I am not going to talk about Charlie Kirk.
Clearly, many people loved him and his message. Clearly, many people despised him and his message.
It’s not my job to tell you what to think or to change your mind.
However, what Kirk’s murder has taught me, or reminded of what I already knew, is that the inability to listen to other people’s points of view is ripping apart this country. This is the worst on social media.
I guess everyone has their moment of breakup with social media. My friends usually drop it for a few months, maybe a year, and then start again. Or they will cut loose Facebook, for example, but rely on other platforms. Many I have known dropped X when Elon Musk became “shameful” to support and moved to Blue Sky. It’s a common thing to have a social media realization.
I guess I had mine in the aftermath of Kirk’s murder. I made the mistake of clicking on an X video that a friend of mine sent to me that showed the actual shooting in all of its gore. That was a mistake. I don’t recommend watching the video.
(Watch my comments on the latest episode of Santa Barbara Talks by clicking on the YouTube video above.)
I have seen dead bodies before — Isla Vista and the David Attias car rampage on Sabado Tarde 25 years ago, and working in San Jose and covering homicides there.
In this age of social media, however, reactions are harsh.
Instantly, social media exploded with a variety of conspiracy theories about who really took Kirk’s life. Worse, the attacks came in all directions, with most people refusing to hear perspectives they don’t agree with.
Somehow, many in our culture have gotten accustomed to talking at you instead of to you. They turn to their keyboards to bang out a scribe, where they know all the answers and everyone else is just wrong. Many of those beliefs are laced in a variety of conspiracy theories. Alex Jones is a pariah, but his conspiracy theory mindset has been mainstreamed.
Believe me, I love my iPhone. I am on it frequently throughout the day. I love to read, I love to listen to music, and I love to post pictures of my kids.
I wish we could get back to a time when we used social media to support one another instead of yelling at people who disagree with us on the internet.
No change is happening when you download your largest words in a rant on Facebook about how the other side is wrong, or worse, when you lose online friendships because someone posts something you disagree with.
The internet is not real in the sense that it does not cultivate real relationships. You can watch all the TikTok videos of your favorite influencer, and they probably aren’t going to be there for you on your darkest day. Your friends in real life hopefully will be.
I wish people would talk to one another more. Put the phones down and have a conversation with one another.
Many people have forgotten how to develop real relationships in real time, or worse, don’t know how to resolve conflict in real time with people they disagree with.
Social media encourages isolation, one-way thinking, affirmation of bias and opinions, and creates a false sense of connection with other people. Our devices have become for many people our emotional lovers. People turn to them when they are lonely.
I wish we could get to a place where we promote our families, our friends and ourselves, and encourage one another to do great things. In journalism, smartphones are miracle workers. They allow us to capture stories instantly, in real time, anywhere in the world. In places where journalists are not allowed, iPhones and instant video tell incredible and important stories, and we all need that.
That said, our reactions on social media are dismal and beneath us as adults.
Some people don’t even read the full stories anymore, or don’t watch the videos; they just react and start typing from the headline or the first few seconds of the video.
Say what you will about legacy media — The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal — but that content is vetted. Sure, there are mistakes and bias happens, but no system is perfect. A vast majority of the content, nearly all of the content, is true and accurate, as accurate as the journalists know it to be that day.
Online social media commentary is mostly not vetted, but becomes “truth,” and then the algorithms push it to you over and over again, and your world view becomes narrow — just the things you want to see and the things that you already believe. You have heard it all before; you know how it works.
My wish is that people stop fighting on social media. Stop hating. Stop yelling. Get to know people in real life.
You may seem powerful in the moment that you are attacking someone from your keyboard, risk free, but what’s really happening is that this behavior is contributing to the overall erosion of standards of what constitutes truth and decent behavior.
If you don’t like something or understand something, or you violently disagree with someone or something, either go out into the real world to meet people and create political or social discourse that maybe will influence public policy and trends, or just ignore it. It is OK to ignore things you disagree with.
At the end of the day, you have the most influence on the people in your own lives — your own families and friends. Engage with them and people in the real world, not on social media. If we all spent less time on our phones and more time in the real world, we probably would learn to hate the other side a little bit less. And that’s at least a start to unwind this untenable situation we are in.
If you want to know what I think of Charlie Kirk, you can ask me in real life, in a non-performative setting, just me and you. And we can agree to disagree. Or not.
Joshua Molina is a journalist and college instructor who interviews a wide variety of people on the issues of education, housing, politics, culture and business. He is a former reporter at the San Jose Mercury News. Visit SantaBarbaraTalks.com to sign up for his newsletter and make a contribution to this individually owned podcast.