IRONY
And God spake unto Hymie Cohen in response to his prayer to win the Lotto: “Hymie,” sayeth The Lord, “….meet Me half-way - buy a ticket….”
Irony
Yeah, it may be true, as some would aver, it’s somewhat ironic that people who claim to dissent against the system, technology etc. use that selfsame system to air their grievances.
Ironic? Amusing? Hypocritical perhaps?
I’m not so sure.
Facebook, for all its censorship, proven allegiance with the 3-letter government agencies etc. still provides a streamlined access in a workable format to post whatever it may be you wish to post whether it be the soccer club social feedback or vitriolic outpouring on the Gaza situation.
I think however, it behooves one simply to be cognisant of the inbuilt shortcomings of the platform - the shadow banning, the ghosting, the reduced exposure, the outright censorship when certain words, keyphrases or opinions are flagged by the bots and your supposed dissidence is diluted in accordance with the algorithmic parameters defined by Meta and its collaborators and you have no real way of knowing to what degree that is happening in the background unless they actually send you a notification.
It’s the game. We know it. And it’s an educated choice if we elect to play it even when we know the odds are stacked against us.
Besides, we know the innate laziness of the average social media browser addict. Their scrolling is usually confined to scanning posts as they whir past on the screen with a brief scrutiny should something pique an interest - rarely however, will this browser click a link to the full article on Substack to digest the detail and the nuanced narrative the author may be proffering.
The Facebook bots are the same. They won’t be linking out to the Substack (where most independent journalists who embrace the concept of uncensored content post their writing) and for the most part, unless you’re a John Rappoport or a Sharyl Attkisson or a Matt Taibbi - the average aspiring Substacker’s posts will go unread by the social media browser.
But does that mean dissidents shouldn’t be posting on Facebook or Twitter / X or whatever other social media outlet to which they may be subscribed? No. The reach is the reach and anyone posting on these platforms has to know the nature of the algorithmic dynamic governing this tech and work within that framework accordingly.
What social media also encourages is a collective ability to engage in discourse, debate and opinion sharing when, of course, the author permits that dynamic in their content. One also, however, retains the power to limit commentary, shadow ban people, prevent any commentary on a post which perhaps begs the question - why?
Why put something out there as a position - ostensibly YOUR position, if you’re not prepared to engage over it? Must one then assume the author brooks no debate and is offering empirical factuality or that they simply cannot summon up the wherewithal to defend or expand upon a position?
There’s rarely a topic these days that’s cut and dried, black and white, unassailably unarguable and, let’s be honest, one of the most common herd-driven strategies adopted is that of confirmation bias. We’ve arrived at opinions, are comfortable with them, haven’t necessarily explored all options out there and when confronted with contrary opinions, simply find confirmatory “evidence ” to support our stance rather than deep diving into the contrary arguments and sources. To some degree or other, I think we’re all guilty of this. It seems we’re hard-wired that way or got there through parental, pedagogic or peer driven enforcement, oftentimes the product of populism rather than deeply and individually objectively researched endeavour.
And when you discover a different potential position that contradicts that populism, the accepted paradigm, and you swing to adopting the alternative stance, that’s when the real trouble starts. Going against the herd mentality even when you have proven it to be the correct choice, is a tough gig. People will resort to just about anything to defend the conventional position especially when the cognitive dissonance kicks in and compartmentalises the conflicting ideas. No matter how compelling an argument, even when replete with supporting evidence, if it flies in the face of your entrenched beliefs and falls outside of the accepted paradigm, it has to be rejected. The solidarity of the herd depends on it. Even when something deep down inside of you knows it to be wrong.
Circle the wagons, kill the infidel. We must rally together to defend this narrative at any cost as it protects the herd.
Or does it?
If one does a proper deep-dive analysis of what transpired in the last 3 ½ years, it turns out that the best way to have protected the herd was to have embraced the dissident narrative from the get-go. That would have saved millions of lives.
But it would have been way less profitable.
But to return to the point - I see no cynicism or hypocrisy in being critical of something using the agency of that “thing” to do so.
It’s like saying we cannot be critical of our employers using the suggestion box at the office Reception. Or we cannot criticise elected officials because we got them elected.
Utilising systems and technology to share ideas and criticism (opinions) of those selfsame things is akin to working the system from within but it’s certainly not guaranteed to change things which is the crux of this biscuit - the systems, the beliefs and the current paradigms, certainly in western culture, do, in my view, need a serious shake up. Systems, not governments, need to change.
And if anyone still believes the global militarised response to the Covid shitshow was a successful and repeatable one, regardless of your position on vaccines and viruses, then I have to say we exist in very different realities.
And I’m still prepared to have a civilised debate about that topic or any other for that matter, without resorting to ad-hominem strategies.
But for that, we have to permit other people to comment on our throwaway pronouncements.