I know, I know. That's almost as irritating as the old saw about hearing the tree fall in the forest if no one is around to hear it. But I do wonder if we're entering a time where the only opinions which matter will be those held by people willing to risk something for their beliefs.
Here's my reasoning: Thanks to Twitter, Facebook, and other social media outlets, we are constantly surrounded by people venting their opinions. If we agree with said opinions, we post our glowing support. If we disagree, we post an angry rebuttal. The result is the internets constantly getting riled up over some idea or injustice and the resulting emotional response spreading through comments and posts and tweets. With really good opinion fodder, the reaction might even jump off the nets into the fertile crap-ground of cable news and newsprint. There the opinion-fest grows for a few days before decaying back to nothing.
And in the end, what has changed? Most of the time, the answer is nothing. Because inaction thrives in an instant-response world where we don't risk anything by stating our opinions.
I began contemplating this topic after writing a recent post about the BP oil spill. During that trip to Alabama I'd been outraged at witnessing how the oil spill was destroying an environment I deeply loved. However, a funny thing happened after I wrote about my experiences--suddenly I was able to literally release the anger from my mind. Expressing an opinion gave vent to the emotions fueling my need to express the opinion. If I'd wanted, I could have easily moved on, content at having spoken my mind, never mind that speaking my mind did little to change the problem of the oil spill.
My reaction to this experience fascinated me, even more so after I read Lloyd Nimetz's essay Information Overload, Action Deficit. Nimetz argues that in our social media saturated world we process tons of information--and generate equal amounts of emotional responses--even though our ability to act on these stimuli is limited. Here's the killer quote:
"You care, but you don't act. It's ok. You're not alone. Acting requires a lot of effort usually with little perceived impact.The key is that you're not any better equipped to take action than you were 10 years ago. Where’s the progress? Change requires action ..."
In his essay, Nimetz states that "action is the next big thing to get changed by the Internet." He believes that the ability to change the world is the next incarnation of social media. That in the future we won't simply grow angry and vent online--we'll have the ability to fix the injustices of the world with the click of a virtual button.
Perhaps. But I'm suspicious about this rosy social media future because it overlooks a vital part of influencing change through one's opinion: Risk.
In the mundane world where we must physically deal with being around each other, what makes us actually change our minds about something? Likewise, what makes a person stick with an opinion in the face of overwhelming hostility? While a few people respond to logical appeals, for most of humanity changing an opinion--or acting on an opinion until it changes the world--boils down to our emotional response to risk.
The emotions I refer to are tied in with the relationships we create between each of us. These bonds nurture us as humans; without them, we're literally not human. And this is where risk exists in stating an opinion. When we read an opinion online which differs from our own, there's little risk to the relationship between the person giving the opinion and the person receiving it. As a result, people scream and yell over opinions before moving on to the next virtual fight. And in the end, nothing risked, nothing gained.
But when a friend or family member stands before you and says they disagree with one of your core beliefs, your emotional response differs. Because of the relationship and bond between the two of you--and the fact that your friend or family member is risking your relationship by expressing a difference of opinion--you consider their words differently than those of an online stranger. This reaction also carries over to people who aren't friends and family. When you meet a stranger in person and they express a differing opinion, the personal dynamic makes you more likely to listen than to some online stranger.
This dynamic also applies to the person stating the opinion. When you risk something by acting on your opinion, you are more likely to continue to push that opinion into the world. For example, during the Civil Rights Movement the jailing of protesters like the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. didn't weaken the movement. Instead, it strengthened them. The more the protesters risked, the more they were willing to risk to change the world. And the more they risked, the more others came around to their view of the righteousness of ending segregation.
To express a difference of opinion in person always carries risk. To act on an opinion carries even more risk. And how people accept and deal with those risks creates the only true change in our world.
And it is this risk, I fear, which is missing from stating an opinion in the virtual world.
This isn't to put down the recent social media explosion. One of the great aspects of social media is it brings a semblance of real-life personal dynamics into the virtual world. We friend each other on Facebook. We follow people on Twitter. And if a friend is willing to risk that virtual friendship with an opinion we disagree with, we may be more likely to listen and reconsider our beliefs.
But it is equally likely we'll simply unfriend them and move on.
It can also be risky to state an opinion through social media and the internet. Everyday we read about people losing their jobs or livelihoods for stating an opinion online. But these instances are frequently mistakes, where the person stating the opinion didn't realize there would be real-world consequences for their online words or actions. That is also why so many people online prefer anonymity, and why on many sites avatars and pseudonyms are far more popular than real names. That way we aren't truly risking anything by stating our opinions.
I have never before agreed with Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, but his recent concurrence in the Washington ballot case made me stand up and cheer. In a ruling stating that people signing petitions did not have a right to anonymity, he said "Requiring people to stand up in public for their political acts fosters civic courage, without which democracy is doomed."
Despite what people like Lloyd Nimetz may believe, social media and the internet won't be a force for true change until they tie in more with the risk of living in the real world. We saw a foretaste of what's to come in how social media helped the recent Green protests in Iran. Social media aided the protests and helped them gain strength, but in the end the protesters had to actually risk their lives to try and create change. While the protests were beaten back in the short term by the Iranian government, their possible long-term success rests on the blood the protesters spilled, and their belief that creating a better world was worth taking a risk.
So where does all this go in the coming years?
There are currently 6.5 billion people in the world. As more and more of them come online, I predict we will see an ever greater explosion of opinions. In one way this is great. After all, making information more available to the world can only be a force for good. But the flip side to this are billions of people screaming their opinions without the ability to actually change someone's mind. Screaming their opinions without the need to act on their opinions.
Perhaps technology will change this. As more people realize that no one is truly anonymous online, and as new technologies make tying a person's real-world face to their online persona easy, perhaps stating opinions online will take on the same risk as in the physical world. Or equally likely, perhaps having billions of people stating opinions will overwhelm any sense of risk, and make stating your views as easy--and as inconsequential--as blowing your nose.
Either way, I suspect that even with social media advances, true change will continue to result from the small subset of the population who are actually willing to risk something to remake the world. And perhaps this is how it has always been, with a few people creating the change we all benefit from. With those willing to act on their opinions creating the world we all end up living in.
I think the strength of social media is the fact that it's instant. We saw the benefits of that in Iran, as you say, and later in Pittsburgh at the G20 protests there (two men were Twittering the police movements to protesters so they could avoid the draconian law enforcement).
Then there's places like Kickstarter whose causes thrive on being passed around the social networks, but require you to put your money where you mouth is. $10 isn't much to put towards a cause you believe in, but a lot of $10 donations make all the difference...
As for changing people's opinions, I think the same rules apply online as they do offline. You're far more likely to listen and seriously consider the opinion of a friend or someone you trust over a stranger, and you're far more likely to consider a well-considered opinion over someone repeating a couple of talking points in a loud voice.
I don't think stating an opinion is about making an immediate physical change in the world. I mean, take the oil spill. We all agree it's a tragedy, but it's been going on for ages now and most of us will never see it, and have never seen the area of the country in question. It's easy for us to dismiss it and ignore it as old news. So it slips off the radar, people stop caring and in ten years time, it happens again. Writing personal accounts, like you did, keep it in people's minds and give them an emotional connection to it. So we keep putting pressure on BP until they clean it up and then put pressure on the government to make sure it doesn't happen again. It's very hard to change the present, but we can influence the future.
In the end, it's about making people care. If people don't care about you, they're not going to care so much about what you're risking and so you have to risk more (like being beaten up by police or thrown in jail). If you can make people care with words, then that's cool too. It works.
Posted by: Dylan Fox | July 23, 2010 at 01:13 AM
Dylan: Excellent points. You are totally correct that when people care about someone they'll go the extra mile to help them. And you are also right that it can be difficult to change the present, with change happening incredibly slowly most of the time. However, change can also happen in quick explosions when the moment is right. Slow most of the time, but incredibly quick if circumstances warrant.
BTW, Alexandra Samuel wrote a fascinating post in response to this one at
http://www.alexandrasamuel.com/20100723/the-risks-of-risk-management. I suggest people check it out.
Posted by: Jason Sanford | July 23, 2010 at 06:10 PM
I think the strength of social media is the fact that it's instant. We saw the benefits of that in Iran, as you say, and later in Pittsburgh at the G20 protests there (two men were Twittering the police movements to protesters so they could avoid the draconian law enforcement)
^ I completely agree with you Dylan. Without the use of real-time social media at the G20 demonstrations in Pittsburgh, a lot of innocent people might have been unnecessarily arrested by the oppressive law enforcement presence there. 10,000 police to 1,000 protesters is a little overkill, considering the minimal amount of damage the city sustained during the protests versus the various significant messages represented by those who came.
Since I was one of those demonstrators - speaking up against the American police state, ironically - I really appreciated (and still do) that people went out of their way to spread information that kept us safe.
Posted by: Kellye Parish | July 26, 2010 at 11:21 AM
Jason:
Cosmoetica is, to my knowledge, the most visited website in the world run by a single person with no ties to a major media outlet. In a month or two I'll have had over 200 million visitors and over 10 billion hits on my 1500+ pages.
More people read it, in a day, than all but the top 25-30 US magazines. Roger Ebert praised it, it's been noted in a number of media locations, but it really has not helped me get published or get an audience motivated the way the few 100 copies of Whitman's Leaves Of Grass did 150 years ago.
Yet I reach more people and a far higher % of the world population.
Why?
People are social creatures. They buzz and drone like bees, and the Internet is the biggest hive imaginable. Look at all the losers on Wikipedia who spend 18+ hours a day doing nothing but edit warring, contributing nothing. Look at the 100s of comments on Ebert's thread about me where only 12-15 people say anything of remote intelligence. Look at all the 1000s of MFAs cranked out every year to people with ZERO writing talent, who flood the print and job markets.
Yes, in the long run the Internet will be the thing that raises me and a handful of other writers to readerships long after death, but it also dooms the masses to White Noise unexperienced in human history before. Every ignorant opinion- from the noxious racists to the plain old dumb ass sciolist to the sex obsessed porno addict is presented. I recently applied for a blog spot on Huffington Post, and have yet to hear. Maybe they don't want intelligent writing (although their Arts page consists now of Ads for gallr shows and 2 paragraph rants on 'safe' subjects), or just as likely there are 1000 other idiots clogging up the pipeline so that my submission hasn't even been seen.
And who loses? The reader searching for quality. far more so than even me.
Yesterday, before work, I saw the Bonnie Hunt TV show, and she interviewed this guy named Ken Robinson, who wrote a book on the education system. Naturally he ripped it, and made some good points, but he persisted with the patently wrong assertion that everyone has real talent, i.e.- notable talents. Yes, I agree that A may be good at checkers and B good at knitting, and C can whistle through his left nostril. But none of these are talents of significance. Most human beings are dull, dumb, and actually satisfied with such. I work at a supermarket, and I always get fat women wanting certain 'healthy' yogurts, thinking drinking it will make them look like Jennifer Aniston or Halle Berry, yet they ask while riding in motor carts because they are too obese to walk and their carts are still filled with Pepsi, chips, frozen pizza, and all other junk food.
And they are serious in thinking a healthy yogurt or Diet Coke is the answer.
The Internet became the vast wasteland in a time it took TV over 20 years to get to, and Twitter is the worst example because now people can literally fart their opinions. Yes, everyone can fart, just like everyone has an asshole and talent in a meager way.
But discerning the real and significant talent and opinions eludes all but a few of us, which is why we have the Congress and President we have, which is why we're in 2 wars we are losing, which is why the BP spill happened, and on and on.
Societally, we do not reward and encourage excellence. We shun it, whether it's evolution, homosexuality, abortion, or any other relatively simple issue. It's demagogued and real reason is drowned out. And, then, many folks of intellect and reason refuse to opine in public, as they are scared to take a stance. I've done some great and landmark interviews, but for every one of them there are 20 non-interviews by folks unwilling to answer real deep q's, and/or go on record with them.
I average 25-50k readers on a given day, but most of them are poor, artists wannabe, with little motivation to make real art much less change the world. Their own solipsistic existences are what they are. I can only offer good advice, but if they ignore it, out of ignorance or being drowned in a din of idiocy, so be it.
It's why we are still in a society where it takes decades to afford one's own roof over one's head and not trolling between the stars, discovering the cosmic joys that might reach deeper into even the most stolid political blog commenter.
DAN
Posted by: Dan Schneider | July 27, 2010 at 08:47 AM