With the Republican primaries in full swing and the 2012 presidential elections in near sight, politics in social media seems dirtier than ever. About half the people I encounter via Facebook and Twitter — with ideologies ranging from ultra-conservative to shamelessly communist — have lately felt inclined to post statuses, charts, graphs, delightfully brief articles and the like with the apparent hope of changing their friends and followers' views on current issues in just under two minutes.
There are too many problems to count with this form of social media politics. If your opinion on President Obama's State of the Union address fits nicely into 140 characters, reconsider how insightful your opinion actually is. If you expect that the chart you posted on Facebook portraying how well or poorly Obama has influenced the economy will do anything but frustrate the other side and inspire a response chart depicting exactly the opposite, I can all but guarantee that you are horribly mistaken.
Many brilliant political theorists have written well thought-out arguments for and against countless political ideologies. Instead of reading even one of these and seriously evaluating it before forming such a strong opinion at the ripe age of about 20, most of us are far more inclined to share a two-paragraph Facebook post describing why this or that ideology is stupid, and I'm right and you're wrong, so you should vote for this guy.
These political posts are the greatest problem with social media. If you actually believe that you can disprove the validity of someone's general ideology faster than you can heat up a bowl of Easy Mac, then fine — keep blindly posting and blogging to ultimately nobody but yourself.
But I like to think that most of us here at Brown know this is impossible and that meaningful political debate involves a conversation, not a competition of posting snippets of arguments that validate or invalidate an entire ideology via social media.
Entering a 2 a.m. political debate in the depths of Keeney Quadrangle, however, is a frightening endeavor to say the least. It can feel as though people expect you to have already formed concrete opinions on all potential political questions, and that conversation you hoped to have quickly becomes a heated argument of picking apart the details of another person's point instead of listening to what they are actually saying.
With the possible exception of extraordinarily well-read individuals in political and economic theory, none of us are qualified to dismiss others' opinions at the drop of a hat — and certainly not with such intense rhetoric. Passing ECON 0110: "Principles of Economics" does not make you an expert on the recession, and embracing atheism does not grant you the right to dismiss religion as a legitimate reason for holding certain views.
It is beyond ignorant to reject someone's ideas without having a perfect argument for the opposing side. It is always stupid to call someone else's thoughts stupid. It is never effective to suggest that those who do not share your views simply do not understand politics, mathematics, economics or morality.
Maybe we Brown students resort to those sorts of nasty tactics because we want all the answers and all our opinions set in stone now. With too much information out there — at least half of which is hardly legitimate — we feel the need to be super opinionated and defensive to compensate for the lack of quality research we have actually accumulated on any given topic.
With this in mind, perhaps we could all make an effort to keep politics out of Facebook, though I am admittedly more guilty of keeping it in there than most students. Still, I have never seen anything political on Facebook or Twitter seriously alter someone's opinion, and I doubt that will ever change.
The same principle applies to the shrinking world outside the realm of social media. We should strive to keep political conversations more reasonable, less angry and more fun to participate in during the wee hours of the night, when nobody will be able to effectively articulate a great point, anyway.
As a member of the Brown community, I feel it is our collective responsibility to maintain an open-minded and inviting atmosphere for everyone because this is what we pride ourselves on having. We owe it to the future classes at Brown. It would be a shame to see one of our best-selling points slip away under the reign of social media.
Matt Brundage '15 can be reached at matthew_brundage@brown.edu.
