I’ve been feeling extremely convicted for the past year now for my participation in the “only read the headline, get outraged and retweet” community.
But do you guys remember in school learning about the different kinds of propaganda and techniques used in the media, to evoke certain responses? I know that in my History class one year (I don’t know what grade) we learned about the use of different images and headlines to promote the war that the U.S was currently in.
The same things happen today on the internet. Way too often we read the headline of something and instantly get mad. We don’t even click on the link to the article to read the context of what was strategically pulled out to initiate a response. What’s even crazier, is that right after retweeting that bait-click-not-telling-the-whole-truth tweet, we will proceed to discuss and argue our opinions about that thing we didn’t even read.
A recent example would be the Erykah Badu interview where she mentioned Hitler and his creativity. People were pissed. They were outraged and calling Badu all kinds of things and going back and forth. But had not even read the article. Want to know how I know they didn’t read it? Because I read it. And once I read it, I was like “Oh. That’s all she was saying” because I was reading what she’d said in the actual context of the article. I think there should be more conversation about our willingness to help circulate narrow point of views that are only created to make us angry.
I say all this to say: I hope we learn to practice safe social-media-ing, and research before you repost.
-HCxo