Tuesday, March 29, 2016

Tolerating Today's Tolerance (V2)


While tolerance serves to combat radicalism, tolerance can also fuel radicalism. Today's social climate indicates that we must rethink the way we utilize social media.




Our Digital Society. We all post on facebook, tweet, and share youtube videos. This new level of connectivity not only brings us closer, but more openly exposes our ideas and beliefs. As society slowly adapts, new social norms begin to integrate.

The Overly Tolerant Internet. The internet is now a domain where ideas circulate uncontrollably. People expect tolerance and acceptance, but even more so online. Ideas that are normally filtered through social circles spread more easily behind the facade our parallel internet lives sometimes offer. This overly tolerant nature seems to breed radicalism.

Appeasing the Internet. Social media users don't seem to acknowledge radical ideas as before. It's easier to continue reading your Facebook news feed than to stop, comment, and defend your beliefs. Bigotry and prejudice have wrongly been attached to the checks and balances normal society has on radicalism. Online, these checks and balances don't exist.

Working the System. Social Media should be used to not just circulate but filter ideas. By improving the feedback loop behind social media, we improve the rate at which society grows and develops.



2 comments:

  1. Checks and balances is a nice way to describe what you think should happen, Alec. I'm not sure if your post wants to touch on this, but how can this happen? Is it possible for anything to be done to change this current "swiping past" trend, rather than standing up for your beliefs?

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  2. I liked the edits to your post/video! It had a lot of substance and I think it would encourage a lot of discussion. A couple suggestions: Edit typos out of video, maybe add pictures/history to the text part of your post in case viewers don't watch the video, and tie post into concept of "change."

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