From Capt. Fogg at Human Voices:
“I’d hate to think there’s a national discussion going on that I’m not part of”
says the man in pajamas with a laptop, in bed next to his sleepy wife. It’s a cartoon in the New Yorker but it could be you, it could be me, obsessively Facebooking and thinking that it really was a place of national discussion and we really were part of it. But it isn’t. It’s a place designed to seem like the real thing: perhaps like Westworld where the people around you are not what they seem. Indeed, some are just software. Some are paid to influence you. Some just want an audience they couldn’t otherwise have or the feeling of having one as they shout into the void or shoot at people who don’t actually die.
In any event, the people who will read the comments you make, see the pictures and political messages you share and post are mostly selected for the purpose and so are your contributions that appear to a selected audience. We preach mostly to the converted and they to us and so the challenges and questions and contrary observations rarely force us to explain or question ourselves.