November was a tough month to be online. I can’t count how many times I heard (or saw posted on social media) that people were just about ready to chuck the whole thing, to unplug, unfriend and unfollow. Every ugly or divisive incident, from terrorist attacks in Paris to U.S. governors’ war on Syrian refugees to college student protests against racism on campus occasioned bitter and cynical arguments. Feelings were hurt. Relationships severed.
People have been arguing on the Internet since there was an Internet. But this was worse. Everyone felt it. For whatever reason, it seemed like the time for curiosity and debate had passed. The time for ranting was at hand.
I almost reached a breaking point myself. And then I was rescued. I was nearly convinced that social media and 24-hour news TV and websites like Salon and the Huffington Post, all churning out endless angry hot takes, would soon overwhelm the Web with negativity and disagreement. And then in an unexpected place I found reason to hope again that there are indeed people out there who want to talk about issues, who are willing to listen and learn.
The nuttiness began for me last month with the French flags on Facebook. If you hadn’t heard, Facebook gave users an option to temporarily alter their profile photos to display the colors of the French flag after the Nov. 13 terrorist attacks that left 130 dead in Paris. Many users made the temporary switch, while expressing sympathy for the victims and their families.
Not long after, op-eds appeared, full of fury for Facebook’s French flags: they were just one more case of imperialist oppression. When a Russian airliner was bombed on Oct. 31, when 40 people were killed in ISIS attacks in Beirut just the day before Paris, where were Facebook’s Russian and Lebanese flags? Facebook was a megacorporation telling its users who deserved their sympathy: America’s political allies. And anyone who posted their sympathy was party to the oppression.
These op-eds, which were often full of anger, were well shared on social media, enraging millions. As is often the case when people get defensive on Facebook and Twitter, the arguments were personal, nasty and everywhere. Whether we were part of the conversation or not, if our friends were posting about it, we got dragged in. And often, we learned things about our friends that we didn’t ask to know.
Here’s the thing about the flags: they are truly worthy of serious reflection and debate. If only we would actually debate, rather than rant, taunt and accuse, we might learn something. We might even change our minds.
Later in the month, Princeton students staged a 32-hour sit-in in office of university president Christopher Eisgruber, demanding that one-time P.U. president Woodrow Wilson’s name be removed from campus because while at Princeton and in the White House, he instituted racist and segregationist policies.
The idea of “unpersoning” someone like Wilson because times have changed is unsettling to many, including me. But Wilson’s place in history must be examined, discussed. Eisgruber didn’t accede to the students’ demands to disassociate the university from Wilson, but he didn’t deny the racism charges either. Even so, observers in social media largely preferred to give Wilson a pass, focusing instead on the “spoiled,” “insulated” student protesters who were making everyone uncomfortable with their notions of 21st-century social justice.
During the Princeton sit-in I read an op-ed in the student newspaper in which a sophomore wrote that she didn’t want to see Wilson’s name stricken from the record as if he had never existed, but she wanted to see people on campus reflecting on what it means that a former U.S. president could act as Wilson did. It was thoughtful and well expressed.
With trepidation, I read the reader comments to the story. Everyone knows that comment sections are where you’ll find the most outrageously expressed points of view. Rather than vitriol, though, I found calls for students to come together, to learn more about how university policies or traditions, long unexamined, might be worth a review. I found reasonableness. In a moment when I was contemplating the Internet’s downward spiral, I found something that restored my hope. At least for the moment.
The Internet will wear you down if you passively endure the barrage of negativity that attends every major news story. It’s important to remember that there is always another side, a cool take. Reasonable people would never reason that they are the only reasonable people in the world. It’s worth remembering that the next time Facebook and Twitter seem to be trying to drive you crazy — and succeeding.
