Shrugging
The “who cares?” people were saying “who cares?” in response to Peter Boghossian for one. I’m not a fan of Peter Boghossian’s, but this time I’m on his team as opposed to theirs.
Well, it shows it’s possible to agree on some of them, some of the time – but as I mentioned, there are people being ostentatiously indifferent and scornful. But broadly speaking, yes, there are some things that very few people will celebrate or shrug off with “I don’t care and neither should you.”
There are reasons for hope and optimism, I agree, but the twitter mob ain’t one of them.
Sad little assholes on twitter, safe in their warm armchairs with their chicken dinners and their kerosene lamps and their cats, complaining about being subjected to news of Ukrainian citizens being killed. Such an imposition on their freedom.
Is that what they are all saying.? Fortunately, I missed all that, as I never go near Twitter. From the little I have seen of it, I would say that is around the intellectual level of your average public shithouse. But I could be wrong there.
Could be worse, even.
The cynics aren’t entirely wrong that there is a lot of performative display of superficial behaviours designed to garner attention — as exposed on this very blog, with “the war in Ukraine confirms this unrelated thing I’ve been saying all along” a prominent example from the field. But that is an artefact of social media; if you pay attention long enough, you will recognise the pattern repeat itself with every sort of controversy or public event or matter of concern.
Twitter is a video game, a Hobbesian simulation of Warre. Expecting anything else of the platform is a recipe for bitter disappointment. Caveat twittor — twittum omnium contra omnes.
If you are moved to feel sympathy, or fear, or helplessness or hopelessness or something else entirely that motivates you to do something, consider donating blood or clothing or money, either to a specific Ukraine-focused charity or simply to your local community. Take a bit of joy in doing a small thing that will make a bit of difference.
I am reminded of a bit I heard on NPR many years ago. A man was describing another man who was obsessed with Teddy Kennedy. “He turned everything into a discussion of Teddy Kennedy. You could say ‘Nice weather today’, and he’d say, ‘Yeah, I bet the weather was just like this when Teddy Kennedy drove off the bridge at Chappaquiddick’. “