Stop Sharing Videos of People Talking

I told my brother to stop sending me videos of individuals opining directly into a camera, because of all the human distortions social media had admitted into our common life, the lone individual spouting an opinion to unbounded audience may be the worst.

Human communication flourishes in a context of relationship and shared space and time. The phone-filmed confessional video has none of those things. Yet it conveys urgent emotion and parodies an actual human connection. It admits no conditions to its understanding but wraps itself in a pernicious kind of moral certainty. As a vehicle of communication it inherently suspect.

Worse still, these videos are designed to excite the grievances and biases of their audience, which is eager to receive them and share them, often without even watching them to the end. They pose as earnest thought sharing, but, at bottom, they are thoroughly disingenuous.

It doesn’t matter if the author is telling me how I should treat myself or who I should vote for–the deficiency is the same.

I’m more interested in what you think. So call me and tell me instead of sending me video of what someone else thinks.