I think this is nothing new for most of us, but nuance has left the building. We no longer have conversations that are open for interpretation. We either want our own biases positively confirmed in ways that validate us, or we want to be enraged by the sheer stupidity and irrationality of the people who think differently than us. This erosion of nuance is visible and we can see who is capturing and taking advantage of this phenomenon.
It is funny how this entire debate began. It had nothing to do with politics. It started off with a friend of mine telling me about an Instagram reel she had recently seen regarding the emotional asymmetry some lesbians experience when dating bisexual women. The argument of this video was that since most women are socialized as straight and carry the biggest mental load in a heterosexual relationship, they do not tend to engage as deeply with their male partners. When they start dating other women (in this case, mostly lesbians with experience dating women), it leads to an asymmetry in how they handle emotional burdens compared to dating men.
Afterward, this evolved into a very nuanced debate. We agreed on the main argument that there has to be a learning period when someone dates a new gender for the first time. But at the same time, we both found a dangerous side to this logic. If taken at face value without any nuance, you might reach the conclusion that lesbians should NOT date bi-women because of their past experiences with men. This opens the door to some very biphobic and discriminatory conversations. That does not even touch on the transphobia within queer communities, but that was a whole other slew of voice messages.
Slowly but surely, our conversation veered off from lesbians and bisexual women. We started being grateful just to have a space to talk in depth with a friend about these topics. We questioned and reflected not only on whether we agreed on these things, but also on the medium in which they were being discussed. Due to the shortness of these videos, there is rarely space for nuanced conversations or analysing issues from multiple perspectives. That got me thinking about a wonderful book I read a few years ago.
It was called 10 Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now by Jaron Lanier, the father of VR and a white dude with dreads who plays some wicked music. In his book, Lanier explains how social media companies are in reality social engineering vessels, or as he likes to call them, behaviour modification companies. He wrote this back in 2018. They have poured billions into hiring the smartest people. Through decades of trial and error, and with billions upon billions of data points feeding into the most advanced technological engines of information processing and machine learning, they have created peak-optimized tools for selling ad space and keeping people glued to their phones.
This led us down the pathway of talking about the influence social media has had on our democracies. Of course, we can see the trends over the last few decades of how "the middle" in politics has been completely erased. We are living digital lives on social media platforms optimized for ENGAGEMENT. They are not built for us to have civil discussions, concede our points, or learn from other people’s perspectives. Oh hell no. We live in a world of ENGAGEMENT. Thanks to the most brilliant psychologists, sociologists, economists, and computer scientists hired to optimize their platforms, these companies have discovered that the best way to algorithmically keep us glued is by triggering our most basic emotions like anger, vindication, and frustration.
We can see that in how most of the content we receive is targeted to validate our biases. We are bombarded by the idea that people who are different than us are the enemy, or they are just plain dumb, or they are wrong. In the most vile cases, they are portrayed as a parasite that needs to be removed from our nation or our society by any means necessary. Which pretty much
The alt-right pipeline
I think this makes for an interesting argument as to why alt-right content and narratives seem to be winning in the "marketplace of ideas" (God, I hate that term because it is so flawed and abused by hateful people trying to justify their horrible takes). For me, it seems like the reason the alt-right has a stronger chokehold is that they are not playing for optics. They are playing to win. At the end of the day, there is no moral superiority needed if you get results. If the ends justify the means, who cares about voter fraud, lying to the electorate, and creating cults of personality? Who cares if you align with and receive funding from outside influences as long as it keeps the wheels turning?
There is a clear alignment in the best interests of social media companies and their shareholders for these views to dominate. These narratives will not lead to an increase in regulations that restrict these tech companies and their operations. By the nature of their pro-capitalist economic ideology, the right and the far right are very much in favor of private enterprise running amok regardless of the repercussions, as long as it doesn’t affect them directly. Meanwhile, more left-aligned narratives and opinions represent actual threats to the bottom line of these companies.
This alignment isn’t some abstract conspiracy theory I’ve seen it first-hand. For a brief stint, I kind of worked as a freelance policy writer for a tech think tank1. My very first assignment was to write an article arguing that Germany’s strict data privacy and speech laws were unfairly hindering the far-right AfD party(also lowballing their far right perspective and completely ignoring any relationship to Germany’s past) . In reality, these politicians were facing criminal investigations and penalties because they were echoing literal Nazi talking points.
This think tank which is not so quietly funded by giants like Meta, Google, TikTok, and Amazon to act as their loyal hounds in the halls of power in Brasília, wanted me to argue that Brazil should avoid copying Germany and instead let “free speech” run amok. The darkest irony of their request? They were pushing this unregulated free-speech narrative just a year after Bolsonaro’s failed coup attempt and the horrors of the aftermath of the banana republic version of the MAGA Jan 6th fiasco.
The grimdark future
What are we to do in the face of these challenges? Honestly, I think the trick is to step out into the real world. We need to start building physical communities, talking with others, and engaging with both friends and strangers outside of the digital realm.
Slowly but surely, we are witnessing the death of the internet as we know it. It is getting flooded by synthetic content and automated operators running amok online, far beyond what we are already seeing today. These forces will have deeper and deeper effects on us as societies and on our democracies. The tools for human behavior manipulation are only getting better and faster. In my opinion, the only way to build resilience against them is to actually be out there in the physical world.
There are possibilities for a much better future. But we have to do the work if we want to see the results, and we have to be willing to get uncomfortable while doing it. I know that sounds like the biggest hypocrisy as I write this from the comfort of my own living room. So please, call me out on my bullshit. Invite me to a political rally. Let’s grab a coffee and actually debate politics face to face. I am always open for that if you ask nicely.
Just to be fully transparent I was also very lazy on this because I didn’t felt like writing something defending the AfD, so after procrastinating a few days they never contacted me again, nor was there any attempt to continue with other pieces of work nor did I ever got paid for the drafts I wrote but yeah… life’s weird sometimes