I’ve long feared the fragmentation of our reality as presented by our media and devices. It’s been obvious for YEARS that if you look at a news story on Fox and then the same story on NPR you’ll get wildly disparate versions, but I’ve been looking for evidence of it in our advertisements, and this past year I feel like that’s becoming more and more obvious.
Of course, by demographic, looking at who gets served what political ads. Getting hit over the head with anti-Angela Alsobrooks ad over and over while others claimed to have never heard her name. Ads obviously geared towards black families (lots of “we need someone who’ll fight for people who look like US” language) because of our zip code but going to another friend’s house (or logging into another friend’s streaming account) and never seeing a person of colour in an ad ever.
A friend commenting on how he was shocked to see an ad for therapy, that he expected it to be a joke. Meanwhile I get FLOODED with ads for therapy and have been for at least a year. I thought that was being normalized. He seemed to think it was shocking because “no-one goes to therapy”…
I see very few posts about hate for “woke” Star Wars or Star Trek, but I see a lot of articles about the posts for hate about “woke” Star Wars and Star Trek. I’m inclined to think that media amplification of that racism is a LOT more pervasive than the racism itself, helping to promote more fear and hatred than the actual fearful and hateful racists at the root of such posts.
Hearing about how people’s social media feeds are flooded with hate and racism makes me wonder what the Hell they’re consuming that that’s what The Algorithm feeds them. I haven’t pruned THAT aggressively, and I must admit I try not to scroll endlessly, but I don’t feel that my Instagram and Facebook feeds are firehosing the same detritus that others are receiving.
I absolutely hate a lot of people, and I witness a lot of small-minded pettiness, fear, racism, stupidity, selfishness, etc – on a daily basis. But not nearly on the scale that it’s reported. I mean, Hell – how’d Trump get elected? People telling people to be afraid of things that… just don’t happen. Convincing one another that they’ve got something to fear from immigrants and the Big Horrible City. The Man and Other.
There’s plenty to fear, but … there are good people out there too.
