The more time I spend away from traditional social media, the more I realise that these places are just the absolute worst at accomplishing what they originally set out to be. It’s one thing to exist as a farm/firehose for data. It’s another to be the sort of place that actually encourages the kind of thoughtful communication we seem to have completely lost.

I see this the most when I look at what is happening right now in the battle between the pro-life and pro-choice movements. There is this endless stream of vitriol spewing forth and it’s just exhausting to see now.

Personally, I am pro-life. I don’t talk about it much online because that’s the worst possible place to try and have a reasonable discussion about the issue. I keep seeing friends posting link after link after link to all of these horrible statistics and I keep wondering what the point is. For the most part, they are only connected with people who believe the same things.

So all that happens is another shout into the echo chamber. If you want to do something like change someone’s mind, you’re going to have to do it in meatspace. The internet isn’t where change is ever going to happen.