Have you ever played tug o' war with a dog? I have. It's an uncanny experience. The dog doesn't know that if he stops pulling, the game is over. He doesn't even know whether it's a game. He is simply compelled by his instinct to pull back. This is what it's like to be on the Internet when a national crisis, like the one in Baltimore right now, bursts onto the newsfeed. There's a powerful sense of obligation to get our opinion out there and defend it.
It's a vicious battle that means nothing and everything all at once to the seething hive mind of the Internet's brain. Its Timeline lobe is illuminated by rapidly firing Tweets, its Facebook synapse awash in social chemicals like outrage and disgust. In the reaction cortex, thinkpieces flare, vehemently fanning the flames. The fight is on and then, as suddenly as it began, it's over. The force on the other end of the rope has dropped its grip and there's nothing left to pull against.
We have language. We have the ability to think critically and synthesize information. We have thumbs, you guys. I say break the pattern. Fight your instinct. Drop the rope. There are real battles to be fought and real voices to be heard. Let's listen.
Baltimore is burning. It's scary. Shitty. Surreal. It's frustrating to watch our country slice itself open with sharp knives over and over, then slowly try to move forward before having the scabs ripped off yet again. It makes me sad. But my emotional distress isn't relevant to this fight. My pain is thirdhand and it's infinitesimally small when compared to that of anyone with skin in the game. Most importantly, my pain is intellectual and immaterial, so I have the invaluable luxury of keeping it to myself.
I don't have to tug back on the pull of hot takes, racist tweets and misspelled troll posts. That's how you get tired, fighting battles where no clear victor can emerge. Those things are the rope and just because the Internet is pulling on it doesn't mean we have to dig in and strengthen our grip.
Thoughts can't kill you. When I get upset about the chaos currently rippling through Maryland's biggest city (or in Ferguson, North Charleston, Aurora, Sandy Hook, and so forth), I try to keep it off the Internet. I might tell my friends and family what I think, if they ask. But here—on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, where my voice has greatest potential to be heard—our energy is better spent listening, being an ally.
Not only are we not required to fight the fight, we shouldn’t. My timeline is choked with tweets about Freddie Gray in Baltimore. Three weeks ago, the same thing happened when Walter Scott was gunned down by a cop in South Carolina. Friends, coworkers, strangers, all clamping their jaws around the rope and pulling, tweet by 'gram by status update.
Pulling. Confusing the narrative. Pulling. Ignoring the real fight. Pulling. Pouring all their intellectual capital into the fight, instead of into learning to rise above the fight and boosting the signal of those who know how to do that. I follow Wesley Lowery on Twitter. He's a journalist who works for The Washington Post. He was in Ferguson and now he's in Baltimore, covering this latest gash in the country's scarred skin. People like Lowery are in the cut, narrating it, trying to find the people at the center of the real struggle and bring us their voices.
Whether you agree with those voices once they reach you isn't the point. The point is that when you're determined to have an opinion on everything, there's no time to actually form one.
I'm not saying I've got it figured out. I have a hard time walking away from a troll, just like we all do. But I have noticed that fighting dumbasses is more gratifying than hearing hard truths. Shouting your own irrelevant opinion into the void is easier than amplifying the opinions of relevant voices. The ones that don't shout because they're too busy pulling against real injustice, not timeline tug o' war. The voices that belong to people who feel firsthand the pain I can only imagine from the comfort of my privilege.
People like Lowery aren't pulling the rope. They don't have the luxury of playing games on the timeline and fighting pixel tigers. They are the ones whose voices need to be heard.
Drop the rope and listen.
Dave Infante is a writer living in New York City. Read more of his work on Thrillist and follow him on Twitter here.
