Adam Shackell

This quote has been in my head so much over the last few months: “The rise of social media as the primary form is social interaction changed the way that we judge people. We once used to judge people mostly based on their deeds, but in the age of social media we judge people mostly based on their words and opinions because that’s really all we see of them. Since we’re defined by our opinions, there is a pressure to have an opinion on everything. Problem is, people generally don’t have the time or the will to research everything they are expected to have an opinion on, so they copy the opinions of others. And the result of this is that there are precious few original thinkers. In this way, the culture war is largely two armies of NPCs being ventriloquised by a handful of actual thinkers.” — @G_S_Bhogal It’s the first half of that which has been so impactful on me. The gap between words and actions has never been bigger. You can be the least virtuous, meanest, most dishonest human on earth, but if you say the right things on social media, the world will be unaware. No one stress tests the words coming out of most people’s mouths. Which means that appearing good becomes more important than being good. Performative empathy is more rewarded than genuine empathy. Posting about mistreated groups is more incentivised than helping mistreated groups. Words have become more important than actions, because you can tweet the words without needing to do the actions. It’s the path of least resistance for everyone. This isn’t me saying that you can’t do good whilst posting about it online. But that many (maybe even most?) of the people who proselytise about how virtuous and caring they are, and how it’s everyone else who is evil/malignant/the enemy, are allowing their morality to stand on the shoulders of limited scrutiny. Beware the people who only say good things, but don’t do good things.