Speaking. Silence. Social media.

The weird intersection of inherently problematic platforms, politics, and parasocial relationships.

Oct 18, 2023

What does silence= today?

Almost 30 yeas ago I lived in NYC during the height of the AIDS crisis, and I have always believed that Larry Kramer was an American hero for his work founding and leading ACT-UP. ACT-UP adopted a protest poster that included the pink triangle that the Nazis made homosexual prisoners wear and the tagline: Silence=Death, and with their adoption of that poster, they made it a ubiquitous rallying cry.

It was shorthand for decrying the lack of attention and acknowledgment of the crisis from President Ronald Reagan and his government, but it was also a call to others outside the LGBTQ community to SEE what was happening and to SPEAK. To SUPPORT. To SEEK justice and to seek action from people who were in positions to do something. And in the case of this crisis, the “death” was quite literal. An entire generation of predominantly gay men (at least in the U.S.) was decimated by AIDS. If you weren’t alive in those times and in the many years when there were no drug cocktails and there were no preventative mechanisms, let alone a vaccine, you may not understand the trauma.

There is also the concept that silence=complicity, variations of which have been attributed to, among others, Albert Einstein, Elie Wiesel, and Bishop Desmond Tutu. It represents a similar exhortation to see and speak and support, and the implication that if one does not, one is on the side of the oppressor.

I’m seeing a lot of these calls to speak today, and I’m seeing these calls where I personally see most movement building take place now…on social media. Inevitably if someone actually comments apologetically on such a post about how hurtful silence is, the original poster (OP) will say, “oh, I didn’t mean you.”

And therein lies the problem with speaking vs. silence on social media. Years ago when I used to counsel brands on how to listen to what their customers were saying about them online, I would urge them not to chime in to every conversation in which their brand was mentioned. That this would feel creepy, not helpful, in many cases. Because, odd as it may have sounded then and still sounds now, people on social media do lose track of the very public nature of their online discourse.

Certainly there are ways to completely lock down your social profiles, so you can literally know exactly who is listening. but most of us don’t do that. Even if we did, we can’t control screenshots. Still, most of us go along our merry social media way imagining we’re only talking to our die-hards. The people who actually respond or comment or like our posts. If you’re like me and have been roaming these social media streets for a decade and more, it’s hard to remember everyone you follow, much less who may have followed you.

We have algorithms to thank for some of that. The early days of Threads seemed marked mostly by people exclaiming with joy that they were seeing posts from people they hadn’t heard from in years, despite following them on all the other platforms. In the algorithmic desire to “know” you, platforms shepherd you into echo chambers not entirely of your own making. So what you perceive as silence may be algorithmically-induced.

Another factor though is the essential asynchrony of “parasocial” relationships. The official definition of parasocial is utterly one-sided, namely the way we can feel like we “know” a celebrity (or social media influencer), but we do not know them in any sense of the word. I think there’s a less extreme, but common, version of this on social media, which is that we have relationships with people online where in fact both parties would say they know one another, but each of us would define the level of knowing quite differently.

This is why one person can read another’s post saying, “Silence from my friends is heartbreaking;” chime in to say, “I’m sorry,” and offer some explanation, and the OP can reply in genuine surprise that they didn’t mean to direct a pointed remark to that commenter. The commenter is off the hook, but perhaps disappointed too.

When vague-posting meets calling out, it’s a recipe for lots of people taking it personally. At least some of the time, I think that’s the intent. Like, why risk offending any individual by being specific, when you can instigate a lot of “if the shoe fits, wear it” reckoning more broadly?

I always remember one pearl of wisdom Gwyneth Paltrow dropped when I interviewed her at BlogHer ‘15. I asked her about being trolled hard by often-anonymous Internet commenters, and she said, in addition to the old standby advice that one shouldn’t read the comments, that (and I’m paraphrasing from my memory of it) “…if someone says something, and it really stings, I should probably sit with that and ask myself why…”

Is there truth in the harshest trolling? Usually not, but if it actually gnaws at your psyche, there just might be.

Whatever the level we “know” someone IRL or online, you can be sure you don’t know everything. Two of my #BuffyLifeLessons are that we can contain multitudes AND everyone is battling demons the rest of us can’t see.

When it was almost a week past the Hamas attacks in Israel, I finally got my thoughts together to record a 27-minute, slightly stream of consciousness podcast episode about the War. It’s not that I said nothing in the intervening week, but I said very little in online public spaces. And I said very little offline either. I read a lot; I followed everything. I ruminated a lot. I’m not a television news viewer…I find it too repetitive, argumentative, presumptive, narrative-driven vs. fact-driven, and generally bad for my mental health. I was keeping up, and I was processing, and I was questioning what my purpose would be in talking about it, and I was thinking about how I could be helpful and not start arguments with strangers on the internet (per one of my most enduring mantras). I was dealing with conflicting feelings and “both and” feelings that felt insufficient to the moment. I still live by my own definition of authenticity; I don’t have to say everything that is true, but everything I say should be true.

I finally pressed publish (and I hope you’ll listen) and one of the comments I got privately more than once was that people didn’t realize I was the daughter of a Jewish Holocaust survivor.

Did that knowledge buy me grace for my previous perceived silence?

I understand the hunger for people to speak. And the hunger to feel seen and supported. And the hunger to know where people stand. And the hunger to send a message. En masse. We know that consumers want to know where CEOs and companies stand, so why wouldn’t we want to know where our friends stand?

But too often we say things without thinking them through. We say things without all the information. We say things in reaction to the latest news item we saw. We say things without vetting them. We say things we think we should say, but not from the heart. We say things in a perfunctory manner. We say things despite being wholly unprepared for any response, let alone pushback or criticism. And perhaps most often on social media we say things when no one was, in fact, waiting for us to say anything.

So, as I say in my podcast episode: In this moment, I am choosing not to judge silence on social media. And given it’s apparently quite a revelation that I am Jewish, by heritage and ethnicity, if not by religion, on my mom’s side, I am definitely choosing not to judge any lack of people reaching out to check on me!

I don’t know what people know. I don’t know what people are saying that I’m not seeing, #damnyoualgorithm. I don’t know what people are doing IRL. I don’t know what people are dealing with. And yeah, it’s true, I also might not know if some people would hide me if I needed them too, but I’m probably not going to count on knowing that from a statement on social media either.

If you are prioritizing people in your immediate circle over your wider community, I get it. Do that. And if you want the US government to say or act a particular way, you know what to do. Tell your representatives (and share the language you used in case others might find it useful. If you want to). If you need to compartmentalize just to get daily life done, I can’t judge you.

If you’re finding it painful to watch what’s happening to real live people, I mean, I hope so, because that would mean you’re human. Remind yourself that if it’s painful to see them; think about how painful it is to be them. Let that guide you where it may.

And if you are letting your wallet do the talking, it’s much needed. And if so, and in the spirit of being helpful: Here is a list of vetted resources to help in Israel and Gaza, courtesy of Susan McPherson:

Until next time, please leave a comment and let me know your thoughts on any or all of the above. This is basically my blog now! And as always, I appreciate a share of this newsletter or my podcast.

This Week-ish with ElisaCP

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