From The Walrus (Canada), July 31, 2023:
Why does every online discussion terminate in ethical grandstanding?
An alien arriving on Earth in the year 2023 might believe social media was created solely for strangers to yell at each other. It has become unremarkable that, for example, an anodyne tweet by a woman who enjoys drinking coffee with her husband every morning would provoke outrage. “This is cute and all but did you think of all the people who wake up to work grueling hours, wake up on the streets, alone, or with chronic pain before posting this?” fumed one person. Or that expressing sadness over how difficult the early months of the pandemic were for new parents leads to a series of replies detailing how others “had it worse.” These exchanges are varied in subject, but what is consistent is how these banal discussions predictably devolve into a fight over moral superiority.
Look at any social media post that has more than a dozen responses; inevitably, one of them will attack the original post on the basis of some perceived moral transgression. Discussions of bike lanes deteriorate into fights about ableism; posts about the environmental impact of fast fashion unravel into accusations of elitism; the term “pregnant people” is somehow degrading to women. This can also take absurd forms. When an American writer tweeted that Canadian law dictates all burgers must be well done (not true but funny), the replies quickly turned rancid like room-temperature raw meat. All of a sudden, posters were deploying the suffering of Indigenous people and the victims of gun violence to dismiss the other country’s position on preparing ground beef.
So-called discussions like these no longer remain about an issue or a question at hand but become about whose moral position is the purest and most unimpeachably correct. (This is a shame, because the best way to prepare a burger is a topic worthy of introspection.) While this phenomenon is pervasive on social media—which is designed to amplify the most extreme and provocative takes, thereby rewarding users for posting them—it’s also omnipresent in politics, traditional media, and corporate spaces. In January 2022, REI, a retailer selling gear for outdoor activities, prefaced an anti-union statement with a land acknowledgement, wrapping an obvious act of corporate self-interest in the gauzy veil of inclusive language.
It turns out this phenomenon has a name: moral grandstanding. In their book Grandstanding: The Use and Abuse of Moral Talk, philosophers Justin Tosi and Brandon Warmke argue that we often raise issues of justice and equity not to advance meaningful social causes but to generate positive attention for ourselves by denigrating others. Sometimes this involves piling on—joining a Greek chorus of reproachful replies without contributing anything new—or exaggerating one’s moral outrage for dramatic value. In doing so, we dilute the impact of critical ethical issues and foreclose the possibility of productive public discourse. The goal is not to understand but to win. Grandstanding is not just about demonstrating that your position is right but that your opponent’s position—and, by extension, their moral character—is wrong. What was the original point? Who cares: you are ethically bankrupt and here’s why....
....MUCH MORE
This seems like a satire it is so goofy-funny.
Since I have refrained from making a damn fool of myself in 140
280 characters, preferring to do so on the extended runway of the
Blogger platform, I, and many others can no longer read more than one
tweet of a thread. Thank you Mr. Musk.
(actually I was strongly advised to stay off all of those sorts of things. Strongly)
