Malaise

[kimberkit]

I am having a hard time writing. Clearly, we're all socially influenced, but I don't know precisely how writing on the internet is so much "social." When was the last time you wrote or read any entry on the internet that truly changed your worldview, even a little bit, about something?

Over and over again, it seems like the best way to actually effectuate what we believe in is to try to reach out to people in person, and engage in in-person dialogue or demonstration -- and even then, it's hard! The broadcast medium of the internet feels both silly and isolating right now.

People are indeed listening, of course -- but often only for things that already confirm their worldview, or add information to a point they already want to make. In business, that's called niche marketing -- people want to gravitate towards others that already agree with them. I guess that's the "Long Tail"? I'm pretty sure that this is doubly so for the internet, as opposed to real life interaction.
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A year or two ago, Williams broke up the housing clusters, disallowing blocks of 4 people to live together. They argued that diversity in housing was necessary in order to create a group of people who were willing to have their social worldview challenged. It was a hugely controversial move, and it was overwhelmingly opposed by the majority of students on campus. They did it anyway. At the time, I thought, "Well, good luck with that... all you'll get is frustrated people who don't like living together."

Sometimes I wonder whether they were right, and whether that frustration is useful and good for us. I mean, it'd be pretty spiffy if you could get unlike groups to work, and you often do have some unlike worldviews when dealing with co-workers, for instance. It might be useful to have that level of frustration, with people who are 18 and still theoretically able to change how they interact.

But then my cynical side kicks in, and I'm sure that they were wrong, and just created more isolation on campus. Given a choice, I'm not sure I, or your average 18 year old, wouldn't rather chat on IM with someone I knew was like me, instead of talking to someone next door who wasn't like me. I wonder whether the social force of "be only with people who are like yourself" would outweigh everything else.
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Coming back to my original point, I think that the clustering of alike-people does weird things to the internet -- that is, because you get such big groupings of people who agree on most things, it's hard to get a good voice for disagreement on that forum if you happen to be in the minority. So you splinter off and go with a group of the minority-dissenters, and then no one changes their mind, because your voice is primarily being heard amongst people who agree with you, not those who disagree with you. And who could blame you? Changing someone's mind is hard to do in person -- challenging their beliefs online seems impossible, especially not when you think that most people on that particular (insert: forum, blog, whatever) will disagree with you.

Comments

[regyt.livejournal.com]

When was the last time you wrote or read any entry on the internet that truly changed your worldview, even a little bit, about something

A pretty big example: I didn't even think of myself as a feminist until I read this post. I thought feminists were just whiners who sat around and bitched instead of making themselves into shining positive examples. My worldview has shifted pretty dramatically on the issue.

People are indeed listening, of course -- but often only for things that already confirm their worldview, or add information to a point they already want to make.

Then how do we get into so many arguments on the internet? Couldn't happen if we were only interacting with people with whom we agree in the first place.

[kimberkit.livejournal.com]

Interesting on the feminism issue -- I've always thought of myself as a feminist, but recognized that:
(1) The issue sometimes gets muddled because it is tricky to speak universally for all groups of women when in fact there are multiple groups of women who get a double or triple-whammy of discrimination: gay women, black women, sex workers, poor women, etc. As a corollary to this, I'm always a little nervous when someone says, "All members of this group feel this," and I think, "Some of us feel it more or less than others."

(2) It's always a balancing act, dealing with "you can do anything" vs. "you can do everything." You cannot be a good parent and also have two parents be at work 12 hours a day without making any accommodations around that. The socially prescribed "women must stay at home" should change and is changing, but what needs to accompany that is a recognition that at least someone has to be at home sometimes (whether partners take turns, or we shift to drawing in more extended family, or whether one of you should, in fact, stay home full time in exchange for the other members of your household working more), and I'm not sure that anyone's really addressed the childcare issue in tandem with women's rights.

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As for arguments on the internet, we interact with people whose worldviews are often similar, but not the same, of course. But that doesn't mean that when those folk disagree, that we don't either tune them out or get into one-sided grr matches, which is sort of the opposite of listening.

It's true that this happens in person, too, but the difference is that in person, it may be a little easier to be less combative, more polite, allow points to sink in better, and all of those little things that just *help*, y'know? It's not impossible to be polite on the internet, especially not over minor stuff where you don't expect bad feelings, but I know that when emotional stakes are high, I tend to prefer to drop things.