It seems as though it’s become fashionable to make fun of people who say they want to “do their own research.” Every late night host that I watch has done this bit, and I’m sure you’ve heard people doing it on television, online, around the Thanksgiving table ... probably pretty much everywhere. This bugs me a bit. I understand why people do it: they’re trying to combat a lot of ignorance and misinformation out there regarding the COVID-19 vaccines, and sometimes it requires extreme measures. But I still think this is the wrong approach, for a few reasons.
First of all, it’s completely making fun of people for the wrong thing. I’m not actually opposed to making fun of people who are still claiming they’re going to do their own research on the vaccine. But don’t make fun of them for wanting to do the research ... make fun them for taking so damned long. It’s been a fucking YEAR people! Look, I’m one of the people who said they wanted to do their own research, so, you know what I did? I did my own fucking research. It didn’t actually take that long. The information is out there, easily available, and it comes from multiple sources so you can cross-check accuracy. At the end of my research, guess what I discovered? That the vaccines might not be perfect, but they’re WAY better than the alternative. So I completed my research and then I went out and got vaccinated. Now it’s a year later and anyone who’s still claiming they’re going to do their own research is full of shit.
Now, there’s also a contingency of folks out there who are pointing out that making fun of people is not really going to change anyone’s mind. Oddly enough, pointing out to people how stupid they are doesn’t immediately make them want to listen to what else you have to say ... go figure. While I’m sensitive to this line of reasoning, I also think that it’s probably too late to try to change the minds of folks like these. And I suspect all those late night hosts have come to the same conclusion. Still, even though I appreciate this, and I also make fun of those people (if for a slightly different reason), I do have to admit that there’s a certain amount of self-indulgence going on here. A certain amount of wink wink, nudge nudge, it sure is fun to share a joke with another superior human being about how superior we are to those other inferior human beings, eh? There are probably better ways to expend the effort.
But the biggest reason that it bugs me to make fun of people for wanting to do their own research is that it seems like it’s sending a very weird message ... a message that’s exactly the opposite of what we really should be sending. The people who want to do their own research are the ones who don’t want to believe everything they hear on TV, after all. So, I guess the message that Stephen Colbert and Trevor Noah are trying to send me is, just shut up and believe whatever I tell you ... ? But, see, that’s exactly what got the idiots into trouble in the first place: just blindly believing what some idiot on Fox “News” told them. So I don’t really think encouraging blind trust in whoever is “smart” enough to get their own TV show is really the message we want to put out into the universe.
It’s a weird feature of the echo chamber that most of us live in these days that we are constantly bombarded by people saying “don’t believe what that idiot told you just because they’re on TV!” and then they expect us to believe them when they say that for exactly that reason. And what’s weirder is that we do, for the most part. And what is perhaps the weirdest (and saddest) of all is that we perceive absolutely no irony in this cycle that we’re locked into.
I see a weird parallel with the Republican party’s current trajectory. See, I’ve long said that the number one threat to our democracy is gerrymandering. The use of judicious gerrymandering makes it so that Republicans don’t have to appeal to Democratic voters (nor Democrats to Republican voters): the majority of Congressional districts are “safe” ones, where there is essentially zero chance of the other party winning. The only thing these politicians have to worry about is being “primaried”—
And recently I heard someone on television pointing this out and saying that it really needed to be addressed. Except that person wasn’t a Democrat. It was Chris Christie, a prominent Republican, and one of the few who is currently unafraid to oppose Trump (and actually ran against the man in 2016, although he certainly did spend a fair amount of time kissing his butt in the interim). I found it weird at first to hear my opinions coming out of the mouth of someone whose party would almost surely suffer if the ideas were implemented, but then it occurred to me that perhaps this man recognizes the echo chamber trap too. Perhaps the irony that we’re all so bad at perceiving is not lost on him. I mean, maybe he also believes that drawing the district lines in an unbiased way would be good for democracy. I mean, that’s not how I thought Republicans were supposed to think ... but then that’s just my echo chamber talking.
I’m glad that Noah (and, to a lesser extent, Colbert) are really making an effort to get more people who are opposed to their point of view on the show. I always thought Jon Stewart was the best at this: the delicate dance of “I’m going to force you to come out and say that you really believe the bullshit you’ve been spouting, or else categorically deny it” without descending into mean-spiritedness. I don’t know that Colbert has the knack, as much as I adore the man for his other qualities. Noah has potential, but I really think he’s just now starting to flex. It’s not like there’s been more Republicans on The Daily Show recently than Democrats, but certainly more than there used to be: Kristen Soltis Anderson, Dan Crenshaw, and the aforementioned Chris Christie, all in the past month. I look forward to seeing more discussions like those. Maybe more breaking out of our respective echo chambers is exactly what we need.
No comments:
Post a Comment