Still thinking about this piece by @bariweiss @evepeyser. Insightful—e.g., re: how political tribes talk about each other: “It’s about shaming people. And shame, at least in my experience, doesn’t make people change their minds. It just makes them dig in.” nytimes.com/2018/12/03/opi…
“If we had met at a dinner party rather than on Twitter, would we have liked each other? ... Did we actually dislike each other, or was Twitter just making us think we did?”
“Social media has the tendency to flatten people. ... [I]t creates an environment in which the most bombastic, aggressive takes about the hot topic of the day get the most engagement.”
“[O]ffering the benefit of the doubt to another person [on social media] is a sign of cowardice, or of not being sufficiently moral.”
“The night before I had had a horrible experience with two other people .... I was shaken up by it. ... In a way, this was perfect timing for me to meet you because I allowed myself to be vulnerable and to talk about it with you.”
“Of course, we have to acknowledge that we are privileged enough to be able to have this sort of discourse, to be friends despite our differing beliefs. Not everyone has that option.”
“The odd thing about social media is that it’s made me emotionally immune to the worst abuse — an anti-Semitic misogynist threat doesn’t get to me in the same way someone who agrees with me 90 percent of the time insulting me does.”
“I always go back to what Freud called ‘the narcissism of minor differences,’ a theory that asserts that closely related groups of people engage ‘in constant feuds and in ridiculing each other’ to satisfy aggressive impulses and strengthen the bonds within the opposing factions.”
“I reject the idea that by virtue of being friends with you, I am somehow condoning the beliefs you have that I disagree with.”
“I think the animating impulse of our era, certainly politically, is destruction. ... [D]oesn’t it seem that the organizations and the people who get the most attention are destructive? Outrage and negativity are the most ‘engaging,’ and so that’s what we’re fed.”
