I’ve shared a lot here that 2 or more things often happen at roughly the same time (either to me personally…or to society, generally), where it’s hard to ignore the lessons they seem to be sending….the trends they’re revealing.
As I’m sure most of you are aware, yet another mass shooting happened yesterday in Louisville. Just a wk after Tenessee. Immediately “sides” were taken, by everyone w an opinion. Fingers were pointed. Othering happened. And here’s the thing: NOTHING changed. “Othering” happened after Tennessee too – why do we think anything is going to change bc the death numbers reached X+5 instead of X?
Words, more than ever in the history of our planet, are being used to DIVIDE us. I’m saying something that’s not very popular for the SM alg0’s.Those things prey on division (as does traditional media) bc they are what riles up our emotional brains & keep us here – generating more clicks & more $ for advertisers & these platforms. The assault on words is awful: we bucket & categorize ppl into SO many diff labels & make “THEM” the enemy. I’m not gonna even give credence to the labels, but in MH it’s: “they” don’t understand what “we” go thru. In politics it’s “they” are the issue & “we” have THE solution. And we’re conditioned to hate certain words that come to define certain “classes” of ppl.
2 days before Louisville, Darren, Theo & I were taping another episode of our podcast (slide➡️) We’re All A Little “Crazy,” & the topic was how bullying is leading to suicides, & @darrenrovell shared it’s why one of his favorite collaborations he’s ever done is his “Nerd” t-shirt(➡️)…a cartoon of him as a middle schooler w big glasses & hair. He’s taking a word that divides us, “you’re a nerd” & taking back ownership-no, that doesn’t hurt me, “nerds win in the end.”
Call me a counter-culturist but we NEED campaigns like this (more to come on this idea to take down bullying & re-owning what certain labels/words mean). Let’s not buy in to the labeling/bucketing/separation. Let’s find commonality & make CHANGE actually happen. Pointing fingers & othering isn’t getting anything accomplished. It’s actually tearing us apart.