Some end-of-the-world ground rules, perhaps?

I've had to get serious about what I allow into my brain.

When ICE was most active in Minneapolis, specifically during the week when two American protestors had been killed, I began my days listening to news and podcasts on the subject, trying to catch up on whatever I’d missed while asleep. It was not a particularly pleasant way to start the day.

One morning I listened to an episode of a podcast called “On Point” about on-the-ground responses to the ICE situation by folks living in Minneapolis.

They interviewed a pastor of a local church, a Latino man who was helping folks in his area who were scared to go outside. He had set up a grocery delivery program online through his small church, and the next day had received thousands of requests, but had expected a couple of hundred. Rather than turn people away, he focused on organizing people in his congregation and neighborhood who were willing to donate, coordinate, and drive food to those who had asked for help.

The pastor had voted for Donald Trump, and the interviewer pushed him on this, asking why he voted for Trump but now disapproved of the very thing Trump had said he was going to do. The pastor said, and I’m paraphrasing, “I thought he was going to go after criminals, not regular neighborhood families.”

They then interviewed a local woman who, after dropping her kids off at school, spent her day helping in her own neighborhood. She and other mothers in the community had set up driving assistance, getting people to appointments, school events, etc., and also delivering groceries.

She mentioned their focus on pregnant women afraid to go to appointments, and how they were connecting doulas and midwives willing to work for free with women who needed prenatal or delivery care at home.

At the end of the podcast I sat thinking about those people, regular people doing what they think needs to be done in a very hands-on, thoughtful, material way.

Then I opened Instagram.

The first post I saw was a slideshow of at least fifteen tweets, memes, and screenshots of other social media posts making fun of white women for not doing anything of value, calling out the futility of things like “making bundt cakes” and “knitting hats.” It was a searing, sarcastic critique of that sort of “pussy hat” “activism” we saw in 2016 — performative, self-aggrandizing, largely useless — which I also ridiculed when it was happening ten years ago. (How the hell has it been ten years?)

The next post I saw was an assertion that the United States only cared about the two murdered protestors because they were white, arguing that nobody would have cared had they been people of color. And then I got off Instagram.

This essay is not about the content of those posts. Frankly, I’m too old to care what people post on social media. Not sure how my age is related but it feels true.

I am not offended, hurt, sad, or defensive about the sentiments, either, nor am I arguing they shouldn’t be posted or that those posts serve no purpose.

What struck me was the juxtaposition of what I had just experienced, the two vastly distinct impressions I was given about the exact same situation. And the potential effects those two impressions could have had on my brain had I only seen one or the other, or the algorithm decided I only got posts like the ones I saw on Instagram.

What I want to address is how different the experience of nuance, discussion, thought, time, substance is from the experience of standard social media hot takes.

One depiction of the situation told me about people, even those ideologically opposed to “the left,” working alongside the left and anyone else willing to help, on behalf of people they feel were being treated unfairly. It was interesting to hear a Trump supporter, particularly Latino, explain why he voted as he did, and I admired his willingness to decide for himself where he was needed, what service looked like in this moment, and how he could help his community. Rather than clinging to his "tribe,” uncritically accepting his side’s actions solely because they are “his side,” he responded to reality as he saw it.

That’s a humble, courageous, and critically thinking stance. And wildly rare. Seeing evidence of it is hopeful in itself.

He could have done what most seem to do: planted himself more firmly where his voting indicated he “should” stand, proclaiming in a sort of dissociated fugue state “I SUPPORT TRUMP AND TRUMP DID THIS, THEREFORE, GOOD,” which of course is not exclusive to conservatives. It seems most people’s first response to any situation is an ideologically aligned one largely uninterested in nuance, facts, or balance. The right is happy if it hurts the left, and vice versa.

I admire and respect anyone willing to see what’s wrong with “their side,” as even the most basic critique feels like something of a miracle in the war zone and simmering stupidity of American politics.

I was also struck by the everyday suburban mother working with other stay-at-home-moms to help community members. They organized on Signal, communicating their daily availability to help, whether it was four hours or twenty minutes, and then they gave what they could. That’s what she claimed, at least. Maybe she’s a closeted bundt-cake knitter.

Sorry, I have to make jokes or I really will lose it.

The podcast gave me a feeling of Americans coming together, acting quickly, organizing, doing real work, and I considered the possibility that we may be a basically intelligent, responsive, decent group of humans after all.

Obviously I banished that thought immediately from my mind.

What did I get from the Instagram posts? Well, what I get from most social media posts: not much. I was reminded that performative activism is bad and that some people are doing what others consider performative activism, and that there is a disproportionate reaction to the deaths of white people versus people of color.

In other words, I was offered the articulation of two problems. Social media is excellent at pointing out problems. What’s less clear is what we’re supposed to do about them.

I used social media like this for years, offering quick thoughts, jabs, sarcasm, satire, and clever insults in pithy little bites, which is probably why I’m so disillusioned with it now. I tried it. I did it. I saw what it offers. Really, though, when my politics became more nuanced I found myself unable to do it anymore simply because everything became more complicated than a single Facebook post could handle.

I no longer felt qualified to pontificate on complex political situations simply because I possessed an opinion, and I felt it was my responsibility to do my own homework before demanding your attention. I wanted to read, learn, research, listen to all sides before forming a stance. And only then would I ask myself if that opinion is even worth putting into the world. Do I actually have something to offer this conversation? Have I done enough work to offer something new? Or am I just stroking my own ego, seeking the attention and accolades of my friends? Am I cathartically venting anger or frustration? What good does that do? Can’t I just do that on the phone to my friends?

Look, every social media post doesn’t need to change lives. And to some extent, who cares? Then again, we cannot pretend social media doesn’t have the potential to build our understanding of the world, that it isn’t designed specifically for that. It seeks to hammer away at our brains into the shapes it desires. It is quite literally made to do so.

Engaging in social media as I once did is like taking a problem and just lobbing it at the world, over and over again. And then other people consume it. It feels vaguely productive when the comments pour in, all these people agreeing, or disagreeing, as if highlighting a problem and walking away is a real act of resistance and useful activism.

And maybe it is. Surely drawing attention to formerly unaddressed or unknown issues is a useful activity. But when it’s a problem we’ve been hearing about for at least a decade, one perhaps begins to crave more. At least I do.

If all we consume in a day are the quick thoughts of hundreds of people on a platform that prioritizes, and in some case only allows, underdeveloped hot takes that are often extreme, one-sided, and lacking in complexity, we can end up with a skewed understanding of the world and very, very dark feelings.

Yes, I know, two things can be true. I am capable of comprehending that performative and non-performative activism can both occur. And surely they do. My point is that if all I saw that day were posts talking about dummies making cakes, I would have an inaccurate and incomplete picture of the situation.

That is why it matters. Because so much of what we consume is erasing complexity, not inviting us into it. Its priority is to activate our emotions, not get us thinking. We know that “algorithms amplify emotionally stimulating content—such as sensational news or idealized lifestyle posts—often leading to “doomscrolling, (source)” because that doomscrolling keeps us engaged and keeps them earning money.

Algorithms promote extremes through their “engagement‑driven models [that] may unintentionally favor extreme or sensational content, reinforcing negative emotional states (source).” I’m highly suspicious of that “unintentional” claim, but the point stands.

What matters is that we are not given the whole story. We aren’t even given part of the story. And if I had only scrolled Threads, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, I probably would have walked away from my morning “ICE research” with a sense of futility, anger, resignation, and not one glimmer of hope.

***

As it happened, it was all pretty okay. You’ll be glad to know I survived my media consumption for the day.

The whole experience though reminded me how thoughtful I need to be about what I consume. That I must discern, over and over again, what I choose to allow to influence my thinking. That this is my responsibility: I’m either passively consuming what’s fed to me or I am actively engaging in the formation of my own critical thinking and understanding of the world. It will not be delivered to me. In fact, I probably have to work hard for it.

It also reminded me of the way I behaved during the last Trump presidency. In short, I lost my ever-loving mind. Panicked. Spent four hours a day doomscrolling then any extra time reading Timothy Snyder and listening to interviews with people like Jason Stanley or Ruth Ben-Ghiat — really anyone who spoke of the dismantling of democracies by “strongmen” and how we were facing the end of everything we knew of freedom. It’s surprising my kids got fed.

I may be exaggerating, but am I?

I sought out these narratives. I admit it. I was sort of breathlessly seeking information on the end of America the way a person might stare at a car accident while wondering why they’re staring at a car accident. There was exhilaration in the panic, in the fear. Some kind of frantic electricity it offered my day. Mac would come home from work and I’d recount to him the most current danger we faced, the most recent signs of the end of our country.

This did not help me. I understand how it happened but maintain it was not an effective approach in the formation of my opinions, plans, or central nervous system.

The media I consumed shot panic, terror, and a wrenching fear right into my guts. But not much else. It did not offer balance, perspective, ideas, solutions. And I did not seek that out.

I was largely worried about things that weren’t happening, and because I only heard one side by a select group of people, these worries were not challenged, tempered, or complicated in any way. I made sure that only one narrative flooded my brain, the one I agreed with, and the one that gave me that weird shot of doom heroin. Almost like a weird addiction.

Please understand I am not saying Americans don’t have a reason or right to be concerned, as if that could ever be my business since I don’t even live there anymore - or, as if that’s my business at all. And as if what’s happening there is not genuinely concerning.

What I’m asking is: Does one-sided analysis by the same cohort of talking heads give us an accurate understanding? How much energy will we waste on misinformation, skewed narratives, and incomplete stories?

Does chronically elevated adrenaline help us figure out what to do and make us more functional in our daily lives?

I think we need to panic about the right things as opposed to every damn thing.

When we moved here in 2019, it was not a result of the aforementioned panic IV I had implanted into my jugular. It was more complicated than that, and you can read old essays here on Substack addressing our myriad reasons. But yes, a rather urgent sense that our country was moving in the wrong direction did light a fire under us, and I can’t imagine my fear didn’t play a part in my willingness to take such drastic action (e.g. applying for a visa in a country I had never visited).

Suffice it to say I am not judging people for losing their shit or staying up at night wondering what’s next for the great City on a Hill. What I’m suggesting is that the worse things get, the higher the stakes, the more attention we should to pay to what we consume. It’s not about being good or moral and it’s definitely not arbitrary: It’s about conserving one’s energy rather than haphazardly depositing it into the arms of whatever fabricated emergency they invented today to get me to click and scroll.

If I had only encountered algorithmic selections that day, perhaps I would have believed that all that’s happening in Minneapolis is a bunch of performative, vacuous nonsense.

Most likely I would not have been invited to think, consider the thoughts of a Trump supporter, grapple with the reality of why people vote the way they do, and examine my own assumptions about all of that.

The pastor was not a monster. Yes, he voted for immigration crackdown. No, he doesn’t like how that actually played out. Yes, he’s doing what he can about it now. Yes, he is still a Trump supporter.

This is much more difficult to understand than “All Trump supporters are deplorable humans,” but it’s more real. And don’t we need to get square with reality before we can change it? Pretty sure James Baldwin said something along those lines.

The world is a much more complicated place than social media would have us believe.

I have experienced what it feels like to truly believe America is a vapid, hopelessly divided cesspool of evil and division, the source of most evil in the world with very little potential for improvement. If one can effectively create change from that place, I truly do not know how.

What is worth fighting for if it’s all already gone?

**

When Dutch Disney Villain Geert Wilders’s party won the election in The Netherlands, I woke up to at least a dozen messages from Americans in a low-key panic on my behalf. My DMs were really something. I googled American news on the subject and found all the headlines reading “DUTCH TRUMP ELECTED PRIME MINISTER” and “FAR RIGHT POPULIST WINS DUTCH ELECTION.” They made it sound like The Netherlands had just found out Stalin was its new boss.

People asked if I was going to move back. They asked “What will you do? Is your family safe?” They were genuinely concerned!

Funny thing was that nobody here was particularly concerned. While perhaps surprised by the win, people were largely unconcerned because they knew he didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell to actually become prime minister. You see, it’s a different system. Wilders’s party received the most votes, yes, and normally the prime minister comes from the winning party. But if a party wins but does not have a majority of government seats it has to “form a government” (coalition) with the other parties that won the most votes. This happens through compromise and discussion. Everyone knew Wilders had way too many batshit opinions, wouldn’t budge, and thus, the coalition would not succeed unless he stepped down.

Sure enough, he was never Prime Minister.

And yet, the impression my American friends and acquaintances had was that we were now facing the exact situation they were in. Huge vibe of the end of Dutch democracy. I was so startled by the American freakout so deeply contrasting reality that I forced myself to read tons of coverage of the election by various mainstream American news outlets. The majority of them wrote the most sensationalist, dramatic, and limited version of the situation, and almost none of them bothered to mention he was not yet the Prime Minister and had very little chance of becoming one.

That’s not dramatic and fun at all!

I have seen this countless times among my American friends over the six years I’ve been here — the boring, pragmatic, bland Dutch news coverage contrasting the sensationalist American versions.

This also reminds me of past trips to Texas, Alabama, and Tennessee, where I, a Californian, was confronted by genuinely concerned people truly believing California streets were overrun by roving gangs of armed Mexican drug lords. They were really worried for me! I remember asking them where they got this information, and trying to explain that my town was 50% Hispanic and yet it was a lovely, peaceful place.

They had seen the street horrors on the news and “all over Facebook.”

I told them the most significant street consequences were excellent taco trucks, roasted corn carts, and a lot of bandera or mariachi.

Between American news and social media I’m not sure how we get a clear picture of anything and I’m not surprised I lost my mind in 2016. All I got was death and destruction and panic and worry.

I knew algorithms could manipulate my world, and that media skews everything to benefit from those algorithms, turning online existence into an echo chamber of voices, the same ideas bouncing from brain to brain in endless rotation.

But I knew this intellectually. It was much harder to see it happening in real time, how it affected my perception right now. Without my notice, narratives formed and planted themselves as the One True Reality. It all reflected the binary that sells so well. Us and them. Right and wrong. MAGA vs Dems.

But it was just a mirage made especially for me.

**

I think I figured out the “too old” comment. First, I’m too tired for this much freak out. I can sense the drama at this point and I’m over it.

Second, I think there’s a bit of “maturity” involved, which is pretty impressive considering I turn 47 this month and have already figured out that I am responsible for who and what I allow in my brain. Be proud, Mom.

I am making a choice every time I seek out the breathless hysteria that gets my heart beating and adrenalin rushing. I am the one who reads the rage bait, again and again, or feeds my deep-seated car-wreck fascination. I am either discerning this shit like an adult or I am not. I’m handing over my agency of mind or I’m managing it with care.

In other words, I think times are too serious for the uncritical consumption of bullshit.

I’ve spent a lot of my writing life criticizing, critiquing, trying to tear down. I spent less time asking myself if I was offering any actual service to the world. I must have known it on some level, though, because when I really cared about something, I dropped the ranting and raving. I tried to write it in a way that addressed all sides, with data and evidence that backed up my claims. I thought about opposing arguments and addressed the best versions of them. I put myself in the shoes of those who disagreed with me, and tried to give them a fair hearing.

It’s harder, for sure, but if we want more than empty performance, perhaps it’s worth the effort.

unrelated cat pic of Gus because he’s so pretty but very, very dumb, which I hear is an orange cat problem?