Social Media Mobs
We can all do better
"burning torches 1" by robizumi is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0
Dorian Abbot, a geophysics professor, was asked to give the John Carlson Lecture on climate change at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) last year. However, a group of Twitter users asked MIT to cancel the talk. The reason had nothing to do with climate change - the subject of his talk - but was instead because of an article he had co-authored where he argued that university appointments should be based on merit instead of diversity criteria. The pushback got so intense that MIT cancelled the talk.
The case is particularly notorious. While you might well disagree with Abbot’s views, nobody would suggest that he is a fascist or a monster. His article was published in a mainstream magazine and his views are in line with those of many members of the public.
Although “woke” progressives can be a little trigger-happy when it comes to cancelling people, we should be wary of right-wing pundits who claim that cancel culture is exclusively a left-wing phenomena. Do you remember conservatives trying to cancel the Dixie Chicks after the invasion of Iraq? Or Joseph McCarthy blacklisting leftists in the 1950s?
The sad truth is that people across the political spectrum experience cognitive dissonance when faced with opposing views. We are all likely to assume that people who disagree with us are idiots. If we see their views as offensive or particularly outrageous, the idea of vengeance can be tempting. Since the launch of Facebook in 2004 and Twitter in 2006, social media has made it very easy to form virtual mobs. It is easy to imagine McCarthy organizing Twitter mobs if the platform had existed in the 1950s.
I have been on the receiving end of more than one Twitter mob for fact-checking Catalan nationalist narratives (like this one) and I can tell you from bitter experience that it is no fun at all.
Mob rule is dangerous because it is so arbitrary. Joining forces with other like-minded people and demanding that our foes be deprived of speaking opportunities and removed from their jobs gives us power; and power corrupts. There is no due process: The rules on what is and isn’t acceptable aren’t written down anywhere and might change from one moment to the next. The mob act as the police, the prosecutor, the jury, the judge, the jail guard and the parole officer.
Lives can be wrecked by social media mobs. We have seen people lose their livelihoods for making bad jokes, expressing themselves badly or being a little tasteless. Apologies are disregarded. Context is ignored. If we are honest with ourselves, who hasn’t said something a little stupid now and then? Why do we hold strangers to a higher standard than the one to which we hold ourselves?
We can all do better. I would suggest that if you see something on social media that you find offensive, pause and ask yourself whether it involves illegal speech, like death threats. If it does, you should be able to flag it to the platform. If not, please suspend judgement for a moment. Maybe sleep on it and see if you still feel the same way the next day. If you have many followers on social media, refrain from organizing pile-ons when a reply guy with much less influence than you is irritating. Encouraging bullying is never classy!
If you see a mob developing, don’t take part. If your friends are getting indignant about a joke or an allegedly incorrect opinion, try and talk them down. Use humour. Look at the bigger picture. Accept that a little disagreement is the price we pay for living in a free society.
If the person who has offended you is a friend or family member, set up a call. You can have a much more nuanced discussion than if you rush straight into a sterile social media debate. Look for points of agreement.
If you want to get even deeper, accept that not all your opinions are necessarily true. Social media can encourage groupthink, but a very simplified model of how the world works is often too limited. A respectful exploration of a point of view that you believe to be false can help you grow. See you next week!
Sharpen Your Axe is a project to develop a community who want to think critically about the media, conspiracy theories and current affairs without getting conned by gurus selling fringe views. Please subscribe to get this content in your inbox every week. Shares on social media are appreciated! If this is the first post you have seen, I recommend starting with the critical-thinking rabbit hole, which includes links to a free book.
[Updated on 10 March 2022] Opinions expressed on Substack and Twitter are those of Rupert Cocke as an individual and do not reflect the opinions or views of the organization where he works or its subsidiaries.