MATT BAI

The truth is out there, but it’s often discomfiting and nuanced and hard to find, and not nearly as satisfying as believing whatever you want and mocking those who don’t.

There’s no point in having an online mob if you can’t give it someone to trample.

The medium is the message — and the message is fracture.

America can have social media, or we can have a healthy democracy — but it might have been foolish to think we could have both for long.

We thought the companies that owned these [social media] platforms would care about the country and their impact on it. They don’t. They actively promote conflict and conspiracy and anesthetizing nonsense — because those things promote engagement, and engagement equals money.

What Americans seem to prefer — or at least the subset of them who live on social media — is a private square of people who already agree with them. The most successful of these preachers we call “influencers,” which basically means they get paid to manipulate you, and somehow you listen to them anyway.

America can have social media, or we can have a healthy democracy — but it might have been foolish to think we could have both for long.

There’s no point in having an online mob if you can’t give it someone to trample.

We thought the companies that owned these [social media] platforms would care about the country and their impact on it. They don’t. They actively promote conflict and conspiracy and anesthetizing nonsense — because those things promote engagement, and engagement equals money.

The truth is out there, but it’s often discomfiting and nuanced and hard to find, and not nearly as satisfying as believing whatever you want and mocking those who don’t.

What Americans seem to prefer — or at least the subset of them who live on social media — is a private square of people who already agree with them. The most successful of these preachers we call “influencers,” which basically means they get paid to manipulate you, and somehow you listen to them anyway.

The medium is the message — and the message is fracture.