Social media sheeple don’t know they’re sheeple

Andrew R. Tester/Creative Commons

It’s pretty hard to deactivate one’s Facebook. When I ceased posting in 2017 and reduced my activity to client stuff and group management, I made sure that I had no more Facebook sign-ons left. But it turns out that Lucire’s Twitter-to-Facebook page script relies on my account.
   I did look today and got caught up in a thread which reminded me why I don’t tend to look at the feed. Usual behaviour: person offended by a friend’s post. Spewed out opinions disguised as fact. Got called out. Couldn’t back them up. Then began obfuscating and attacking the messenger.
   It would be funny if it weren’t so obvious these days—and that this person thinks they are intelligent. Social media have allowed those under the average IQ to believe they are the superior beings in the human race, because they have an audience and enough dopamine hits from likes to back up that feeling.
   To heck with facts. We also find the same folks despise expertise, and truth is the obvious casualty.
   I still remember last year one gentleman having a go at me for a Tweet that joked about MSG in ‘white people food’ (a term, I should note, that whites use), then proceeded to tell me all the incidents of racism perpetrated by my race that he had witnessed—all without recognizing that what he was doing was putting forth a “master race” argument on how his race was better and more tolerant. A racist who slams others over race. It stuck in my mind as a brilliant exemplar of ignorance and pigheadedness. I’d link it but he’s deleted it—I hadn’t expected the cowardice—but it was a great example of how the original message became the pretext to attack someone rather than engage. (Incidentally, there’s plenty of MSG in occidental food—just look out for those 600 numbers, and fast food joints are particularly nasty.)
   I know there’ll always be more sheeple than independent thinkers. I know there’ll always be more who’ll swallow BS than analyse something for themselves. But it’s still disappointing to see it writ so large in this social-media-democratized world of ours.
   Of course everyone should have a voice, a freedom to say their piece.
   But in a bigger forum it would also be useful for all of us to have some sense of self-control and admit it when we don’t have evidence or we’re not experts in the area. I don’t think that’s likely unless schools are training kids some netiquette, what an actual debate looks like, and how social media “debates” are not debates.
   I’d never go on a forum to debate my GP over medicine. And if I did, I’d qualify my statements with ‘As a layman, I would have thought …’ and allow myself to be corrected by people who know more than me in their specialist area.
   In the 1980s, the Scots comedian Robbie Coltrane said the difference between a Briton and an American was that the Brit might recognize their limitations and say, ‘I didn’t go to a very good school,’ whereas the American would say, ‘If he comes over here, I’ll shoot him.’ But in 2020 I doubt such a distinction exists, certainly not online. A Briton is as likely as an American, or a New Zealander for that matter, to be anti-expert and truth- and fact-resistant.
   I don’t know where that puts society. When I talked about leaving Twitter, one very active and knowledgeable friend in the South Island said he would stay because he ‘didn’t want to let the bastards win,’ or a sentiment to that effect. Sometimes I feel retreat leaves some of us in a gated community while the Morlocks go wild in Big Tech forums. And there would be absolutely no point to such an arrangement, because we enrich each other in society through contact, not isolation.
   So how do you educate others who are so resistant to education, so unwilling to enter into a debate without character assassinations? Is this why the social media sites love us so much, because some of us think that the only way to get through with facts is to shout?
   A religious person might advance the idea of living life better and to lead by example. Don’t preach it, show it. That doesn’t mean isolation, but it does mean demonstrating that not being an arsehole is enriching. Sounds good to me, except, with some so self-obsessed with ignorance, will they even recognize that that’s what’s happening? When this person on Facebook was called out today, I don’t think she realized it. It’s easier in the real world, and not so much in the virtual one where people are so caught up in their own head.

PS.: Let my friend and colleague Peter Fraterdeus have the last word here:

It turns out that Facebook etc are the perfect Petrie dish for extracting Dunning-Kreuger syndrome.

— Peter Fraterdeus (@ideaswords) January 27, 2020