Clockwise from top: Book by Jona Lehrer, Virat Kohli, Sourav Ganguly, JK Rowling, Dalai Lama and Jon Ronson so you’ve been publicly embarrassed
A few weeks back, the internet exploded in frenzied outrage after a video clip went viral. It showed the Dalai Lama seated in front of a large audience, being approached by a small child who wanted a hug. The Dalai Lama hugged him and then asked the little boy to suck his tongue. It became uncomfortable to watch. The boy looked confused and scared. The people in the audience mostly seemed to be laughing.
This was a difficult video to understand. I am not a religious person and I find it difficult to respect people, especially men, given the roles they play. Still, I found myself trying to figure out a comment to write and wasn’t quite sure of any words coming my way. Two things happened the next day. One, the Dalai Lama published a note expressing regret over the incident. Second, many people of Tibetan origin wrote that what we saw in that video was part of Tibetan culture. I don’t know what to believe. And so, I’m kind of relieved that I didn’t comment on that in any way.
Dalai Lama
greed for opinion
For more than two decades, we have been conditioned to have an opinion about everything. As an “extremely online” person, I spend a lot of my time adding not only my thoughts on every little event or incident, but also other people’s thoughts on the matter. Large parts of the Internet are heavily invested in getting feedback from us. The more we comment, the more viral the post becomes. And, I’m not shy about saying it, it’s been fun. In the early years of social media, the comment section of a blog was the liveliest place. I have found many friends through the comment thread on LiveJournal. We gathered funny people, sarcastic cabals stood together, we booed boring people, we bullied some, others bullied us. It was an entire ecosystem built purely on ideas.
It’s easy to be part of the crowd on the Internet. Social media outrage is a powerful thing. This is why we should be careful about getting involved in it.
Then, of course, things got bigger, got wider. In fact the idea came up and the real debate started. People increasingly stuck to their stance because revising an opinion was seen as admitting a mistake, and if there’s a golden rule, it’s that if you admit you made a mistake, You will never be allowed to forget it. Better to be told you were wrong than to be told twice. And as more sites popped up, and we started accessing them on our phones and using every spare minute of every day to see who was saying what, we lost every aspect of ourselves except our opinions. have lost.
it’s never just black and white
If these years of debate have taught me anything, it’s that things are more complicated than they seem, and that nothing is universal, not even the truth. When the camera is panned back or the angle is flipped, something that appears clearly black and white is often pixelated into gray. (And now, with artificial intelligence and all that hubbub, nothing on the Internet can be considered true.)
Part of this realization comes from a book I was reading recently. in jon ronson so you’ve been publicly embarrassed, he profiles a group of people at both ends of this social media transaction. Those who were shamed and those who shamed.
In one chapter, he talks about author Jonah Lehrer, a star writer whose career was on an upward trajectory until Michael Moynihan, a little-known, barely published reporter, discovered that Lehrer had published his book about the singer Bob Lehrer. I made a set of quotes. Dylan. The story and the response it received on social media effectively ended Lehrer’s career. But, the book says, the last thing Moynihan felt was the adrenaline rush of validation. “He said he felt as caught up in the story as Jonah was. It was as if they were both in a car with failed brakes, helplessly hurtling together toward this end,” Ronson writes.
Through this fraught journey, I realized that my opinion was starting to wane. Social media arguments are often discussed on WhatsApp groups, as friends try to build an army of allies behind them, trying to get more people on their side. These days, I often find myself saying that I don’t know. I don’t know enough about the science and psychology of gender to know whether JK Rowling is right or wrong about transitioning babies too early. I don’t know cricket at all to react to the Virat Kohli-Sourav Ganguly death stare and handshake controversy. (Actual incident, not an exaggeration). I haven’t studied Tibetan culture to know whether the Dalai Lama’s behavior was customary or creepy. If anything, all these incidents have only shown me how little I know about things and how my opinions on some of them are both irrelevant and unnecessary.
Virat Kohli – Sourav Ganguly
It’s easy to be part of the crowd on the Internet. Social media outrage is a powerful thing. This is why we should be careful about getting involved in it. We cried for a long time. And things have gotten worse. So, maybe, let’s just try and be quiet for a bit?
Author He is the author of ‘Independence Day: A People’s History’.
column | Is it time to shut up?
Clockwise from top: Book by Jona Lehrer, Virat Kohli, Sourav Ganguly, JK Rowling, Dalai Lama and Jon Ronson so you’ve been publicly embarrassed
A few weeks back, the internet exploded in frenzied outrage after a video clip went viral. It showed the Dalai Lama seated in front of a large audience, being approached by a small child who wanted a hug. The Dalai Lama hugged him and then asked the little boy to suck his tongue. It became uncomfortable to watch. The boy looked confused and scared. The people in the audience mostly seemed to be laughing.
This was a difficult video to understand. I am not a religious person and I find it difficult to respect people, especially men, given the roles they play. Still, I found myself trying to figure out a comment to write and wasn’t quite sure of any words coming my way. Two things happened the next day. One, the Dalai Lama published a note expressing regret over the incident. Second, many people of Tibetan origin wrote that what we saw in that video was part of Tibetan culture. I don’t know what to believe. And so, I’m kind of relieved that I didn’t comment on that in any way.
Dalai Lama
greed for opinion
For more than two decades, we have been conditioned to have an opinion about everything. As an “extremely online” person, I spend a lot of my time adding not only my thoughts on every little event or incident, but also other people’s thoughts on the matter. Large parts of the Internet are heavily invested in getting feedback from us. The more we comment, the more viral the post becomes. And, I’m not shy about saying it, it’s been fun. In the early years of social media, the comment section of a blog was the liveliest place. I have found many friends through the comment thread on LiveJournal. We gathered funny people, sarcastic cabals stood together, we booed boring people, we bullied some, others bullied us. It was an entire ecosystem built purely on ideas.
It’s easy to be part of the crowd on the Internet. Social media outrage is a powerful thing. This is why we should be careful about getting involved in it.
Then, of course, things got bigger, got wider. In fact the idea came up and the real debate started. People increasingly stuck to their stance because revising an opinion was seen as admitting a mistake, and if there’s a golden rule, it’s that if you admit you made a mistake, You will never be allowed to forget it. Better to be told you were wrong than to be told twice. And as more sites popped up, and we started accessing them on our phones and using every spare minute of every day to see who was saying what, we lost every aspect of ourselves except our opinions. have lost.
it’s never just black and white
If these years of debate have taught me anything, it’s that things are more complicated than they seem, and that nothing is universal, not even the truth. When the camera is panned back or the angle is flipped, something that appears clearly black and white is often pixelated into gray. (And now, with artificial intelligence and all that hubbub, nothing on the Internet can be considered true.)
Part of this realization comes from a book I was reading recently. in jon ronson so you’ve been publicly embarrassed, he profiles a group of people at both ends of this social media transaction. Those who were shamed and those who shamed.
In one chapter, he talks about author Jonah Lehrer, a star writer whose career was on an upward trajectory until Michael Moynihan, a little-known, barely published reporter, discovered that Lehrer had published his book about the singer Bob Lehrer. I made a set of quotes. Dylan. The story and the response it received on social media effectively ended Lehrer’s career. But, the book says, the last thing Moynihan felt was the adrenaline rush of validation. “He said he felt as caught up in the story as Jonah was. It was as if they were both in a car with failed brakes, helplessly hurtling together toward this end,” Ronson writes.
Through this fraught journey, I realized that my opinion was starting to wane. Social media arguments are often discussed on WhatsApp groups, as friends try to build an army of allies behind them, trying to get more people on their side. These days, I often find myself saying that I don’t know. I don’t know enough about the science and psychology of gender to know whether JK Rowling is right or wrong about transitioning babies too early. I don’t know cricket at all to react to the Virat Kohli-Sourav Ganguly death stare and handshake controversy. (Actual incident, not an exaggeration). I haven’t studied Tibetan culture to know whether the Dalai Lama’s behavior was customary or creepy. If anything, all these incidents have only shown me how little I know about things and how my opinions on some of them are both irrelevant and unnecessary.
Virat Kohli – Sourav Ganguly
It’s easy to be part of the crowd on the Internet. Social media outrage is a powerful thing. This is why we should be careful about getting involved in it. We cried for a long time. And things have gotten worse. So, maybe, let’s just try and be quiet for a bit?
Author He is the author of ‘Independence Day: A People’s History’.