#generational differences
In internet / social media commenting culture there’s the sort of assumption that’s so subtly and almost ubiquitously present that I can only really put a finger on it in its absence. This almost-universally expected element for comments and statuses in an online context could be labeled wit I suppose, which is vague but I can’t quite think of any other single word or brief phrase that captures it. The expectation is present both in social media statuses and in comments under statuses or in many types of online forums.
The expectation is that whatever you’re writing, whatever point you’re making, is either very heavily serious/sentimental (e.g. announcing the death of someone close to you or deploring a tragedy in the news) or a commentary, either as part of the discourse or a relating of someone happening in one’s own life, which must have a sharp (and preferably somewhat original and non-cliche-sounding) point to it. There has to be some subtle degree of humor behind the point being made, at least if it isn’t a purely argumentative response to someone else’s view. There is typically some very minor inference left for the audience as to whatever broader point (political, personal, or whatever) the commenter/status-writer is gesturing towards. Things are never spelled out 100% bluntly and baldly somehow.
And the reason I’m having trouble describing what I mean in the above two paragraphs is that I believe this is ingrained in our social media and discourse culture as such a low-key undercurrent that I don’t consciously notice it the vast majority of the time – again, it’s more that I notice its absence at once on the rare occasion when it’s absent. Recently it’s been on my mind because I’ve been perusing a small online space where it’s conspicuously absent by (of all random things) gradually going through the archive of old For Better or For Worse comics on the website GoComics: occasionally there are commenters who post under these comics and there’s somehow a complete lack of attempt to be incisive or make a new point or do anything but straight-up explain the joke a lot of the time (hereandhere are typical examples). I’m oversimplifying over thousands of examples obviously but there overall seems to be a complete lack of “wittiness culture” in that space, and I honestly can’t think of any other online space I frequent where this is the norm – the closest I can come to it is the way boomer-age people often seem to act on Facebook (but the regular commenters under the FBoFW comics come across as quite young). I notice something similar on the Peanuts archives at GoComics, except that there are more commenters such that every day there’s exactly one featured comment available which on average is of only marginally higher intellectual quality.
I feel like I’m still not quite getting at what I mean very well, but maybe someone else knows what I’m talking about and can describe it better than I can?
A few mostly self-centered comments about this week’s major world crisis: I’ve always been weak at world history and understanding most foreign affairs and don’t have enough background to really issue a judgment on Russia’s attack on Ukraine and what other countries (like the US) should do about it. I do find the idea of a country invading another country in general to be stomach-twisting and feel horrible for the Ukrainian people (and have known many Russians and a few Ukrainians over the years so this doesn’t feel as remote to me as some world events have). Everything I’ve known of Putin has given me the impression of him as a power-mongering and malicious person.
I can’t help but notice that pretty much all of the voices I hear from the Left (so, almost all the voices I hear) around me are denouncing this attack and professing total support for Ukraine in pretty absolute terms. All this said, I’ve long learned to distrust the notion that anything could be quite so black and white and wonder how much of this is the kneejerk tendency from the Left to side with whichever party is smaller and weaker. Or is this really morally equivalent to Nazi Germany invading other countries after all? I don’t know.
What I do know is that I only have so much tolerance for people on the internet around me going on about a possible World War III – I notice the same urge-to-freak-out reaction in myself as in January 2021(andother times around summer 2020) when people sounded like they were preparing for a civil war. Back then I was like 70% sure this was an exaggerated panic, but 70% wasn’t good enough for me to not feel like I was going to start to panic myself and I had to learn to limit how much of the social side of the internet I was consuming. With this being a non-US affair, I have much less certainty in my ability to assess whether comments about WWIII are an overreaction or not. But I might have to start limiting my internet activity again (the fact that I happen to have a ton of personal/professional stress at the moment doesn’t help).
(Also, what’s up with that meme I’m seeing about letting Gen Zers help you through this because they grew up preparing for nuclear war and something about cold pop tarts in foil… the part about their generation being the one that spent the most time preparing for nuclear war has to be tongue-in-cheek, right? I don’t even know anymore.)
