What About Me?

This is your brain on social media.

High Noon by Edward Hopper (1949)

Back in journalism school, we Newspaper boys and girls indulged in healthy tribalism with the moulting wings of Magazine, and Broadcast. We were ‘dinosaurs’ oblivious to digital asteroids. The broadcast tribe were ‘failed celebrities’ infected with a childlike yen for stardom.  

Newspaper and Broadcast shared a unitive disdain for the slouches of the Magazine wing. That lot didn’t even train Shorthand. For two hours each morning, we’d translate Phoenician scribbles into legible copy, as a strident Welsh woman slashed hypnotic letters into the air. It was like a scene from Triumph of the Will. 

Those arrivistes on Broadcast had a point. Whenever I endure British news, they’re never far from the screen. Our alma mater is the fountainhead of British journalism, supplying pixels and paper with over half its top talent. 

I say this not to humblebrag—I’m not winning Pulitzers, reader—but to anatomise what has gone very wrong at the very top, very recently. 

One of the instructors there recanted a phrase as if a Tourettic tic. Squeezed into every skull, the mantra: “Why is this lying bastard lying to me?”

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Last week, our media neglected that maxim. All of them—The BBC, Sky News, CNN, and the New York Times—beclowned themselves. ‘Palestinian Health Authorities’ claimed Israel had bombed the Al Ahli hospital and slaughtered 500 innocent people. 

On the word of Hamas—that terrorist organisation which beheads babies, livestreams rape, and gloats about killing Jews with its bare hands—our media stoked an ancient eruption of condemnation, protest, vandalism, riots, and good old Jew hate. 

On Sky News, a storied alumna of that school adopted the hardboiled moral clarity of a film noir detective. Talking to an Israeli representative, she slashed at his throat: “Was it you?!” The method was theatrical. The question was rhetorical. 

On the BBC, a reporter ventriloquised the know-nothing whiskey-nosed derelict day-shifting down the Dog and Duck. In a fit of conjecture, he said he couldn’t see how it would be anyone but Israel. 

A few hours later, evidence suggested militants had fired an errant rocket at Israel. As one-third of these do-it-yourself death devices do, it went askew. This one landed on top of the hospital. 

Compelling and independently verified information didn’t glimmer the bubble under which most had camped. 

Representative Ilhan Omar, whose mendacity and stupidity are the sole constants of a world in permanent flux, swallowed the Hamas line like a heron downing a trout. 

Later on, Omar blamed the little people for her weapons-grade fuck-up. With wife-beater logic, Omar implored us to verify sources and be more responsible next time. If you don’t want a black eye, ensure you serve dinner promptly. 

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This strain of conspiratorial thinking is on the rise. Social media is to blame. 

Twitter Brain is an affliction in which the mind mimics the crude algorithms that govern the internet. 

The symptoms of Twitter Brain include a craving for novelty, long-term memory loss, and an inability to think critically. Like the Good/Bad algorithms that inform social media, the Twitter Brain thinks in the same crude, black-and-white manner. 

That is by design. Facebook, amongst others, employs psychologists to inflame your monkey brain—the amygdala—with ‘content’ tailored to your preference. It’s a dopamine-powered hamster wheel. You are the hamster. 

The more time one spends online, the higher the likelihood of infection.

Here’s a soft-boiled example. A tech bro wondered about ‘in real-life podcasts.’ His bright idea was to gather some friends for a free-flowing conversation. No cameras, no microphones. They could even enjoy pizza and wine! That's called socialising.

On TikTok, presented with the age-old problem of coaxing ketchup from the bottle, I witnessed what was billed as a genius hack—place the bottle on its head and wait. That's called gravity. 

Twitter Brain has more sinister implications. Generation Z, unbeknownst of a world without social media and who lives almost entirely online, is the only group to excuse the heinous depravity of October 7. 

(Obviously, the Zoomers reading Oxford Sour are of sound mind.)

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If you’re wondering how Auschwitz happened, Rwanda happened, Srebrenica happened, and Holocaust denial happens, here’s a real-time study of wilful delusion enabling wilful horror. 

Following October 7, the selective sceptics on the far left and far right disputed claims that Hamas beheaded babies. In the face of heinous evidence, they demanded more evidence. As someone said, for the true believer, no evidence is necessary. For the sceptic, no evidence is enough. 

That's what happens when we swap the truth for My Truth. Ideology compels believers to bend reality into doctrine. In this amateur surgery, they diagnose the ailment before rooting around for the correct symptoms. 

And yet, the market for conspiratorial thinking is bottomless. All one needs to say is Question Everything! Hundreds of thousands and even millions will flock to the cause. 

The problem with questioning everything is one often achieves the same result as questioning nothing. An open mind is a good thing. But a mind that refuses all is the same as a mind that accepts all. There’s a difference between writing and typing. 

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If you want to be popular, embrace the sensational over the thoughtful and the instant over the mature. Nobody ever lost money duping the gullible. 

And yet, Elon Musk gushes over this dopamine-addled culture. Gleefully, he says: “The articles printed in newspapers are quite literally yesterday’s news.” 

Yes, but yesterday’s instant news claimed Israel murdered 500 hospital patients. Today’s news tells us a rather different story. 

Musk mistakes the zombie murmurs of something old for the birth pangs of something new. 

We have forgotten that most institutions—such as newspapers—emerge to solve a problem. Often, they solve the problem so well we forget the problem ever existed. Though imperfect and downright mendacious in many many cases, professional journalism soothed the age-old problem of people claiming they saw Goody Proctor with the devil. Now newsreaders tell their audience what it wants to hear. 

For all its faults, proper journalism is far preferable to the alternative, a world in which the truth is My Truth.  

Strange isn’t it? We celebrate progress, as we slide ever backwards.

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