(MENAFN- Gulf Times) I have come to think of it as the Vortex: the psychological whirlpool into which I can feel myself getting sucked almost every time I open Twitter, or Facebook, or any of the websites devoted to chronicling the mendacity and stupidity of the world by which I mainly mean politics in 2017. This metaphor is slightly self-serving, since it suggests not a failure of self-discipline on my part but an external force so strong I could hardly be expected to resist it. Still, that's how it feels. Once the waters claim you, you're no longer really in control.
At the very edge, the Vortex exerts only a gentle pull, which usually manifests for me as the thought that catching up with the news might be a relaxing break from writing or household chores. Or it's the inner voice arguing that having finally persuaded the baby to take a nap, I deserve the small pleasure of a few moments on social media. It's rarely relaxing or pleasurable in practice. But by the time I remember that, the current is too strong: I'm already firing off sarcastic one-liners, vigorously favouriting posts from people intelligent enough to share my opinions, or else actively searching for updates from commentators whose views, I know in advance, will render me livid. By this time, my stomach muscles have tightened and my jaw is clenched, which is the point at which some people erupt into sweary tirades or vicious personal feuds. But that's not really me.
Mostly, my ranting continues inwardly, sometimes for hours, so that I can easily find I've spent an entire session at the gym, or a trip to the supermarket, mentally prosecuting a devastating argument against some idiotic holder of Bad Opinions who will never have a clue how much I cared.
I realise you don't need me to tell you that something has gone badly wrong with how we discuss controversial topics online. Fake news is rampant; facts don't seem to change the minds of those in thrall to falsehood; confirmation bias drives people to seek out only the information that bolsters their views, while dismissing whatever challenges them. (In the final three months of the 2016 presidential election campaign, according to one analysis by Buzzfeed, the top 20 fake stories were shared more online than the top 20 real ones: to a terrifying extent, news is now more fake than not.) Yet, to be honest, I'd always assumed that the problem rested solely on the shoulders of other, stupider, nastier people.
If you're not the kind of person who makes death threats, or uses misogynistic slurs, or thinks Hillary Clinton's campaign manager ran a child sex ring from a Washington pizzeria if you're a basically decent and undeluded sort, in other words it's easy to assume you're doing nothing wrong.
But this, I am reluctantly beginning to understand, is self-flattery. One important feature of being trapped in the Vortex, it turns out, is the way it looks like everyone else is trapped in the Vortex, enslaved by their anger and delusions, obsessed with point-scoring and insult-hurling instead of with establishing the facts whereas you're just speaking truth to power. Yet in reality, when it comes to the divisive, depressing, energy-sapping nightmare that is modern online political debate, it's like the old line about road congestion: you're not 'stuck in traffic. You are the traffic.
And by 'you, of course, I mean me. (And you too, though. Don't try to wriggle out of this one.) — Guardian News and Media
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