Diversity and echo chambers

(Nimue)

I’m over on Bluesky, where a lot of people are adopting a block and ignore policy for dealing with unpleasant people. Of course the ‘echo chamber’ accusations are flying about. Objectionable people often firmly believe that they are entitled to an audience, and that freedom of speech means being owed a platform.

It’s good to encounter diversity. We all benefit from exposure to different perspectives and experiences. However, that doesn’t equate to having to engage with hateful people. Haters aren’t very diverse at all, frankly if you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all. They don’t do accountability, facts of evidence. They’re entitled, self important, into controlling other people, upset by diversity, threatened by anything that doesn’t look like them. Their takes on most things are misinformed and badly thought through at best.

You can safely leave them out and still experience a broad range of perspectives. There are plenty of reasonable people with informed takes whose views will differ radically to your own. There’s a lot to be said for creating opportunities to empathise with people who are very different to us. However, when someone is driven by hatred, about the only useful response is one of pity. Haters often present themselves as victims, yet have a great deal of privilege.

Many people out in the world have a lot of very good reasons for being angry. However, the key difference is that these are people who are *for* something. There’s something they want to build, or fix or improve. You’ll find them talking about the changes they want to make, and this usually looks like fairness, kindness, justice and the like. It can be about just trying to stay alive. Anger around injustice, abuse, oppression and genocide can be tough to encounter but also vitally important. We should be uncomfortable about these issues, and getting out of the comfort zone to hear this is important.

Protecting your own mental health is also important. The less comfortable you are, the more entitled you are to seek comfort. It is the people who are most comfortable in this world who need discomforting – these are also the people with the most power, and the most scope to change things.

You do not owe haters your time and attention. There’s very little point engaging with people who only want to cause harm and tear things down. You won’t persuade them rationally that they are out of order. You won’t appeal to their better natures, their conscience or their capacity for empathy. Many of them are simply bots anyway and exist to spread misery and cause anger.

We all have a finite amount of energy to deploy. Deciding what constitutes the best use of your time is a good idea. There’s not much of a case to be made for arguing with strangers online, and so many better things to focus on. Don’t be persuaded that you owe hatful people your time and attention, or that you need to understand them. There’s very little there to understand – they are neither original nor complicated – they just want to make you as unhappy as they are.