Hey.
It’s been a little while. Sorry about that. I’ve been meaning to write this post for the better part of at least two weeks now, if not longer. Life has kept me busy, and the world at large has just been… Heavy. Which is, perhaps, the biggest understatement of the year.
The thing that I’ve been struggling with the most over the past several months, however, is how unsettling it is to watch the people closest to you change slowly and radically in response to world events. More and more often, it feels like online content is shaping people faster than our real lives ever could. And once we take a little peek into the systems that social media platforms employ to keep us hooked, it’s easy to see why it’s to blame.
Simply put: Algorithms reward outrage. Content creators often make the most revenue by the size of their audience or how many clicks they can get. Even in my own small corner of the internet, I see how engagement drives success. Platforms reward attention, not accuracy or empathy. As a result, many content creators have turned to the practice of “ragebait,” which is the practice of creating internet content specifically engineered to cause controversy. And once that pot is already starting to stir, their numbers are also skyrocketing.
A great example of this process at work is the new Star Trek series, Starfleet Academy. Google the reviews and YouTube commentaries, and they’ll have you believe that this new show is absolute “woke garbage.” Even putting aside the fact that being “woke” is actually a good thing (seriously, read the original definition), Starfleet Academy was getting poor reviews before the show ever even debuted. That’s because the show includes people of color, LGBTQIA+ characters, and oh my gosh, a female Jem’Hadar??! Say it ain’t so!
I can live with folks hating on it for being an angsty teen-targeted Trek (I’ve heard all of the Star Trek 90210 jokes, thank you very much), because that’s sorta what this show promised to deliver in the first place. But the old argument that Star Trek has always been woke is also true. Kirk and Uhura in the original series back in the 1960’s were one of television’s earliest displays of an interracial kiss! Star Trek has always been at the forefront of presenting an optimistic and progressive future for humanity. It has always treated diversity as our strength, not a threat or something to sneer at. People who are different than us can teach us a great deal about things we never even thought about. Frankly, Star Trek should have taught us better than this.
But the haters will continue to hate, so long as it keeps paying the bills. But mockery and outrage have a tendency to not only shield people against the discomfort they may feel toward others, but they’re also unsettlingly influential. Mutual hatred can create the illusion of clarity. It gives people a shared enemy, which feels like a sense of connection, but when it’s built on burning something down, you’re not really winning anything. Don’t the haters ever get tired of that? Hatred is so exhausting, y’all, and life is too short to spend it all on trying to prevent people from experiencing joy.
Empathy and kindness take a lot more work, but man, they’re so worth it in the end. Sometimes it takes an uncomfortable moment or conversation with the people you love, but it’s an investment toward a better future. Like the one in the classic Star Trek stories that shaped us years ago.
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