[2024-09-29 note: This was previously posted on Cohost, on 2022-12-08 at https://cohost.org/ireneista/post/573059-please-don-t-do-the but the irenes.space URL is the permanent one.]
if you read only one line of this post, let it be this one: before participating in a public discussion, ask yourself whether you are acting, or reacting.
even when reactive social media mobs arrive at the "right" answer to some social issue that feels very pressing and important, it's the wrong answer, because the process is wrong. the process is not one that embodies justice.
just to be more specific about how this process of, essentially, shouting people down fails to embody justice... while it is sometimes (very rarely) necessary, there is no particular reason to expect that the "winner" of it will be the party who's in the right, if anyone is even in the right at all. instead it's whoever is best at rallying popular support, which has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with right and wrong or with the issue at hand, it's more about who's charismatic and good at crafting popular appeals and convincing everyone involved that participating in the mess was their own idea.
don't participate in this stuff. it's bullshit. when we discussed this on the birdsite we stopped short of using that word, because it would have risked getting our account suspended for the appearance of incivility, but here on Cohost we hope we can call things what they are. social media reactivity storms are fucking bullshit.
if appeals to justice are not persuasive to you, we have another argument: you aren't being the teller of your own story when you do this. depending on whether any particular reactivity storm is spontaneous or not - which is usually unknowable - you're either being manipulated, or you're worshiping the whims of a random number generator. in either case, you have ceased to be the teller of your own story, you are allowing the mob to decide what questions you're answering and how you frame your thoughts on them. this is true even if you think you're reframing things thoughtfully with your words, because you're still reinforcing the storm and you can't control how your audience will connect it to whatever scraps of context they've managed to pick up.
please do not ask us what prompted this today. you know or you don't; we don't want to spread that particular topic further. it's not really about any specific incident, anyway, it's about a general social pattern that happens all the time, all over the place.
we think Cohost has created the preconditions for building a culture that is better than the web at large in this regard. we think very highly of everyone here, we really truly do. you all are thoughtful and creative and very punk, and we are super glad to be among you.
please do your best, all of you individually, to practice awareness in your public interactions, and reflect on things before you say them. if every raindrop takes responsibility, there won't be a flood. thank you.