The Biggest Threat to Society in 2023
I don’t do enough writing. I have a lot of bad ideas, but 1 idea out of every 100 is a gem. I’m definitely not saying this one is the gem, but by putting more of them down on paper, I feel like i’ll have a better chance at finding them.
Since launching The Pulse Newsletter, I feel like there’s a few things that I'll get from posting more “brain dumps” online.
I can finally start archiving my thoughts.
The internet is the ultimate place for getting unfiltered feedback.
Be able to connect with others who share some of my opinions.
Alright, so i’m just going to dive in.
I think the biggest threat to society is our breakdown in communication.
I didn’t say the biggest threat to humanity, I said the biggest threat to society.
Our ability to communicate with one another has deteriorated so much that every single topic has become hyperpolarized.
Growing up, it used to be that you didn't talk about religion or politics at the dinner table. Nowadays, you don’t talk about religion, politics, gender, health, academics, work, hobbies, or even the age old debate of Lebron James vs. Michael Jordan because God forbid you hurt someone's feelings by disagreeing with them.
Personally, I think this is the scariest part of society today.
It all happened so fast, I feel like 5 years ago this wasn’t as big of an issue. If it only took 5 years to devolve into a society where you can literally have your entire life’s work taken from you, have your entire reputation destroyed, and ruin any future career opportunities by getting canceled for saying something that people disagree with, where are we going to be in another 5 years?
I guess you could imagine a scenario where we start living in a world with only “approved views”. What I mean by that is every topic would have some sort of agreed upon view that is considered approved or appropriate, and everything outside of that would be considered bad, wrong, hateful, blasphemous, conspiratorial or down right fake news.
I truly believe we’ve arrived at a point where we’re using those types of words, “hate, harassment, uneducated, conspiracy theorist, racist, bigot, woke, sheep” as weapons to silence people who say things we don’t agree with, rather than engage in fact or opinion based arguments.
Like, what? That’s terrifying. It’s literally an episode of Black Mirror. And it gets even scarier when you start to wonder who is in control of these “approved views”. Is it the government? Does the government come out and put forward “the proper way of thinking” and then we all agree with it? Anybody who disagrees is spreading fake news and misinformation? Or just as scary, is it a cultural thing? Do certain views get picked up by the mainstream masses and then once again, if you disagree with this mainstream view, you immediately open yourself up to being canceled?
I mean, it’s not too far from where we’re at today. And if we follow this path, it’s worse than censorship. It’s worse than limiting free speech.
It’s taking away our ability to think for ourselves, it takes away our ability to have our own opinions, and if you take away the ability to think for yourself and hold true your own beliefs, you’re literally taking away what it means to be human.
The other crazy byproduct of our breakdown in communication is the notion that if someone makes an isolated comment like “Are you sure this vaccine is safe?”, people will automatically categorize you into the most extreme group that holds similar views (in this case, an “anti-vaxxer”) and then extrapolate that statement across every single other possible point of view that you might have.
If you believe “X” about one specific topic, then that must mean you subscribe to the most extreme levels of everything else people who think that way do.
In what world of human communication does that make sense? Think of how far our ability to communicate must have fallen that we now think one statement is enough to automatically assume a person's entire morality?
We actually experienced this when we ran our 8th Pulse newsletter. There’s a bunch of controversy right now surrounding the Catholic District School board in Canada, and when we asked people for their opinion in a post called Cancel Culture on full display? Or is it time to defund the catholic school board, it actually got flagged as hate.
So, it got me thinking… how did we get here?
Purely anecdotal, but after spending way too much time crawling around in rabbit holes I came to a conclusion that seems plausible.
I believe it’s because we’ve finally reached a threshold where over 51% of our communication is now happening virtually.
What I mean by that is when it comes to human interaction, less than 50% of it is face to face or in person anymore. Whether it be through text or email, FaceTime or Zoom, or via social platforms like TikTok and Twitter, the majority of our interactions are being done virtually.
Now listen, I’m not saying that virtual communication is bad.
It’s amazing that I can call a friend in Tokyo, or run my business through video calls. Virtual communication has given us the ability to connect in ways that have had a major impact on everything from the speed in which information is shared globally, to the overall efficiency and economic potential of our society.
But just because something is overwhelmingly good, doesn’t mean it can’t also be bad. When it comes to virtual communication, those downsides are why I feel we’ve become so hyperpolarized.
There’s a lot, but I concluded that the main three downsides of virtual communication that are fueling a hyperpolarized society are miscommunication, sensationalism, and accountability.
Miscommunication
I think the best way to look at this is to focus on text based communication. Texting, email, and other forms of text based communication are great. It’s awesome that I can quickly use my thumbs to communicate with someone anywhere on the planet. But that level of efficiency comes at the cost of quality.
When we use text-based communication, we don’t have the same control over things like tonality and body language. Those nuances are a benefit in face-to-face communication and when we remove those, it has a noticeable impact on how people are able to receive what you’re trying to communicate.
I feel like a lot of our conversations benefit from “the benefit of doubt”. When somebody says something verbally that might sound offside, more often than not we’re able to quickly deduce whether it’s negative or positive based on tone and body language.
Example being the dreaded, “we need to talk”. I think we can all agree that those are words we hate hearing. But at the same time, if somebody runs up to you with a big smile on their face and excitement in their voice, you’re going to receive that message very quickly and very obviously in a different way than if someone walked up to you with a straight face and said “we need to talk”.
Now if we look at a text based example, we run into similar issues, except now we can’t factor in tone and body language. How many times have you been in the situation where someone sends you a text saying “Ok.” Or an email response that reads “That’s no problem, I’ll take care of it.” Don’t you dare tell me that you don’t notice the “PERIOD” at the end.
If you’ve ever been attacked by the dreaded and ominous period that causes you to question the 18 previous messages you’ve sent in the thread, you know that meaning can easily be lost, misinterpreted, or miscommunicated via text. This high probability of miscommunication via text is one factor that contributes heavily to people becoming more polarized.
Sensationalism
Now let’s switch gears and take a look at the actual platforms that we’re using to communicate. To keep this short, let’s just focus on social media, and seeing as this will probably help with my SEO as well as touch on arguably the most controversial of the social platforms, let’s pick on Twitter.
Listen, love it or hate it, conversations are happening on Twitter. A global place online to have conversations is a good thing. It’s also a good start in making sure that people, all people, in all places, of all different beliefs, religions, passions, backgrounds and morals can have their voices heard.
However, the second ingredient for polarization comes in when you literally restrict the length of what people can say, and apply algorithms that reward virality based on engagement rather than overall quality, accuracy or legitimacy of thought.
Think about it, we have places online where we can talk about important issues, but hold on. We’re going to limit what you can say about it to a small character limit. Seems like a recipe for clickbait to me.
Almost any topic worth discussing, debating, arguing or sharing is complex and nuanced, requiring context, examples, supporting data, and elaboration.
If you’re forced to take a controversial or complex idea and distill it into a limited amount of characters, you’re only able to touch on the most sensational aspects of it. Conditioning people online to highlight the most dramatic sound bites of a conversation is another reason that people are becoming so sensitive to being “triggered”.
Couple that with the fact that algorithms are set to boost content that has high ”engagement”, and you start to see a positive feedback loop that incentivizes sensationalism.
I’ll pause here, I’m not saying I know how to reward content based on the quality of the idea….Yet.
All I’m saying is that rewarding something based on engagement (clicks, shares, comments) is begging for people to say the craziest and most outlandish things to evoke an emotional response.
Why can’t we reward people and provide them with social status for sharing views that they truly believe in? Views that they’re willing to stand up for and defend? At the end of the day, what are we without the things we believe in?
Accountability
Finally, accountability; my personal favorite. In my opinion, this one is obvious but the idea of anonymity online is actually pretty controversial.
Virtual communication gave us the rise in anonymity and pseudo anonymity.
The idea that a good chunk of the online population operate using usernames is something that we’ve all adopted as normal, but it’s also the final and arguably the most powerful driver of polarization.
If you’re wondering why every single social platform's comment section has devolved into a dumpster fire, it’s because people get to say things online that they would never, ever, under any circumstances say in real life.
Let’s use “Carter the 14 year old prep school student dripped down in Supreme as an example. Honour roll prospect by day, rizzed up with your girl by night. Deadly on Fortnight, his idols are anything and anybody associated with FAZE clan, and his YouTube history is filled with “Impaulsive” and Kai Cenate. Proudly wielding the username “nutsquat226”, make sure not to cross him online because you’ll end up with a comment reading:
“mY guY, YoU’rE A*s B**CH. YoU’rE LuCkY I’m NoT ThErE RiGhT NoW OtHerWiSe I’d SmAsH YoU. DoNt MaKe Me LaY tHeSe HaNdS oN yOu”.
Scary.
But let’s not forget Steve, the 45 year old keyboard warrior with Dorito chips and Coca Cola cans around his computer desk. Steve knows the truth, the gym is for losers. He could do it if he wanted to, but he’s not a sucker about to waste his time on appearances. Steve lives at his mom’s, but it’s not like he lives “with” his mom. He has the whole basement to himself.
Steve figures he might as well just cut to the chase and let everyone know what they’re missing out on, so Steve deployed his genius by securing the username “ladiesman217”. With the internet, the world is Steve’s oyster. He can wash his knowledge and insight upon all of us mere mortals. Just look at the advice he’s able to dish out from behind he computer monitor:
“KiM kArDaShIaN iS rEaLlY lEtTiNg HeRsElF Go….ShE sHoUlD LoSe WeIghT”.
Legend.
Ok, dramatic examples, but at the same time, this happens every minute on the internet. The reason this happens is because people can hide behind the anonymity that virtual communication provides.
When we have an environment where people can say whatever they want without consequence or accountability, that literally causes a complete and total breakdown of society. All the rules that govern civility and make our social contracts work get thrown out the window.
This doesn’t only translate into people saying absolute nonsense to one another, but it also leads to another modern crisis of communication which is the proliferation of fake news.
No accountability, equals no consequences for continuously and consistently spreading information that is fake, which of course, adds fuel to the fires of polarization.
Anyway, those are my thoughts on our current breakdown in communication. I figure somebody is going to tackle the problem, why not throw our hat in the ring.
Our goal with DB8 is not only to explore how we can elevate human communication, but also get back to normalizing the ease in which we can share ideas with one another, regardless of how controversial they are.
Today, I feel the best way to do that, is to bring back the art of debating. What does that look like after 30 days of working on this? Well, we launched a newsletter.
The Pulse Newsletter is where we can start exploring what works and what doesn’t when it comes to discussing trending or controversial topics.
Why is there no place we can go to get an honest public sentiment? Why is there no universal place that people can go to share how they feel about something, but also see how their community feels about the same topic? I think that getting an understanding of how people want to share their views, is step one in trying to tackle our breakdown in communication.
So look, if you liked this and didn’t get physically injured by something that might have offended you, let me know your feedback.
Also, seeing as we launched the newsletter, if you want to see how we’re going about the problem and also want to stay in the loop on more of my thoughts around this, give the newsletter a shot. You can subscribe at www.db8.com and It’s literally free.
If you don’t like it you can unsubscribe, i’m probably biased but I actually think you’ll find value from it.
Whether you want both sides of trending news articles, want to share your opinion by voting, or just want to get a vibe check on what people are thinking with the real-time poll results, it’s all upside with not risk.
Also seeing as it’s such early days, more likely than not you’ll see and feedback you give us get implemented into the product which!
Thanks, i’ll be back with some other idea to brain dump about next week.
