In Winifred Gallagher’s Rapt, she talks about focus as a means of overcoming our instinctual fear. We read books and plug into phones on public transport to tamp down on the fear that we’re travelling alongside strangers, a source of physical danger and possible contamination as flu season begins. We set aside places like bathrooms and kitchens where unclean tasks are attended too, allowing us to set aside the fears of and rituals to prevent contamination unless we’re in that room.
Then someone using the public restroom forgets to flush their floater. The ritual of the bathroom is broken, and your attention is drawn to all those fears you’re subconsciously setting aside. You are reminded that the room is a place of pollution, for all that we try to keep it clean and wash our hands before leaving.
Social spaces used to have conventions that help us set aside our fear of other people. We behaved professionally in the work space, limited what we talked about. We had a party persona, a friends persona, and one for family. Then someone broke those conventions – talked politics at a party, or made threats in a professional setting – and our attention returned to the fundamental fact that we are surrounded by strangers. Strangers who may not think as we do. Strangers who may be a threat to us.
The great advantage of social media was the way it connected everyone. The great flaw was the fact that so few people recognised what those conventions in social spaces meant. That all those things we never talked about in polite conversation were constantly in one-another’s face the moment we clicked “friend.”
Your colleagues and casual acquaintances set up camp in your lounge room, where you used to relax. People you got on with, in certain contexts, were revealed to be more complex and nuanced. People talked about work on your day off. We all revealed things, by accident, that were once kept to close friends. Certain views, once held in private, grew vehement when out in public. Disagreement felt more and more like attack, because there was no place to hide from it. Friendships and acquaintances were constantly in review for potential threats and allegiances, buoyed on a stream of rich, new information.
We all joke that SOMEONE IS WRONG ON THE INTERNET, but how can we not feel the instinct to argue? Our attention has just been drawn to our differences, day after day after day.
