Social Media Silver Lining

essaysbysean.blogspot.com 

Hello Reader,

Got a silver lining to the covid-19 social media?

I was amused by the failure of nerve by the National Post. One full-page spread after another—and it went on for quite a few pages—had blue headlines at the top. Labeled Myth on the left page, and Fact on the right. This was a needed public service, but… —my mirth was from the National Post not daring to have the left side headline as Social Media Myth.

Because let’s face it, when someone tells you a myth, in person or on the telephone, they nearly always got it from social media. “My uncle Tom knows a guy, who knows a guy, who forwarded onto social media something he interpreted from the Web.” Misinterpreted, that is.

Who are these social media forwarders and believers? As it happens, I subscribe to a weekly email from famous blogger Mark Manson. On Monday he posted about how he published two nearly identical posts, exactly one week apart. The first one was well received. The later one resulted in all sorts of hysterical hatred and scorn. Why the difference? Manson has several theories, which might be phrased, in composite, as this: The Internet users were the sort of idiots who were slow to wake up to the virus that was already being reported on responsible channels. Here’s the link to Manson’s scathing “3. A tale of two emails.”.

Idiots, indeed. Over in South Korea some folks passed around a water bottle laced with household ingredients that would make it virus proof. In fact, they all got covid-19 from the same bottle. Did they get the idea of a safe water from social media? I don’t know, but such is the sort of thinking I would expect from social media lovers. Call it “being innocent of the need for common sense critical thinking.” Or call it stupidity.

Recently an acquaintance earnestly told me, over the phone, about something important she had just learned from social media. About how having a drink every 15 minutes would make you safe from the corona virus. You ask: Did I pour cold water on the idea? To my acquaintance, who maybe doesn’t have a high school diploma, did I talk down sternly from my mighty university degree in critical thinking? No-o-o.

Because a few years ago I did a thought experiment: Consider two young men. One fellow, full of idealism for saving the planet, has a non-union low-wage factory job. The other, even lower waged, and with less idealism, is employed at the local campus as a graduate student and teaching assistant. Which one saves the planet by using a ten-speed bicycle? I picture the bike rider as being the grad student, I bet you did too.

To me the difference between the two is not not knowledge of ecology, and not I.Q, but “knowledge” nevertheless, in the sense that “knowledge is power.” We all want a sense of power, of agency, and of control over our lives. "If I don’t feel power from knowledge then I’ll seek power from a fine set of wheels." Feel free to disagree, as I suppose I’m oversimplifying. Meanwhile, “they say” the panic buyers who valued toilet paper over the conventional “food and ammunition,” besides being too scared to think straight, were seeking a small sense of control in the midst of chaos. 

It seems to me that a person who has trouble with, say, science articles, or those traditional newspapers with “journalism ethics,” is going to fight against that nervous tornado of facts-hard-to-grasp by resorting to “power from social media.” And that’s why I didn’t have the heart to squelch my friend directly, but instead indirectly referred to my faith in fact-based journalism.

So where are we today? 

With all the distasteful tales whizzing around within social media, with many horrible lies needing long articles to refute them, with horrors needing a doctor on CBC radio to refute many myths at length, is there also, during this dark storm cloud, a sliver lining? As compensation, dare we hope? Has humankind, at long last, learned not to believe in social media? …

Nope. No silver lining. Not as long as people’s needs are not met by traditional media.

The good news, judging by the wimping out of the National Post, is that readers of social media can overlap with readers of ethical media. Maybe the readers of social media are both unknowing, and knowing too. In which case social media is more something to be ignored and kept in perspective, than something seen as a harbinger of social decent into barbarism. And maybe those of us with a sense of responsibility are just going to have to quietly live with the believers of social media. Like how during the blogging frenzy—remember?—folks with library cards (as noted by Neal Stephenson) were ignored by our new improved digital society, and in turn they ignored society’s practise of dull skimming and superficial soundbites, preferring instead to just quietly kept meeting with each other to have those deep conversations they loved, which society ignored. 

How many years did it take, in the time of our great-grandparents, to know that not all stuff in print is true? I think it will take us, in our own time, just as many years before we finally will say, “Just because my stupid brother-in-law forwarded it, does not mean it is true.” May God grant me patience and understanding.

If someone blindly believes in social media, or blindly distrusts journalism ethics, then it might help me to “chill out” if I remember: Some people—judging by their actions—also believe in gossip that morphs, instead of honest unchanging facts; some people won’t make the effort needed for ethics, any more than they will strive to become ladies or gentlemen. In the end, some people will make my blond aunt very nervous because they forward without forethought.. All this while peach fuzzed cub reporters are proud to be “gentlemen of the press.”

It’s been decades since I walked as a volunteer student newspaper reporter at university, yet I still check myself when I speak or write on the Web. With all due respect to social media folks, being a gentleman has become a way of life.

Sean Crawford

Dutifully stuck at home

In a plaster-walled wee cabin at the old city limits

2020 

Update: The BBC has an article, complete with a picture of the corona, about how to stop bad information from going viral.

Another Update: The government has just started up a rapid response unit. Sounds serious. Real serious. Is it serious enough to shake people's faith in social media? Not if my thesis in the above essay is correct. Sorry.

Footnotes: 

~What is a lady? I used to often say to my client Sheila-Ann, “Everybody likes you.” Gracious, thoughtful of others, never swearing, and ever polite. I noticed: Tough Handi-Bus drivers wearing rough work gloves would become smiling gentlemen around her. Now, that’s a lady.

~I documented fake news being a communist plot—er, I mean, a Russian plot, in the Part 2, Pax, to my essay Russian Trolls Meet Social Media archived December 2019.

~Three comprehensive posts defining three aspects of journalism ethics are archived in March and April of 2018.

~Of course the frenzied folks who skim sound-bites won’t have the patience to go over to my archives, and that’s OK. Better for them to stay away completely than to click an all-to-easy-link to a post intended for patient lovers of print.