How aesthetics destroyed privacy and polarized us
Has the internet led to more polarization, or is this more of a great unmasking, where people feel more comfortable to share opinions they've always held?
Tracy has written a super-interesting discussion about how the online disinhibition effect has dovetailed with our tendency to send aesthetic signals to our communities, arguing that this has been a key ingredient into our polarization.
“Corporate platforms encourage us to aestheticize formerly private endeavors, like reading, so they can become signals too. Our overall online activity — which platforms we use, which sources we read — becomes another abstracted signal; sharing a Fox News video sends the opposite signal as linking a Jacobin article. Speech itself has become a powerful aesthetic signal.”
It’s certainly thought-provoking. I have a few competing thoughts:
It’s certainly true that our private lives have become aesthetic signals. Instagram, Goodreads, Swarm, and apps like them have encouraged us to share more private activity — and we form pictures of people and how they mesh with our own interests based on that activity.
But did that really lead to polarization? I can tell you that my own politics have not shifted. What’s different is that I’ve found more people who feel the same way I do, and I feel less alone in having those opinions. But I’m in the same place on the same map. I’ve learned some new things about peoples’ lived experiences — I wouldn’t have as clear a picture of the trans experience without social media, for example — but my reaction to them would have been similar before social media.
So is it possible that what we’re seeing is not polarization but a lack of political masking? I’d offer that, perhaps, more people feel more free to express radical opinions, because there is more social proof of people having them in public. In turn, more people are exposed to those arguments and find themselves attracted to them. This is not the same thing: it’s not aesthetics but genuine values alignment.
The conclusions are perhaps no less troubling. While I’m not particularly moved by people worrying about what they call the “far left” — the so-called far left in America would be considered reasonably centrist in parts of Europe, with views that basically just relate to universal healthcare availability and not letting poor people die — we’re also living amidst a political climate that is increasingly reminiscent of 1930s Germany.
It’s not a fun thing to come to the conclusion that a bunch of people really are intrinsically attracted to what amount to Nazi ideologies, but that is what I think. And if you consider the history of America over the 20th century, including Jim Crow, the McCarthy period, and even the post-9/11 furore and introduction of the PATRIOT Act, it checks out. Those are all popular fascist movements.
On trips to Germany, I’ve stayed in guesthouses where the owners felt safe enough to quietly show off their pristinely-kept Nazi uniforms, perhaps because of our Germanic last name. (In reality, of course, the reveal was horror movie material.) In the UK and US, I’ve had people feel comfortable enough with me to reveal their dislike of people of other ethnicities, or their opinion that women should be homemakers, or any number of other deeply regressive opinions. I’ve seen tattoos furtively hidden under shirts. Those people weren’t polarized by the internet: they were always there.
So that’s my take. This is not so much a polarization as a great unmasking. There is truth in the idea that aesthetic signals have led to some conformity, and there are, unfortunately, purity tests on all sides. I suspect there are also some morally rudderless people who have decided to hitch their values to particular wagons based on their popularity. But the underlying train tracks were always there; they’ve simply been dug out and given a bit of a polish.
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