The reason the internet is so full of bad information is because most people have never learned how to handle information.
College (university) used to make you an educated citizen of the world: it used to make you good at thinking. Good at handling information. Not only is this no longer the case, but today’s universities are actually making the problem worse. Because they have become hubs of ideological nonsense. (Plus, when everyone has a degree, no one has a degree. When something becomes a commodity, it is by definition no longer a mark of excellence.)
And it goes without saying that public schools absolutely do not teach us how to think or handle information.
But more specifically, most people have never learned how to handle information in a way that doesn't interfere with their identity. And maybe that’s the bigger issue.
We upvote and share all the wrong things, because we are incapable of separating information from our own sense of who we are. And much of the internet is designed to connect directly with who we are — or rather, who we think we are. Who we wish to be.
A lot of posts on the internet are little more than empty calls to upvote: an extreme headline or statement which you are morally compelled to upvote if you care. If you don’t upvote it, you must not care. If you don’t share it, you must not a be a [real American, animal lover, decent person, etc.].
It’s not a call to be informationally correct, it’s a call to be a certain kind of person. And many people answer that call, because they want to be a certain kind of person.
If we stopped upvoting and sharing nonsense news stories and bad opinions, they would stop being a problem. After all, you can’t sell something for which there is no market.
How to be very wrong, all of the time
In an age of connectivity, all of us are the stewards of information. Not just professors or scientists or politicians. All of us are both able, and in some sense morally expected, to contribute to the information ecosystem. The internet makes the information ecosystem everyone’s environment and everyone’s problem — and therefore everyone’s responsibility.
If you see something alarming on the internet, it’s your responsibility to upvote it or otherwise raise awareness. That’s what social media has done to us: it has taken mainstream media’s raison d’être (to make every problem your problem) and magnified it all the way into the pockets of our jeans. It’s inescapable.
The problem is, most people know almost nothing about almost everything they see, hear, or read. Which means most people know almost nothing about almost everything they upvote or share.
It’s hard to imagine a worse way to build something than by handing it to a bunch of people who don’t know what they’re doing. You would never hire someone to build your house if they had only read headlines about how to build a house. You would hope that they had read a few articles, too. Or spent a wee bit of time actually building them.
In science or math, if you don't have anything useful to say, you simply can't speak. Your opinion doesn't matter, and it’s obvious that it doesn’t matter — only your grasp of the facts matters.
The internet isn't like that. People are not only accepted, but socially rewarded, for speaking about things they don’t understand. When something offers social rewards, it rarely matters what other incentives are in place. The social rewards are going to trump everything else. Because social rewards are tied to our sense of status, relevance, and personal value. They’re tied to our sense of identity.
Politics and religion are considered huge no-nos in the US. From the time we’re old enough to think, many of us are raised to never talk about politics or religion at work or in public. Because these topics have two very special characteristics:
a) they require absolutely no expertise to participate in (because the discussions are based mostly around opinion, subjective morals, subjective interpretation of the Bible, etc.),
and b) because they are tied to identity in a way that something like mathematics isn't. Who you are religiously is who you are. Who you are politically is who you are. So, disagreeing with someone’s politics or religion in public is the same as attacking who they are.
So what you get with the internet is that pretty much everything becomes like politics or religion: people take moral responsibility for spreading awareness of an issue, a news story, or an opinion. The internet peer pressures us and says “I demand that you have an opinion about this.” And, being weak and gullible as we are, we listen. Because we don’t know how to say no, because we don’t know who we are or what we stand for.
Going on the internet and getting into hateful discussions is an American pastime now. We do it when we’re bored. Because the system rewards us for doing so. The system gives us identity for handling (mishandling) information. The system gives us the feeling that we’re “fighting the good fight”… even though that claim is sort of like saying “I’m a fitness expert” without ever setting foot in a gym. It’s just a ridiculous claim.
Information and identity
But why does it have to be like this? Why does disagreeing with someone have to be the same as attacking them? Why can’t we separate information from identity anymore?
Because our society runs on information now. It really doesn’t run on relationships, parenthood, work ethic, communities, or any traditional values anymore. It just runs on digital status. If your phone isn’t saying to you “you have status,” then you don’t have any.
And we conflate that with worth.
If your post doesn’t get any likes, it must mean that you didn’t say something worthwhile. Maybe you should be more extreme — maybe you should mishandle more information, and then you’ll be worthwhile as a person. Because then you’ll have likes and engagement.
We have so little in life that we truly identify with… and because of that we overcompensate by trying to identify with things that are too big for us or simply not relevant to us.
When I was in high school, I was struggling to find an identity. Like, really struggling. I genuinely had no idea who I were. Because of that, I made a point to try to seek feedback and worth from as many groups as possible. Even groups that I completely did not understand.
I was sort of friends with the popular kids, sort of friends with the burnouts, sort of friends with the upper classmen, sort of friends with the nerds, and sort of friends with the outdoorsy guys. By spreading myself so thin, I only confused myself more.
I lacked a real identity, and what I did in response gave me even less of an identity.
I’m not saying you can’t be friends with lots of different kinds of people. You can, and maybe should. But I’d have probably been better off just choosing one of those groups and seriously committing myself to spending time with its members. Then maybe instead of zero real, true friends, I’d have had one or two.
A lot of political vomit (which masquerades as news) gets passed around the internet by the mere obligation of being a member of a group. The same way that you get invited to parties in high school that you really don’t want to go to, but you have a crippling terror of missing out. So you go and drink 21 beers, puke, and get hung over because your ego says you must. Because your membership in that group places an obligation on you.
(By the way, internet hatred gives you no less of a hangover than alcohol.)
The world runs on information now, and we prove it every time we share something we have no business sharing.
Political content becomes “upvote if you believe the other guys are wrong for this particular thing” and, with no research or nuance required, the piece of news-vomit becomes a tribal messaging ritual where people feel morally obligated to participate simply to wave the flag that they belong. To something. Because most people don't feel they belong to anything. I mean, my goodness, we barely even feel close to our grandparents or cousins anymore. The nuclear family has murdered our sense of identity. We’re out for ourselves and only ourselves.
Is it freedom? Is it progress? Yea, but it sure is lonely.
Drugs
In the absence of the church, close neighborhoods, and big demanding families, we have to find something else to hang ourselves on. Ergo, politics. It's the last refuge of the irrelevant. And I don't say that to make fun of people for being irrelevant (I’ve been neck-deep in it before too); I'm saying that as a logical conclusion. Most people don't feel relevant. To anything. That's just a symptom of our time.
One of my favorite things in the world is when I see people cut the cord between themselves and media and join the real world again. You could set up a camera and watch them get happier in real time. Because it forces them to find new (better) ways to identify themselves.
And when I say politics, I don’t just mean “politics.” I also mean things like getting in semantic battles on Reddit over the proper behavior of a “real gamer.” Or arguing over philosophy that almost certainly neither side actually understands. Or arguing with people over what it means to be a caring mother. These arguments are about subjective opinions, and are almost always completely worthless. They’re just groups of people swapping bad information trying to make themselves feel more relevant.
So when I say “politics,” what I really mean is “playing status games with information.” Which is more or less what politics is anyway.
But internet politics is like eating junk food when you’re hungry: it gives you the feeling of being full, even though you’re worse off than before.
We have yet to figure out how to manage a world of information. Or, to manage ourselves in a world of information. This is still a very young problem.
And I don't necessarily think most people can or will fix themselves and get better at handling the internet. Most people's best bet is just to stay away. If you aren’t the sort of person who is willing to curate a healthy, responsible internet ecosystem around you, you probably shouldn’t be on the internet. Again I’m not saying that with judgment. I’m saying it as a statement of self-care.
I can’t be trusted to use drugs responsibly, so I don’t use any mind-altering substances. Including alcohol. That’s just my cross to bear. And the internet has turned us all into irresponsible drug users.
But let’s be honest, most of us will never give up the internet. In fact it’s almost socially and professionally impossible to do so now.
Fortunately, there is at least a basic treatment. A treatment that can help some of us manage ourselves better in a world of information. And it happens to be the same thing that makes you better at almost everything else in life: reading. Especially books. Especially old books. If you become a cultured and wise consumer of good information, you become better at having your own ideas about all information. More importantly, you get better at dismissing bad information outright. Which is the absolute least of what we should all be doing.
Offended
Funny enough, this conversation also answers the question “why do some people get offended so easily nowadays?” It’s because those people have made so many different things part of their identity, part of their moral position in the world, that they take just about everything personally. If someone has the wrong politics, it becomes personal. If someone doesn't see gender or history or culture the same way they do, it’s personal. If someone is wrong on the internet, about anything, it’s personal.
Because, and here’s the cliché, people have it too easy. Subsistence farmers don’t have time to be offended. They’re too busy doing timeless things such as surviving and loving their children.
In simpler societies, people's identity is just “being a hard worker and a loving brother.” Here in the modern West, it's “how many of the world's problems can I place squarely on my own shoulders?” Which, in some cases, translates to “how many different moral badges can I wear to show the world how good I am?”
But if you try to stand for too many things, you stand for nothing. Because you don't have enough time or resources to care about more than just a few things. You can't meaningfully contribute to all that many things in this life; you have to be picky.
As Paul Graham said, you have to keep your identity small. Especially now that the world is offering you so many different things to care about, so many different things to “be.”
You can’t be all of them. Mathematically speaking, you can be almost none of them.
In the movie The Patriot, Mel Gibson’s character Benjamin Martin avoids going to war because he doesn’t have the luxury of doing so. The problem is too big for him. And he has kids now — he can’t afford to put himself in danger being the bold young soldier he once was.
But then, after his own son is killed by a British officer, he finally grabs his old soldier gear and goes to war. Because at that point the war is his own personal fight. It has (understandably) become part of his identity.
Hopefully no one ever harms your son or mine over some information on the internet. And until they do, we should probably just not care that much. Keep your identity small. Keep it where you can do something about it. Be a sister. A husband. A friend. If you do those things right, the internet isn’t going to matter.
One more thing about identity
Wherever possible in life, replace “I'm right” with “this is right” or “that's right.”
Try really hard not to say things like “I know I'm right.” Instead, say “I just can't see any way this isn't right.” If you've ever met someone who bases their identity on being right, you can see the difference.
Which is why “I told you so” is such a dangerous thing to say. Because it shows people that you're more concerned about being proven right than you are about cooperating. You have made being right, your identity. No matter where or when you live, that’s an ugly personality trait. So don’t do that.
Drink some water and don’t share information that sucks.
JDR
“In an artificial world, only extremists live naturally.” - Paul Graham
"And the internet has turned us all into irresponsible drug users."
Recently, I've asked a few of my close friends to show me their daily screen usage time. None agree to do so. They know it's horrible. They know they spend hours on doomscrolls and all the other types of scrolls. They are addicted. Addicted drug users.
It's reassuring to read your piece which see's the issue cleary - sometimes I wonder if other people are as worried about phone/internet/social media usage as I am.
This was a seriously deep and investigative piece. Very good writing Justin. I'm subscribing so I can hang around for the next ones!
I love the advice you give here so much about keeping your identity small and leaving the internet for the real world. One thing I have struggled with while develop myself is that everyone has strong opinions about what I should or should not do as a young man. Marry early, marry late, don't date at all, save when you are young, spend when you are young, learn X programming language, no learn Y.. on and on.. it didn't help that I am the kind of person who is always trying to fit into a group and feel that I belong.. it was not until I kept following advice and ending up unhappy that I learnt that all that matters is what works for me or what is practical for my specific situation.. You've made me understand what was happening