I recently came across a tweet that accused white Americans who choose to learn Spanish of cultural appropriation. Or, more specifically, I came across the mockery of a person who tweeted thus. The premise itself is farcical. Even if you buy into the exclusionary bigotry of the cultural appropriation movement (yes, that’s what it is), Spanish, despite its prevalence in the Western Hemisphere, is a European language. Moreso, it’s a Romance language, born of Latin, and holding much commonality with French, Italian, and Portuguese (among others). I’d dissect the tweet even further, but, really, what’s the point?
I know nothing of the original tweeter, and deliberately didn’t save or screen cap the tweet. The tweet speaks for itself, as does the reaction.
Both illustrate the down-side of social media and the ease with which people today can share their thoughts with the world. On the tweeter’s side, we witness the phenomenon of believing that an often fleeting thought is important enough to bestow upon the world – in perpetuity. On the responders’ side, we witness the “low-hanging fruit” or “target rich environment” ease with which people can assert their intellectual superiority.
One moronic statement, one big-ass dog-pile, and one more brick removed from the baseline of civility that is fundamental to a functioning society.
I know I sometimes find the desire to mock such idiocy irresistible, even as I grow increasingly aware of how pointless and counterproductive it can be. Many don’t see it that way, preferring instead to jump on such moronic exhalations by their political opposites as a way of establishing their side’s superiority.
We witness a similar object lesson from the recent White House Correspondents Dinner, where a comedian named Michelle Wolf headlined. Ms. Wolf, to the dismay of many, apparently broke with the long-standing spirit of the event, which is supposed to be a sharp but light-hearted fun-poking at the President and at journalists themselves. “Singe, don’t burn” has been offered as the proper mind-set. Instead, by many accounts, Ms. Wolf went way too far in attacking Trump and his staff, and one New York Times journalist (not exactly the core of Trump’s fan club) lamented “I don’t think we advanced the cause of journalism tonight.”
This high-profile event carries far more weight than a throw-away tweet by one nitwit, but it mirrors the latter in that one moron’s words or actions spawns a dog pile of guilt-by-association attacks and rebuttals.
How does this get fixed? How do we, as a society, move past this unfortunate and corrosive phenomenon?
I don’t know.
Each of us can do our best to ignore the dumbasses, but our silence doesn’t convince those who think dog-piling is how their side wins. We can try to police our own, and tell the dog-pilers on our side to cool it, but it’s difficult to do so without defending, affirming, or encouraging the dumbasses themselves.
Unfortunately, I think this is an inevitable product of human nature mixed with this instant technology, and it’s going to evolve as it will. Perhaps it sorts itself out, with a collective disgust at the extreme behavior that ultimately pressures both the dumbasses and the dog-pilers to chill out. Or, perhaps, it continues to lead us to a point of fracture, where we sort and segregate ourselves by belief and opinion instead. Only time will tell which outcome arises.
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