We live in a world of dopamine-driven, doom-scrolling, emotional incontinence and performative, manufactured outrage.
Worse, the social media echo chamber amplifies and accelerates the outrage like a Hendrix howl of feedback. Round and round it goes until it explodes onto the street as mindless protest, riot or murder.
James Marriott has an insightful column in/on today’s Times – Why elitism is key to democracy’s survival – which addresses exactly the point.
We’re all familiar with the popular notion that social media has “democratised” our discourse. The voiceless have been given a voice. Experts have been dethroned. Information and debate is no longer controlled by a self-interested and self-satisfied elite of journalists and academics. If you want to address the nation, you no longer have to get past that intimidating figure, the comment editor of The Times.
But as the political philosopher Dan Williams points out, a more democratised discourse can be radically anti-democratic in its effect. More people can speak, true. But the resulting proliferation of ignorant, wrathful and inexpert voices means that ordinary people are increasingly poorly informed.
Last week, also in The Times, Hugo Rifkind made a similar point: War on woke leaves a free-speech Wild West.
The Graham Linehan case, in which the comedy writer was arrested by armed police after landing at Heathrow, was deranged and appalling. Even there, though, I’m a little weary of reports that talk only about his “gender-critical comments”. What he actually said was, what you should do with a trans-identified male in a female changing room is “punch him in the balls”. Obviously this was a joke rather than an invocation. Still, if it had been a joke about punching Jews in the balls, or black people, or Nigel Farage, I’m not convinced the same people would argue that the police shouldn’t even make a note.
Never forget, though, where this problem came from. Five years ago, had Linehan said this on Twitter, he’d have been kicked off. Twenty years ago, he could only have said it in a comedy club. In a newspaper, in a book, in a recording, some editor would have been at his elbow, knowing that they, too, had a responsibility for whatever they facilitated. Thinking of audience, of context, of consequence, as all publishers should.
It reminds me of the old business adage, “You can eliminate the middleman, but you can’t eliminate their function.”
We might not like the fetters, but editors and arbiters existed for a purpose. And is today’s manifestation of unfettered free speech really what the early idealists of the internet had in mind?
We mustn’t allow the baby of free speech to be thrown out with the bath water of manufactured outrage. There is still a role for the responsible grown-up.
Photo by Klara Kulikova on Unsplash
