On Echo Chambers

The world is full of people who agree and disagree with you. And me. There are millions of people on both sides. But we don't like to think about the people who disagree with us, we like to think that those people are stupid and that we wouldn't bother ourselves with people like that. We like to laugh at the idea of them from afar, without engaging in their debate.

And the internet has become another place for us to surround ourselves with others of our own opinions. We follow facebook pages of political parties and comedians and scientific groups and all sorts of communities that share our ideals. So we can point and laugh at The Other and how silly they must be for their opinions. We unfriend the people who disagree with us until we are sitting in an echo chamber; screaming at people who agree with us.

Because it's nicer to say something and hear "yes! you're right! that's true!" than to hear "well actually I disagree, I don't think that makes sense". So that's what comes up in our newsfeed. People who agree with us. Our social media pages become an echo of the thoughts in our head. They make us feel comfortable and content.



After the Vegas shooting (and oh gosh, I hope when you read this the world has not reached a point where we say "which Vegas shooting?"), my newsfeed changed. I started seeing pages from pro-gun people. I started seeing arguments I'd never heard before. I started to understand why they thought they were being logical. They laughed at anti-gun people just the same. They mocked them - pointed out flaws in their logic. And of course, there are always flaws.

I wonder if Facebook made this choice. If I was some pawn in their game, trying to determine whether my viewing habits changed from this. Or if it was just a mistake in the algorithm. Too many of my friends liking and commenting on these pages that they thought showing them to me was a good idea.

I wonder if it changed the way I converse with these people. I wonder if it made me more tolerant or helped me search for compromise.

I wonder if realising the racism of so many of my friends and family members makes me more tolerant of those people. Or does it make me less tolerant?

I wonder if hearing my family discussing at the dinner table the idea that it's perfectly ok to assault someone if they assault you first will make me a more hateful person or a more accepting person.


...I just want to go back to my echo chamber. Where there is always someone who knows the answer. Where there is wisdom to defer to.

Please let me go back.