Rewarding the Bully. I have been trying to capture what is broken in our society and also in our social platforms right now and I think it comes down to this. So many of our systems right now are wired to reward the bully.
Our social platforms celebrate the bully. The bully gets engagement. The bully gets replies who cheer them on, or try to debate. The bully gets amplified. It is one tap away to reply and be a bully yourself. The platform sees the engagement and makes bullies more famous.
When you are on the same side as a bully you might even feel good. Feel protected. Until the bully turns on you. Society, our media, our social platforms all reward the bully. When you are on the same side, you are rewarded too. Until you arent. Then you feel it. It’s too late.
This desire for Facebook, for Zuckerburg to stand up to the bully is because we want someone who has the power to do that.
When I was bullied as a kid, the advice I kept getting was just “ignore the bully, then they will go away”. But gosh that’s hard. And it’s super hard when the bully is constantly goading you, and is rewarded by everyone else.
The counter advice is to “fight back”. But that’s hard too. It’s hard to outwit a fast thinking mean bully who spends all their time every day practicing and perfecting how to be a bully. (We elected someone with a lifetime of training)
But we have to rise up. To unite around the bully. To stop being goaded into responding and discussing and amplifying
And we need to demand real change from our social platforms. They need to stop rewarding the bully. Stop rewarding “engagement” that is vitriolic instead of uniting
Imagine a social platform that had an “ignore this” button. Not a “block” (that is active) but “ignore”. What a signal. Use that signal and the platform can ignore the noise. Not amplify it. Not let the bully get rewarded.
And we need to change the language we use. Let’s call a bully a bully. When they troll someone, when they are being vindictive, or when a policeman is choking someone already handcuffed (George Floyd) or punching an unarmed protestor
We need to reject the bully. No more reward the bully. We need to reward the Uniters and celebrate that and only that.
