so sure that if you convince this one person of your point of view, the world will be demonstrably transformed into a better, more moral, more “right” place.

Friends, I say this with pure love and without condescension: It won’t.

Sure, there are some examples of formerly-bigoted (most often ignorant) people changing their worldview because they were exposed to online arguments later in life. But those examples are few and far between, and are vastly outweighed by the number of people who adamantly refuse to change, who will never be convinced by a Twitter thread, whose raison d’être is only and always to spew hatred and to stir up others’ rage and resentment. These people are overwhelmingly supported by an algorithm that feeds on your anger and insecurity.

To those squabbling over “good” and “bad” representation (something which will always vary person-to-person and has no single, black and white “good”): will fighting about it on Twitter change the representation that already exists in these TV shows and movies? It may move the needle the slightest bit, as studios and CEOs clamber to keep your eyeballs on their properties, to convince you that this show understands you, cares about you, and to keep your dollars feeding into their subscription services and pockets – but not in meaningful ways, ways that are only arrived at through a writer’s lifetime of experience and thoughtful, personal contemplation, rather than tokenism or appeasement of the angriest mob.

As for whether bisexual women should bring their boyfriends to Pride parades, the discourse around this and similar topics only seems to grow more prejudiced, more inflammatory by the year, and I can’t help but feel that by continuing to discuss it, to allow ourselves to be upset by it, we’re just adding fuel to the fire – or the algorithm, as it may be. Why are we giving these bigots – yes, they may be queer, but they are still bigots – so much attention? Why are we yielding our own hard-earned platforms and follower counts to people who are hateful, who are merely pretending to be part of our community? These bigots are not part of any community I wish to call my own.

Should you be “allowed” to bring your boyfriend to Pride? Honey, just fucking do it. It’s true, you may notice some judgmental stares, but I must counter that this is the risk of engaging with the real world, and it can also come with great reward. Talk to those people who seem to be judging you, ask them calmly why they’re staring – they may not be thinking what you assume they’re thinking. And if they are, you stand a much better chance of changing their opinions by engaging with them face-to-face, peacefully and without feeding into your own preconceptions of who they are. By showing them that you and your boyfriend are not the boogeymen they’ve imagined through their computer screens.

That, in my opinion, is what it really means to be part of a community: a willingness to engage with others who may not hold every single viewpoint that you do, who may not always immediately understand you, but who are nonetheless connected to you in other significant ways. People with whom you can find common ground and understanding, if only you make a real effort.

You will also find many people who are generous, who choose to come from a place of openness and curiosity rather than judgment and antagonism. And many of those who wish to judge you harshly will find that, by speaking with you in person, they are simply unable to disregard your inherent humanity the way they so easily could online. This is a good thing. The goal should not be to “win” the argument, then discard the conquered “enemy” like a piece of trash, but to foster greater understanding amidst a larger number of people, and to create a community that many more of us can take part in. That is how you bring about real change. That’s how you get people on your side.

We all need to be engaging with the communities we inhabit physically, to live more fully in the offline world. Far too many hide behind computer screens, shouting uncompromising opinions that leave no room for disagreement, with no concept of what the real world—and what the average person who is not chronically online—is like. Leftists do this constantly, to their own detriment, and far too many well-intentioned people get caught up in it. Then, when they do venture out into the real world, they punish those around them for not being aware of the (ever-changing, hyper-specific) social “rules” of the internet, alienating those who could’ve become valuable allies.

An anecdote: I went to the Women’s March in 2017 with my dad, a 70-something man who, while very liberal, has never spent any time on Twitter, and whose knowledge of some commonly-discussed internet topics such as pronouns and terms for different gender identities is not nearly as extensive or up-to-date as my own and other “online” individuals. At one point during the march, we noticed a person who appeared to present as male in all ways but one – he was wearing a dress – climbing a tree nearby.

“Well, gosh,” my dad said with mild amusement. “That’s a man in a dress.”

Immediately, I felt myself cringe, glancing around anxiously to gauge the reactions of passersby. If it were Twitter, I knew the self-appointed Word Police would be pouncing on my father at that very moment, screaming and shouting to let him know he was clearly an unrepentant bigot, that he “should know better by now,” and all kinds of other things that would fail to take into account his lived experience. One which does not contain many, if any, encounters with nonbinary people (which, to be fair, I don’t even know this person identified as – perhaps he was, simply, a man choosing to wear a dress that day). I knew there was no cruelty or prejudice behind my dad’s words—he’d just never seen a man in a dress climbing a tree before!—but I couldn’t know what assumptions a stranger might make.

Luckily, this was not Twitter, and the people around us chose to engage kindly rather than make negative assumptions. A black woman standing next to us smiled warmly at my dad and merely replied, “And that’s just fine.”

My dad nodded, smiling back at her, and we went on with the march, united, at least for a few hours, in the things we all had in common, the things we all agreed were worth fighting for.

This small interaction was more meaningful to me than any Twitter fight I’ve ever “won,” and more affirming of the inherent goodness of people who take the time to interact with others from all walks of life without judgment. Even people who have experiences, and thus opinions, that differ from our own. Even people who don’t know or understand all the “correct” vocabulary.

And I know there will be people reading this, already summoning up counter-arguments in their heads. Perhaps you are disabled and can’t attend Pride in person, or participate in marches or other IRL queer/activist/community spaces. Maybe you’re very anxious and these things are difficult for you to do (though I’d challenge you to try anyway). But that doesn’t negate my first point, which is that Twitter and short-form social media “discussions” are no longer a venue for making material change. That, in fact, these discussions are doing more harm than good. And I hold firm on that opinion.

That’s not the same as saying that participating in niche groups online, ones with clear goals, can’t still be useful – but those discussions have to translate into something more, or they’re truly just talk. More chatter in a sea of discussion that isn’t going to change laws, or stop a genocide, or make life tangibly easier and more accessible for the disabled. And isn’t that supposed to be the goal? To make society better when we are actually living in it?

Today, every Tom, Dick, and Uber-Dick thinks they deserve a soapbox, even if it means usurping someone else’s platform and audience, one which real writers, thinkers, and creators have to earn through countless hours of hard work and thoughtful contemplation. But these bad-faith Betties and Brads, with their pitchforks and flames, are so much easier to ignore – and they should be ignored – when you have real control over your platform; something none of us has, not really, on Twitter or similar social media apps.

You can block accounts until your arms fall off, but there will still be more coming at you in droves. Rage-baiters and bigots and talking-head-wannabes who, I promise you, are never going to change their tunes, but who will take up so much of your time and energy. Those people will never yield as long as you continue to give them what they want – attention – because they have too much at stake: fame or money or simply the need to preserve a worldview that no one in their real lives has the guts to challenge.

Consider the “cancellation” of a tradwife who was fired from her job after people went nuts on Twitter over the YouTube personality’s use of the n-word in one of her videos. That woman is now more famous than ever, has become a hero to the staunchly racist, and is currently doing the rounds on the conservative news circuit. The woman went on to “thank” those who called for her cancellation on Twitter for “kickstarting her career in conservative news.”

This is what I mean when I say the snake is eating its own tail. Our words on Twitter no longer have meaningful outcomes – at least not the ones we want. Rather, they often have the exact opposite effect, causing concrete harm. Is the world all that changed because a woman lost her job as a paper-pusher at some nameless company? No. Is it changed because her hateful views now have an outsized voice in conservative media? Yes. Tangibly, yes.

The world is also made concretely worse when we alienate those who could be our allies, if only we’d give them a little understanding and some of our time. When we make enemies of people who we actually have so much in common with, albeit not every single thing. These people are all around you – they may be a minority who identifies similarly to you, but they may also be your out-of-touch relatives, your clueless neighbors. They need you to engage with them, and you need them, too. Today, more than ever, we need all the help we can get rebuilding a world that is kinder to all of us, and we need numbers – not perfection.

(Note: This is not the same as insisting we all shout until our faces are blue over Thanksgiving dinner. We should know when and how to choose our battles, both online and off. Change and newfound open-mindedness often comes through small, seemingly insignificant interactions, but I maintain that those useful interactions are, by and large, going to be had in-person, face-to-face.)

These days, I’m endeavoring to take my own advice. In part, by making this website; by writing these essays and thinking long and hard about the ideas I want to present to the world. I hope I’ve challenged some of you in ways you weren’t expecting. But I’m also endeavoring to engage more with the beautiful-ugly world that’s all around me, and with the beautiful-ugly people in it. Even when it feels scary.

I hope you’ll join me.

 

Header image via Unsplash.