First up, why would you want to hurt anyone? Not physically, I mean, but verbally. Why?
Well, of course, the answer is you might want to hurt someone when you're in an argument and you're losing. The standard line then is to use ad hominem. That is to attack the person, not the argument.
If you're on the Left and you're losing an argument to someone on the Right, you might use one of these old favourites:
- "Well, you're just spouting far-right talking points". All-purpose. The Swiss Army knife of ad homs.
- "You're a racist". To counter any criticism of a person of colour, in any context at all. Can also be used more widely. Pretty much anyone can be tarred with the racist slur.
- "You're a bigot". If anyone disagrees with anything you say, anything at all.
- "You're a xenophobe". If you're discussing immigration.
- "You're a misogynist", if they criticise any aspect of a job done by a person of colour.
And so on. And on, and on...
But I reckon the one that's a real arrow to the heart of your conservative interlocutor (hereinafter, m'lud, known as "the enemy"), before you blow them right off, before you leave the field of battle, before you ghost them on FB and cancel them from your life, is this one:
"You're just captured by your YouTube feed"
[Or Facebook or Instagram, or Tik Tok, or whatever]
Sure, this one looks feeble compared to the others above. But consider this:
First, it is of course ad hominem. It says nothing at all about argument being made by your enemy.
Second, it demeans your enemy. It condescends to them. It tells them they are foolish and naive. That they don't have the brain to discriminate, that they can't sort the wheat from the chaff. That they are subject to the craziest of conspiracy theories on the internet. That they believe anything they read and see. In short, That they can't think for themselves.
My counters are these:
Most people are not engaged with politics. They get on with their lives without worrying about any of the stuff that some of us do and that I do in the posts of this blog. It's perhaps only around 30% of the population that has enough of a deep interest in these topics to get to the stage of having to need a killer counter. This varies by age, with older folks more interested than younger. In the US, only 9% of 18-29 year olds are interested.
Of that 10 to 30% everyone is biased. Everyone. As I discussed here, years ago.
Most of us never go the the battle front, or to famine areas, or enter halls of Congress. Even those that do are not unbiased. They'll be affected by what they se and experience. We know from many war memoirs, for example, that the same battle, let alone the same war, will be seen so differently by everyone writing about it.
The challenge then is to try to understand as many facets of an issue as you can.
And here we have interesting data: those on the Left tend to read and watch only media on the left. Those on the Right tend to read both Left and Right media. Even if the conservatives did not do so, they are swimming in a sea of media, of government, of academia that leans heavily Left. So those on the Right have a default setting of being more aware of the other side's arguments than vice versa.
As for social media "capture", I can only speak about YouTube, as I don't do FB or Instagram. I'm on X mainly to see what important people of the world are saying.
Does YT "capture" folks? Does it "grab" people on the Right, to drive them down rabbit holes of disinformation, delusion and conspiracy? For sure there are some. But there are also people on the Left who are lured down rabbit holes. We learn in David Harsanyi's "The Rise of Blue Anon" about the conspiracy theories on the Left. Including the Grand-daddy of them all, the one that like a Zombie just wll not die -- the Russia collusion hoax.
YouTube has its downsides and dangers (for some). But overall I consider it a wonderful tool for humanity. We are blessed and privileged to have it. Never before in the history of humankind have we been able, at the press of a button, to see the speeches of world leaders, to watch debates in real time, to participate in Town Hall meetings, to listen to long-form podcasts with people of high intellect.
Am I "captured" by these? By only one side of the debate? Do I seek only confirmation bias via YouTube videos?
I won't say mea culpa. Because I'm not guilty, m'lord. Non mea culpa. Non ego felum. I am not to blame!
On YouTube I subscribe to a decent number of left-leaning sites. The likes of Pod Save America, the Daily and Charlamagne Tha God. On X, née Twitter, I follow about 300 people and I've made it personal policy to have half and half on each side of the aisle. So that I see posts even by the egregious Robert Reich. (Who has said, this Titan of the Left, "The Republican Party wants to turn American into a theocracy". Yeah, right Rob...).
So, yeah, I would find it pretty offensive to be told "you're just captured by your YouTube feed".
I'd rather be called a "racist" if it's a choice of slurs. I don't think I've ever been called a racist, TBH. Nor a "xenophobe". The closest call came in an encounter in our local supermarket. I was in line to pay and was idly eavesdropping on a young couple, mainlanders chatting in Mandarin. I guessed they were now living in California, as when they spoke to any other gweilo in the queue, they spoke in fluent SoCal. Then, something weird. The guy up and tried to push in front of me. I remonstrated. "Hey buddy, I'm in line here!". He went back to his wife and said to her, huffily, in Chinese Bai Pi Zhu, "White Skin Pig". Which is pretty racist I thought. I considered a stinging retort in Chinese -- was working on one -- but then was my turn to pay and I left without saying anything. I felt fine about that, because as with any of these racist issues, it's the person making the comment who's the dickhead. The bigot. They're the one fault, not you.
Just as I'm not the one at fault for wanting to read widely, on all sides of the aisle, and watch widely as well, on the wonder of modern technology called YouTube. Where I am not captured. No, not at all.
