Consuming Hate
Hate has split the United States down the middle.
That we are no longer united on any front is not facetious. We go out of our
way to find things online that we can hate. Ideas to hate. People to hate. We
search terms in Google that we hate, so we can hate whoever wrote an article or
put up a video we find offensive. We are not only divided by hate, we demand
it. Do you see?
We. Consume. Hate.
Solid Communicative Lines
Our lives are digitally imprinted online, with
the average adult spending approximately 20
hours (Anderson, 2015) a week on the internet. We communicate over various
message apps even as we do whatever the hell it is we actually do on Facebook.
Then there is every other social media site, especially Twitter, Instagram, and
Pinterest. Younger adults surf Tumblr. We have the ability to communicate with
each other. Aside from Pinterest (to my knowledge), each of these sites have
been used to spew hate.
When we go online, we must know we will run
into somebody or something that we find offensive. Common knowledge. All of us,
at some point or another, have taken the opportunity to disagree (at best), to
outright threatening somebody’s real-world life over an idea we don’t agree
with.
Disagreement is fine, assuming it’s done with
respect to the other person. Disagreement opens our minds to new ideas we haven’t
considered before. Disagreement without respect is far more common. We attempt
to shut down the person we disagree with, rather than attempting a
conversation. We don’t want conversations, which take time and thought. We want
to prove, irrevocably and right now, that we are right.
“You’re an Idiot” Nation
We gain much of our internalized morality, and
measures of fellow man, from those we talk to the most. This is not new to the
digital age. Humanity is tribal, and when we find our tribe, we defend it with
everything we have.
However, the shortcoming of tribalism is a loss
of outside ideas. We fight against new ideas more easily than considering them,
extracting their pros and cons, keeping what is better and discarding what will
not work within the tribe’s internalized ethics.
Intellectuals can, and do, look at ideas
outside of what they have already accepted. We (used to) go to college to learn
how this process works. Despite more people having gone to college now than in
history, we are still skewed towards either being incapable of seeing the other
side, or refusing to do so.
Again, we are in a hurry. Calling a random
somebody online an idiot is much easier than looking at why they think the way
they do. No side is more or less guilty than any other: Conservative, Liberal,
black, white, religious, or not. Few people consider somebody else’s (opposite)
point of view before labeling them an idiot. Then, we escape into our echo
chambers to be clapped on the back for our bravery.
Dangerous Echoes
It is my belief that these echo chambers do more
damage than any other cause of hatred. An echo chamber is, essentially, a
person’s taken tribe. The friends, relatives, loved ones, and online acquaintances
who agree with us on ethical, moral, and general ideals. Again, this is not
new. Churches are known echo chambers, some for being vicious to outsiders.
However, on an intellectual level, echo
chambers only allow us to hear one, converged viewpoint of the world. If we go
against the chamber, we run the risk of being exposed as an outsider and “run
out of town,” so to speak.
This makes thinking on an intellectual level
dangerous. As humans, we need a group that accepts us and loves us. However, we’re
not allowed by our group, our chamber, to bring up outside ideas without some
amount of fear. We are left to consider these ideas on our own. That’s hard.
Nobody has time. An outside idea is found online, the chamber rages against the
outside idea, and we gulp down another generous helping of hatred.
Hatred is the digital age’s spiked Kool-Aid, and
there are so many people drinking from their cup.
How do you feel about echo chambers? Is it real, or just mumbo jumbo? Leave your comments below.
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