Blooming and Dooming
How to be Online This Election Season
The election is 85 days away. For many of us, that means 85 days of intense screentime.
If we are using social media, how should we do so?
We should help other people to bloom.Â
We should introduce them to helpful ideas. We should provide them with specific offline actions they can take. We should encourage and affirm. And we should recall always that the election can only be won by votes.
And we should be aware of those who doom.Â
We should know the tricks of the trade of the bots and trolls who try to distress us. They have only one goal. The trolls and the bots' creators want us not to take action, and so they try to find ways to make us feel bad.
It really is as simple as that. The algorithms, and the people who have been educated by algorithms, aim for depression. They do certain very predictable things. They call names, they make vulgar references, they make outrageous claims, they trivialize the meaningful. That's pretty much the repertoire.
None of this is done in order to convince. It is only done to deflate. It is there to break the chain between action in the online world and action in the offline world. It is there to keep us online, while making us depressed.
The Russians were pioneers of this, and they are still at it. It has become harder and harder to distinguish Russians from MAGA on line, and for the purposes of this election it does not really matter. They are doing the same things for the same purpose. Much of MAGA has been educated by Russian bots, such that their own online (and even offline) behavior simply imitates demotivational algorithms.Â
JD Vance is the central example of this. Sponsored by tech broligarchs, he behaves irl like a fleshy algorithm. He follows Kamala Harris around much as the comments section follows a cheerful tweet.
It is possible to fight the doomers, of course. In the current Ukraine war, an anarchical collective called NAFO has done a good job making fun of Russian and Russian-aligned propagandists. And there are some excellent American wits doing the same kind of work.
But for most of us, the assignment is simple. Recognize the doomers, and ignore them. Most of them are not human, most of the humans are not American, and none of them care. They are like a pothole in the road: there is no point reasoning with them. Just keep moving along, doing your thing.
And your thing should be to help others to bloom, by acting offline. And, of course, we should act offline ourselves. More about that in posts to come.
Joy is a revolutionary act.
— Joan Halifax
"It is possible to fight the doomers, of course. In the current Ukraine war, an anarchical collective called NAFO has done a good job making fun of Russian and Russian-aligned propagandists. And there are some excellent American wits doing the same kind of work."
Yes, the Polish public broadcasting outfit TVP World does an excellent job on YouTube of using Russian propagandists' words against them by selectively showing their most over-the-top statements with a clown's nose superimposed on their faces.
It seems to me ridicule is perhaps one of the best ways to disarm disinformation. It’s the most effective debunking of disinformation I’ve seen because it does not take what they say seriously, thus lending them credibility as if their statements were worthy of a serious, adult, logical reply.
And it's better than ignoring them at the risk of letting their statements go unchallenged, which does not work either. Laughing at them like they’re immature children destroys their credibility!
I worked for a U.S. Senator for 8 years, and one thing I learned was how effective humor is in political discourse. When used effectively, humor trumps logic, is more accessible, and memorable.
One clever skit by Alec Baldwin making fun of Trump is so much more effective than exposing Trump's 20,000th lie in a traditional lengthy article of dry text. Humor is viral on social media.
I would love to hear Dr. Snyder's thoughts on this! Has satire been effective in the past? Thanks.