Estimated reading time: 8 minutes
Hiding from Our Beautiful World
I was on a cruise in the Caribbean, enjoying a vacation many can only dream of. The sun was high, the sky so clear and blue it almost hurt to see. Sparkles dotted the ocean out to the horizon.
It was one of those vistas so breathtaking, that I gave myself a reminder, almost a prayer. “This is why you work hard. This is what you struggle for, for moments of beauty like this.”
At least, that’s what I had said earlier. After, I withdrew to our cabin and pulled the curtain closed like some sort of eccentric zillionaire hiding from the world. In the dark, I stared at my cell phone. I had connected to the cruise ship’s spotty (and expensive) internet, so I could login to social media and argue with a moron. We were trading insults about an election that had just passed.
Fortunately, the scene outside was too gorgeous to ignore. My internal voice spoke up again, no longer reverent but furious.
“What the hell are you doing?!?!” it yelled. Somehow it got through. I looked up from my phone. What the hell was I doing?
That was the beginning of the end of my days as a Comment Commando.
Enlisting in the Comment Commando Corps
It all began in 2016, when dictator-wannabes rose to power in the USA. They’re still here in 2024, being awful and making life miserable for everyone else.
Back in 2016, I began reading books about survivors of dictatorial regimes. I sought guidance. What did the average citizen do to resist the rise of cruelty? Could it be stopped?
The main lesson I found was this: be visible. The human animal looks around for cues on how to act. If we see cruelty, we tolerate it more, ignore it, or worse, participate. If we see kindness, that too, is contagious.
The advice I kept encountering was simple: remain visible in appearance, habit, and speech. In as many ways as you can, advocate for a society of freedom. Don’t just vote. Be visible.
It’s not a new concept, but one I felt I could do better than I had been doing.
So we put up a sign outside our home where it remains to this day. It’s one of those with no allegiance to a party or candidate but rather to principles. As in, “In this house we believe in science, in kindness, that all people are equal, that love is love, etc.” A sticker from gay-rights group HRC went on the back of the car.
I don’t think these actions are going to save the world. Nothing will “save the world” as long as we have free will. But it was what the experts had said to do. I wanted to do more.
Where could I be more visible? The internet, of course. I’m a computer guy, I like the challenge of writing and articulating thoughts, and I’m decent with insult zingers. So I metaphorically parachuted into the badlands of Twitter and Facebook, seeking to become the terror of bigots and bullies everywhere.
Everyone Off the Bench
Now some might think I’ve screwed up this article by mentioning politics. “Ew, yucky!” is a summary of most common reactions. I’ve never understood that. If you don’t get involved in politics, it will get involved in you. Quite literally.
There’s a million ways you can dissect why bad behavior seems to be on the rise, but I distill it down to this: people don’t participate enough in politics. They consider it boring and tedious. They’re partly right. It’s often designed that way to discourage people from paying attention. But participation is necessary. Just like taking out the trash and unclogging the toilet, politics may be unpleasant, but tending to the task is required and ignoring it brings disaster.
Right now, we need everyone off the bench. Everyone has to get involved in politics. The bad guys have been working diligently to reduce our freedom for decades.
Now they are in positions of power and using our sense of fairness against us. For example, we respect who wins the election and let them make the decisions. That grace is not returned. They don’t respect anyone else’s electoral win but their own.
Note the differences in reaction between the presidential elections of 2016 and 2020. In 2016, the free will of the people was accepted by the losing parties. In 2020, the free will of the people has been attacked relentlessly even to this day, despite a complete lack of evidence.
Lar’s Law of Politics and Internet Arguments, a.k.a. The “No Life Advantage“ Principle
I don’t want to blame the average American for failure to participate. It’s not entirely our fault that we’re sliding into fascism or religious dictatorship or corporate takeover or whatever rancid dystopia-flavored smoothie results from those three heinous ideas mixed together.
The system is already against us. We’re worked nearly to death and by the time we’re done all the annoying administrative duties of survival, we’re exhausted. We want to relax and so we ignore politics. Just how the bad guys want it.
Exacerbating that is the “no life advantage” principle. The what? I’ll elaborate, but basically, in some fields, people who have “no life” have a built-in advantage.
Let’s start with you and I: we have family we love, we have hobbies, we have things we want to do, parts of life we want to experience. When we’re not pressured by work, we don’t want to get involved in politics because it’s tedious. We have a life.
Contrast that with religious extremists, bigots, and other bad actors. As we say in the vernacular, “They have no life.” They are miserable and rather than do something to improve themselves and fix their misery, they oppress others. Religious extremists (not all people with religious belief, but extremists) are even worse. The myth of a paradise-like afterlife is a weapon the bad guys exploit: “Yes, this political work is dull, but don’t worry about it. You’ll have fun in the next life.”
The “No Life Advantage” Principle has at least two implications:
- In politics, those with “no life” have an advantage because they will be persistent beyond anything a person who has something fun to do can match.
- In internet arguments, the person who has “no life” most often wins because they reply and reply until the other party goes off to do something else. The no-lifer gets the final say.
We good guys, we live-and-let-live types, those of us with lives, have an advantage too: there are far more of us. The problem is that not enough of us are involved. We need you NOW. Everyone off the bench! If we all do a little, we win, because we so vastly outnumber the jerks. Get visible!
With one small caveat: don’t burn out.
Being Visible in a Way You Can Sustain
Hold on a sec, if I’m so pro-participation, why is this article titled “Confessions” like I’m against it? Well, there’s a balance to be maintained. Participate, but don’t overdo it like I did. I’ve adjusted my Comment Commando strategy. I’ve learned to balance it with life.
You’ve heard of “work life balance?” How about “participate-in-democracy life balance?”
On that cruise ship, as I neglected that gorgeous view, I realized I needed to re-calibrate, or I was going to flame out and become another non-participator. You occasionally have to enjoy what you’re fighting for. And by fighting, I mean word-slappin’ user ChristAndGunLover2A with a perfect insult about his ancestry.
Back then, I was pleased with my visibility but concerned with the time I was spending. More than that, I felt I was being manipulated by social media. It’s now common knowledge those apps serve up extreme content to keep you engaged. Was my attempt at allyship serving as support for the marginalized or more to boost a platform’s daily user metric? Was I being visible, or was I …
- Brawling with trolls from a foreign nation bent on sowing animosity in the USA?
- Battling with humans paid to push an agenda, to portray unpopular ideas as popular?
- Arguing with pranksters who try to see how much they can irritate others?
- Debating with actual extremists and/or actual idiots, neither set ever changing their minds?
- Talking to bots from the platform itself so they can prove high “engagement” to advertisers?
I still use social media to be visible but I’m more careful about my time there. I now have a two-comment rule. I may leave a comment if I feel the need (or urge.) If someone replies, I am allowed one counter-reply. Then I’m done.
The sign in front of my house that marks us as visible advocates for freedom? That stays. The stickers, the flags, that all stays.
As for visibility, it’s there now, but more a habit, and I’m always looking for new ways to do it in a more meaningful way. I hope you do too. If not, well… remember what I said about ignoring the clogged toilet.
Imagine that on a nationwide scale. Let’s not find out what that’s like. Participate now, please. And get visible! Thank you!