There’s an online game that I hate because it’s too much. I don’t want to play this game ever again, but its existence is a result of the deep fabric of social media, so if you’re going to discuss it on the internet, playing this game is inevitable.
I call this game “Where is the discourse?” It looks like this:
- Alice begins by giving some examples of arguments (or points of view, feelings, etc.) that she hasn’t really thought about and would like to refute.
- Bob says that no one important is making such an argument, and that Alice’s example is cherry-picked (or “chosen,” to use the old mid-2000s “blogosphere” terminology). I would argue that there is.
- Alice responds to Bob by highlighting the qualifications of the people behind Bob’s example. Maybe they have a large following on social media or are affiliated with a prominent institution. Or maybe that person is totally random, but their signed tweet, screenshot, or Forbes article has been shared a lot.
- Bob then retrieves in detail the qualifications and status of each person Alice proposed to understand Alice’s reaction.
- (Optional step): Alice rebuts Bob by defending each person’s status as eligible participants in the discourse, and the parties get further lost in the weeds of credentials, metrics, and evaluations. . Authentic.
By the time they move to number four in the game, the argument has fully evolved from a fight over the superiority of the argument Alice was trying to rebut to a fight over whether this particular list of individuals is representative of a larger group. is moving to. movements and ways of thinking.
In other words, Alice and Bob are now fighting over the place of discourse. Where?Who is participating in it? And who is not? Which byline, institutional affiliation, number of followers, or engagement metrics qualify individuals? genuine Are you a participant in the discourse?
Back in the bad old days of media monopoly, everyone knew where the discourse was. If you have a regional monopoly on one or more scarce distribution channels (parts of the electromagnetic spectrum, newsstands, library shelf space, or fleets of printing facilities and delivery vehicles), you are by definition a It is a place where you can act as a gatekeeper. Both those who participated and those who did not.
But in about 15 years, our society has changed this discourse, as anyone with access to a smartphone can instantly publish text, images, audio, and video for the entire planet to see. We collectively lost track of our place. . No new discursive Schelling points have emerged to replace the now-defunct monopolies of radio, television, and print. we are adrift.
Perhaps the most corrosive effect of “Where is the discourse?” In our collective intellectual life, even the noblest questions are reduced to trivial disputes over entitlement.
I am reminded of this saying: The average mind discusses events. Little minds argue about people. ” Discourse games are therefore a powerful mechanism that turns the discussion of any idea into a discussion of people, thereby shrinking each player’s mind twice her size.
