Internet & Identity

Thursday, February 13th

For today, a less glowing review of the internet. From Jia Tolentino’s Trick Mirror:

I’ve been thinking about five intersecting problems: first, how the internet is built to distend our sense of identity; second, how it encourages us to overvalue our opinions; third, how it maximizes our sense of opposition; fourth, how it cheapens our understanding of solidarity; and, finally, how it destroys our sense of scale

---

The past few posts have mentioned my affinity for the internet, but also how human nature rears its head in everything we do.

It’s not clear to me if the internet helps or worsens our innate tribalism. On the one hand, everything is at our fingertips, including people from every walk of life. Naively, I would hope that this increases our affinity for others.

On the other hand, we have no obligation to consort with them, and treating them poorly is far easier, emotionally, than it might be in real life. We don’t have to look others in the eyes, we’re often granted quasi-anonymity, and we’re constantly performing for everyone else (but particularly our own tribe) with everything we write.