That strange feeling...
That strange feeling...
Even Elon Musk admitted to experiencing the strangeness. Have you also felt it?
When you meet people in real life, they come across as “normal”. They are all working hard, worried about kids’ schools, planning holidays, dreading bosses, cribbing about crowds - normal people leading normal lives. Yes, they have their own quirks but they are all fine.
But online, you meet two raging extremes, facing each other as if it is always a match. Trump V Biden; Socialist v Capitalist; BJP v Congress or BJP V Kejriwal; Left Liberals v Right-Wingers; Pro-Life V Pro-choice; Woke V non-Woke, etc. You meet these extremes everywhere. It comes as forwards on Whatsapp, tags you on Facebook, in long threads on Twitter, and even on updates on LinkedIn. It seems the online world is insane.
And you seem too small to survive on your own, forced to join a side, assumed to be on one side. You end up self-censoring, hiding from the online hate mobs out to get you at the slightest infraction. I am sure you have felt the same too. That, my friend, is how sanity feels in an insane world.
Elon Musk recently tweeted this picture by Colin Wright:
Is that what is going on?
Yes and no! Online, the fringe opinions get amplified. A lot. These fringe opinions dominate your online streams. The Leftist opinions are amplified a lot more than right-wing opinions. Left is dominating the narrative through its position in the power centres. The internet companies are coopted by the left and hence quick to censor right-wingers. The net effect is that things appear to have moved left and fringe amplified - with the left bigger than the right.
But the centrist - they are missing.
They are not extinct. Most people, cluster around in the centre. Some a little to the left, some a little to the right. They exist, and in large numbers. If we really allow the centrists to set the narrative things will feel more like a crowded restaurant. There will be warmth and conversations. But most importantly, there will be sanity and peace. The world will look friendlier.
The way to get there is a bit weird.
It comes from the experience of de-transitioners. These formerly-trans people, mostly girls, fell into the deep end of the radical left of the online communities, taken in by hate and idealogy. They managed to get back to their real self by connecting with real people who simply interacted decently with them. In other words, the solution to online insanity is sanity!
We - the sane centrists - must own the platform and start the conversations. We must connect with people online, we must discuss like we discuss - not react but respond. We must flaunt our sanity, nudge it, demand it and only then, hope to get it.