Social media fights, they all look the same and lead to the same place.
I admit it, I get drawn in myself. I comment less these days but I often read the entire thread and imagine what I’d say. It’s hard not to play.
One common bit that happens is the request for real facts, which is sort of funny because facts are no longer capable of changing minds. There are just too many of them out there.
If we’re to be honest with each other, we’d admit we don’t actually want facts and we don’t want to change our minds. We want to be right and we want the other person to lose the argument. We want our friends to swoop in and tell us how smart we are and how right we are and we want the other person to go away thinking that we’re a mighty impenetrable wall of knowledge.
We want to look good and we want solidarity but only with the people we came with.
The fact is, if we were standing in a room alone with this person and sharing spinach dip or guacamole, things would be different. If we grew up living next to them, things would be different. If we knew their life in its sweetness and sorrow, it’d be different. If we watched them walk through one day from start to finish, I swear to you, it’d be different.
Doesn’t that count for something?
Why wait for the shared guacamole moment? Why not start sooner?
We can start sooner.