Friends now often tell me that they avoid tweets, posts or other contributions about the war in the Middle East or Ukraine. A few days ago, renowned British journalist Simon Jenkins even admitted to the Guardian that he could no longer watch news from Israel and Gaza, even though he traveled to some war zones.
What he and more and more people can no longer tolerate is the terrible tabloidization of every conflict, which is often simplified into a spectacle on social media and on TV. They feel better if they do not see or hear contributions from the war zones, even though they actually see themselves as informed and critical contemporaries. They do not want to turn away from the suffering, but they do not like the way this suffering and the extreme violence is presented in the media.
You can still hear the breathing of the hunted and refugees
They want reliable, down-to-earth facts and knowledgeable expert commentary, but instead they hear on TV and on Instagram, Twitter, Tiktok or Facebook the breath of hunted people and refugees talking to the TV cameras on piles of rubble. On social media, we can’t be sure for a second that someone won’t share another brutal scene with us.
Instead of information and informed interpretations, we see speculation and weeping relatives or chilled army spokespeople, all people who stand without any critical distance from the horrors. As a result, the perpetrators are always quickly identified, and afterwards, as Simon Jenkins notes, all that remains is a feeling of powerlessness.
But not everyone can or wants to simply unplug and forgo evening television or social media. On the contrary, you learn to live with the daily horror or even go along with the quick accusations – and you sound like you are standing in the middle of bomb craters.
What permanent digital connectivity does to us
The 53-year-old Austrian author Eva Menasse, who wrote beautiful bestsellers with ‘Vienna’ and ‘Dunkelblum’ and is also one of the most politically prominent intellectuals, has written an extensive essay about what permanent digital connectivity does to us. How it accelerates and inflames our dealings with important social and political issues, how “the anger, the hatred, the excessive demands, the frustration, the rampant irrationalism, the conspiracy stories” increase as a result.
Digital modernity has a strong impact on interpersonal relationships, as Menasse shows. The way we conduct debates has also changed. We have become drastically aware of this during the Corona period. Back then, we could see firsthand how reason-based science works. Safe vaccines and effective behaviors were quickly found.
The down-to-earth specialists and health politicians did something that has become completely unusual or almost unnatural in our digital age: they sometimes asked for more time to think about it and told us to investigate and investigate more thoroughly. Sometimes they also admitted mistakes, because rational thinking and science always involve verification and falsification.
Disinhibition brutalizes public discourse
But a completely irrational and highly aggressive anti-vaccine group soon formed, raging on social media and spreading superstitions and untruths. As we all spent more time at home and in front of computers during the pandemic, we got a sense of the terrifying potential for disinhibition we have to live with in digital modernity.
The technical term for this is ‘online disinhibition effect’. As Menasse writes, this disinhibition causes an “erosion and brutalization of public discourse, the widespread destruction of decency, tact and generosity between people.”
In the digital sphere, “the gross, the most exaggerated, and the most controversial are most prominent,” and outrage is the feeling that keeps people glued to their devices. That’s why fighting terms like cancel culture, woke, or cultural appropriation can easily lead to digital escalations, with the waves of excitement spilling over into conventional media and even into political election campaigns.
The “airbag from time” is missing, everything happens so quickly
The question of whether these are facts or grossly fictional is secondary in our new home of ‘digitalia’. If you don’t want to get lost on social media, you have to “blow yourself up big time,” says Menasse, even at the risk of creating a “shitstorm.” “The speed and massive outcry removes complexity from debates as suddenly as oxygen in a fire,” says Menasse. The “airbag from time” is missing, everything happens extremely quickly, too much just continues to influence.
Eva Menasse, born in 1970, belongs to the generation that, as she herself says, has already learned to use social media quite well, without being able to suppress a “slight contempt for much of it”, because they remember the pre-digital world. It by no means remains categorical digital pessimism, but rather recognizes the positive effects of social media, for example in the case of MeToo, but even here there is a general skepticism, fueled by digital means, which suddenly puts all institutions in almost all sectors under general pressure stood. suspect.
The digital always influences and changes the analog world, but internet thinkers such as Jaron Lanier or James Bridle and also Eva Menasse emphasize that the real world is analog, and not digital. However, digitalization is transforming individuals and societies increasingly faster and with greater consequences. The way we perceive has changed.
In the end, often only a “brutal simplification” remains
Even in digital modernity, the essay, as used by Menasse, has become an anachronistic form: the essayist approaches a subject, revolves around it, allows himself detours and flashbacks. The essay form is not for writers who want to surprise their audience, not for thesis makers and notorious know-it-alls. In the essay you also listen to opponents and try to convince them with better arguments. This means that the essay relies on the endurance that we are increasingly losing in the high-speed digital age.
Eva Menasse makes it clear that, especially when it comes to the ubiquitous digital debate topic of anti-Semitism, progress can only be made with calmness and understanding for those who think differently. Anyone who constantly moralises to a boiling point and always argues with ‘genocide’ or brandishes the club against anti-Semitism only promotes the ‘overheated moral struggle’ with which they try to intimidate and throw away the opposition. In the end, often only “brutal simplification” remains.
Critics could now easily dismiss Eva Menasse’s essay by saying the book was outdated before it hit the market. It is true that her essay on the ugly face of our digital debate reality could no longer cope with the horrific analog reality of October 7 because the book was already in print.
But Eva Menasse can convincingly demonstrate how the discussion about Israel, the Palestinians and anti-Semitism in all its facets was already present before the Hamas massacre. The whole debate has been bubbling for a long time, but since the Hamas terrorist attack, the mood has become more explosive and anti-Semitic crimes are increasing at an alarming rate. Eva Menasse’s essay is therefore not outdated. The outbreak of war in the Middle East has made this even more relevant.
Soource :Watson
I am Amelia James, a passionate journalist with a deep-rooted interest in current affairs. I have more than five years of experience in the media industry, working both as an author and editor for 24 Instant News. My main focus lies in international news, particularly regional conflicts and political issues around the world.
