It strikes me how many of us feel compelled to share our take on recent events across social media. Silence, in this interconnected, online world, can feel like disengagement, as though not weighing in means you’re absent from the public square. It is as if you don’t care if you haven’t posted your hot take, shared someone else’s hot take, or sufficiently liked/loved enough hot takes by others.
But before this era of constant connectivity, people who commented on every major news cycle item were often dismissed – as eccentric at best, a crank at worst. Back then, if you wanted your opinion heard widely, your options were limited: write a letter to the editor, call into a radio show, or literally stand in the public square and shout. Today, all it takes is good Wi-Fi and a keyboard.
Sadly, tragedy is nothing new. People have experienced horrific deaths for millennia. What’s different now is the speed and saturation. News, and often video, of these horrors reaches us almost instantly, pushed to our feeds before we’ve had a chance to breathe or realize what we are watching. Stories that once took days, weeks, or might never have reached us at all now arrive in real time.
For better or worse, we live in an attention-driven world/economy. Things that are controversial, outrageous, provocative, and titillating get amplified and promoted by the algorithms that are the drivers of the attention economy in which we now find ourselves. The old phrase “if it bleeds, it leads” is still true today, unfortunately, just turbocharged as we can all be journalists and writers now.
In a world where attention is king, amusement will outperform information, and spectacle will outperform arguments. The more easily something attracts our attention, the lower its cognitive load, that is, the less resistance there is to overcome for us to be drawn to it.
In his book, The Siren’s Call, Chris Hayes says the following: “In such a landscape, the craft of capturing attention shifts from depth to immediacy, from substance to surface. The algorithms that govern our feeds favor the vivid over the nuanced, ensuring that our gaze remains anchored to transient spectacles rather than lasting truths. Ultimately, the battleground of influence becomes a contest of visual and emotional resonance, rather than of reasoned discourse”.
One lesson I’ve learned in these last few years in my online pursuits is simple: it pays to pause. Waiting and reflecting before hitting “post” can save you from amplifying half-truths or outright falsehoods. Too often, misinformation spreads unchecked, sometimes because of honest mistakes, other times because bad actors see an opportunity to exploit tragedy for agenda, division, or personal gain.
The issues we see being debated in our feeds are not simple black and white issues, as many try to portray them. They are highly complex and nuanced issues that will require difficult, honest conversations to solve. These are issues that belong to all of us. They do not stop or respect party lines or borders. They do not change because of the color of the state in which you happen to live. They do not go away because we avoid them or avert our eyes and pretend they don’t exist. Every time we shrink from hard truths or try to shift the blame to someone else, we leave more space for these issues to remain/resurface.
It is hard not to feel like we are living inside a national crisis or the beginning of one. I don’t think the mass shootings and targeted attacks are random. I fear they are symptoms of a culture that tolerates expressions of hatred, low barriers to violence against each other, and social/political rhetoric/discourse that invites harm.
And too often, those entrusted with leadership seem to pour fuel on the fire. Across the spectrum, responses to recent events have ranged from tone-deaf at best to dangerously inflammatory at worst. Some of our elected officials have been the chief offenders. We deserve better. Leaders should be modeling how to respond to tragedy, not exploiting it to deepen divides.
We can all do better. It is easy to get caught up in doomscrolling sessions that convince us that certain doom awaits us all. We could all probably benefit from more depth and substance and less amusement and spectacle in what we consume. Many of us would benefit from pausing before posting/sharing and listening more to our fellow brothers and sisters rather than villainizing them.
I saw this shared today, and it feels like the right place to end: September 11th, 2001, would be very disappointed with you, September 11th, 2025.
certifiable 
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