Notifications Turned Off
Not long ago, a revered publication to which I subscribe did a feature on an online site known as Reddit, unknown to me before. The article noted that with minimal publicity, Reddit had enrolled tens of thousands of subscribers dedicated to a parallel theme of their publication. Apparently, rather than being a fully open forum like Twitter where anybody can access anything without defined themes, Reddit defines subjects of discussion, allowing any subscriber to that subject to post and respond while keeping other threads hidden to minimize mind clutter or perhaps distraction. I enrolled in three, the one noted in the Journal to which I maintain my subscription, my medical specialty though I am now retired, and my current town. I have familiarity with all but really only participate in the one profiled in my journal, though I am happy to answer inquiries from newcomers to my area and to respond with medical information to mostly people who have a doctor in my specialty but convey less than optimal trust. For the first time ever in any expression of opinion, one of my comments got over 100 Likes. Which raises a serious concern, do I care how readers respond to my thoughts? Should I care?
Expressing what I think is not at all new to me. Indeed, it has become almost an adult hobby. In my school years, concern over adverse consequences overtook my craving for expression, but once securely employed where the only people who knew who I was were the ones that needed to know, I could set my world view, or at least responses to what publishers publish, to paper with no fear of reprisal. By then I also earned a professional title, when appended to signature added 10 perceived IQ points to my stature. I never called talk radio to express myself verbally as my imprinted speech pattern would have taken those ten IQ points away. Moreover, the written response enables me to edit, sleep on it, and never become immediately defensive the way experienced talk radio host entertain by flustering their callers. Only written expression for me. I remain enduringly grateful to the many teachers who insisted that when I read something, I think as I go, and when done make a quick assessment mentally to what has been conveyed.
It required little extra time, as I never read a magazine, news article, or journal study for the purpose of responding to it, other than for my boss who asked me to edit a textbook chapter he had authored. This interest in no way displaced my professional obligations nor did it interfere with any petty hobbies in competition, as there were none. Just some quiet time with a paper and pen, followed by the electric typewriter that I purchased as a college freshman, some Correct-Type or one of those wheeled erasers with a brush that could obliterate fresh ink from quality typing paper, an envelope, and a stamp. Then onward to the mailroom where clerks sifted it, editors or operatives read all or some, and a few appeared in print an edition or two later. A fair number of those were mine, on paper, accessible to hundreds of thousands by subscription or purchase, untold more picked up off their doctors’ or hairdressers’ waiting room tables. No feedback. Just a rush seeing my name, usually with title, in print. Knowing it was selected among other submissions added to the thrill. Like most flash pleasures, it doesn’t last very long but got repeated often enough to replenish the satisfaction, no matter how minor or transient. I did not particularly care if anyone other than an editor and designated proofreader ever read it. The creation was mine, the perceptiveness that generated it also mine. And feedback to me personally was entirely cordial “I saw your letter in ___” without any comments of its content.
We still have Letters to the Editor, screened by an adjudicator for print. But we also have online invitations to express thoughts on a subject somebody else prompts, be it an article that took effort to assemble, a tweet of rationed characters, or somebody else’s work copied and pasted as something not their own but that they hoped others would find either their minds or their ids in higher gear because of it. There are no envelopes and stamps, or they remain hidden if there are, but still thoughtful or emotionally irate communications distributed that way. Amid the ease of response and the absence of any meaningful potential for adverse consequences, we now have inherited the Wild West of opinion exchange. Screeners have mostly disappeared or in popular forums are overwhelmed. Nobody claims accountability for creating a barrier to comments measured more by their hurtful intent than their contribution. We have effectively pried off the manhole covers to offer the trolls daylight with no butterfly nets to recapture them or confiscate their ISP access.
Arguably, to make matters worse, electronics fundamentally has a quantitative basis so now we keep score. How many views, how many likes, comments from contributory to gratuitously inflammatory have claimed parity that they shouldn’t really have. No grades from teachers or professors to cover in red what we should have expressed differently or maybe not at all. Unlike the era when we had no way of knowing who read what, Facebook and Twitter and others use real names which can be searched on Google. As part of our subscriptions, they appeal to our vanity with personalized profiles of our work, education, often age, marital status, geography, and recreational attractions. They don’t display automatically but they are there. An enterprising teenager can do a mighty decent Science Fair project by just taking a public figure’s post, looking at the comments, dividing them into friendly and hostile, and see which group is more personally accomplished. Or maybe even those who live by our votes have staff to do that for them while musicians and related celebrities count more the attention than the type of attention. We have reached the age of Pooled Ignorance. Perhaps this opportunity to not only to respond but to be counted among the responders appeals to those nebbish Dunning-Kruger icons, those Pooh Bears of limited brain, or at least limited insight, who think their ability to splash their slogan across a screen and get a Like for it provides sufficient illusion of ability.
While these tabulated response scores and the verbal sentences or paragraphs create a measure of clutter within the most valuable marketplace of ideas, I have no interest whatever in usurping the task of the Opinion Editors to select which to pursue further. In some ways we have Sodom in reverse. Find ten worthy people and the evil people survive as well has been replaced by find me ten trolls and the whole response thread gets ditched, even if there are ten worthy commentators. Abraham could not find ten honorable men in Sodom. I can find far more than ten trolls on any Twitter thread of a public figure. Ditch the thoughtful comments as filtering processes become overwhelmed.
As I pursue my expressive hobby, now not only as a responder but as a primary author, I stopped keeping score. My work is just put out there for anybody to do what they want with it. Thoughtless slogans reach my visual and auditory cortex all the time, each with good screening mechanisms honed through evolutionary biology. I cannot do that with comments to articles I author or remarks I make to the works of others. Fortunately, Facebook and others leave me the option of not being notified of responses, whether emojis or words. Some offer the option of removing subsequent notifications after the first. Others still clutter my email with some message that somebody with a provocative avatar has added a comment to mine. The email service allows me to delete without opening the message.
The approach of our successful elected officials seems the way to go. They campaign, the votes get counted. Our most popular Presidential candidates had a third or more of the voters express a preference for somebody else. But that third of contrarians never deter pursuing the ideas associated with those candidates. Just like theirs, my thoughts are mine, they are put in public, and I don’t even need majority approval to refine my ideas or create new ones.