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More than a half dozen transgender individuals have been targeted and murdered in 2015 so far. Unarmed African American men and boys have been the victims of excessive force by the police in several U.S. cities. A well “respected” (wink and a nudge) magazine was bamboozled with a false story about rape and college campuses, potentially tainting sexual assault allegations for years. Vaccinations apparently cause autism. Oh, and I’m pretty sure if we don’t do something climate change is going to make every season hurricane season. Or something like that*…
You can currently find one of those colorful narratives, or a variation of them, dominating the conversations on most of social media. Every side of these debates is littered about, on everything from Tumblr to Snapchat to probably Tinder. You’ve seen them. You’ve probably engaged in these conversations and used a hashtag or two. They vie for your attention, energy, and blind loyalty. Anything else means you’re on the other side. Or to quote the great orator, former President G.W. Bush, “You’re either with us…or you’re with the enemy. No in between” or some silly rhetoric.
Now these narratives, or claims as the sociologists Joel Best called them, are competing against other narratives to enlist us on their side of the narrative war. And this is a war. The soldiers are the supporters of these narratives, or claims-makers. Their job is to proselytize and draw us in, their ammunition is rhetoric.
These supporters can be anyone, from the Neo-Conservative elderly white lady saying that marriage is only between a man and a woman to the young African-American man using a hashtag to gain support for a rally against police brutality. Their message may be muddled and garbled like a bad TV reception or it may be as clear as day.
The content may differ but the messenger’s role is all the same. They engage us on the frontlines of a battle unlike any seen. In many ways, it’s like the grandest of epic battles. A battle bigger than Avengers: Age of Ultron, all 6 Star Wars, and anything Arnold Schwarzenegger has been in, combined. And in this generation, the battlefield is social media.
The hashtags, the Vine videos, the memes, and the statuses are all viable weapons. These tools of discourse have one aim: to convince you to swear fealty to one narrative or another. Before social media the fight was usually localized and far less lively. Now we are all one touch away from watching videos of a transgender man pleading to be treated equally or seeing a meme proclaiming the harms we are eliciting by ignoring climate change or the horrific video footage of a man being beheaded.
Sure things like science can be considered as acceptable tools of the trade. But if the anti-vaccination movement has shown us anything, it’s that science doesn’t mean shit when you can appeal to basic feelings and ideas like paranoia, distrust of “the man” and fear. Veracity BE DAMNED! That is the glory of the narrative war, emotions trump logic every time. And that’s probably the greatest danger of all.
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Smarter people than I have stated that in the marketplace of social concern, the narrative with the best sales pitch and strongest promoter is the victor. The marketplace lacks any civility and all polemic speech is allowed. Outrage is the currency, anything else is useless. One side or another grabs you and like that you’re choosing teams in the narrative wars. The ability to see both sides of a debate, critical thought, and things like the scientific reason are thrown to the wayside and replaced with political rhetoric and appeals to emotion. Conspiracy theories become equal in certainty to Einstein’s theory of relativity.
And because our brains can only handle so much, once we latch onto a narrative, the rest become at best background noise and at worst evil distractions. Our brains just love a false assertion, of course. We assert that our side, our challenge, or agenda is the only one that is relevant. Of course this makes sense, since research shows that once people take sides, contradictory evidence does nothing to stymie their fervor. “Confident idiots,” we all are.
In the end, I guess, the revolution(s) won’t be televised on TV or broadcasted on the radio. It, or they, will be captured on a Snapchat, shared on Instagram, retweeted, and posted in a Facebook status. And as a simple journeyman on the social media roads, I have to acquiesce to the battles of the narratives.
The epic confrontation of distinct and disparate narratives will go on unabated. Each side claiming moral superiority and importance with no end in sight. Our hearts – minds are irrelevant – are their battleground. And our opportunity and ability to actually address important issues become casualties. Casualties to a battle that prioritizes who can shout the loudest or boil the most blood.
Or it could be all be made null and void once the sea levels rise and we’re all living under the sea. #BiggerIssues
* — The opinions stated above are not mine. So no you don’t know where I stand on the issues…except climate change. That shit is serious!