I've been watching a lot of podcasts recently and I’ve realized just how much social media is destroying our ability to find common ground.
It came to a head recently while listening to an incredible conversation between Ezra Klein and Ta-Nehisi Coates – two men with whom I generally align myself. They are friends and yet they fundamentally disagree with one another about a current issue.
Repeatedly throughout their conversation, one of them would say to the other, “I think we can agree on this,” and use that as a jumping off point to better understand where they diverge. Both of them are supremely passionate about their own point of view, but there was a ton of patience to better understand one another.
Now, contrast that with online discourse.
I’ve actually tried the whole “can we agree on this” thing over the years.
It doesn’t work.
This is because most people don’t comment online to have a discussion. They come to score points by looking smart/funny/trollish/whatevs. Whether we’re talking about social media platforms, dedicated online communities, or comments on news pages, we post something and rarely come back to look for replies.
Almost never.
And even when we do, the vast, vast majority of the time, we simply double down and defend our position. This serves no one in the long run.
Don’t worry, I’m not leaving LinkedIn. But I’ve been cutting most other media consumption to near zero. Once I realized how hard it is to find common ground with people online, talking to them suddenly stopped being interesting.
I’m not interested in arguing anymore. I’m way more excited about finding the surface area where we still overlap.
I’ll keep answering questions in post comments, but if you want to have a conversation, let’s schedule some time to talk synchronously. In person, if possible.