Stop thinking “if only we could convince people” of something, that things would change. Just stop that. It’s not about explaining.
You’re wrong if you think being uninformed is the problem, or that if you can just explain something the right way, or provide enough evidence of how something’s bad or dangerous, that it would change things or win people over. Change comes when people who know better make change. Period. That’s how it works, we know this from historic examples. You find the other people who understand what’s up, and who want things done the way you do, and you encourage each other to push for that, to stand up for it.
The sooner you realize that ignorance or denial or being unaware or uninformed is not the problem, the sooner you can switch your narratives and your actions to what’s actually useful and effective.
Change comes when people make change. Period. Anything else is accelerationist apocalyptic hopium based on some kind of tipping point where enough people have some kind of awakening and this is running into the territory of superstition and is definitely a pseudoscience political ideology that seems awfully close to a kind of eugenics.
But there’s this idea continually repeated in progressive and left online content target marketed at people who do care about public health, civil rights, or disability accessibility, that sort of enforces a narrative that the problem is one of ignorance and some kind of social mass hysteria with psychological denial of facts, and what will happen and is already happening, because of the abandonment of the public good. And if the people could just fuck around and find out, people would “wake up” even though we’ve seen year after year that things don’t work that way. Change comes when people make change. Period.
Of course I’ve seen this for years now regarding the seriousness of covid. Covid is a real shitty illness that’s bad and comes with nasty risks. And year after year people just keep spinning in circles thinking that if they can just shove the latest covid related study at someone about the grisly worst case scenarios of complications that people get with covid, then you’re going to scare people into doing the right thing and not going to visit grandma at assisted living facility with a runny nose. This hope that if people realize that their new cardiac condition could be connected to their covid infection, that they’ll change their ways. Or if they believe that avian flu is on the verge of exploding deaths, they’ll put a mask on when they’re on the train. But that’s just not what’s going on here and that’s just not how humans make decisions or decide how to behave. People for the most part know that covid is dicey and they’ve already FAFO, and they still go to crowded places while half the people they know are sick, and they still go to work sick because they have to, they’re out of sick time. If you try to convince someone something is detrimental, when they already know it is, you’re just going to annoy them. And if you shame people they’re just going to feel judged and be motivated to spin it, and the covid contrarians wield that like a sword against people doing right by others, no matter how ridiculous.
I’m describing this because I continuously see op-eds and social media posts hand wringing about how people just don’t understand the risks of long covid, and how bad covid is or the risks of covid complications. These influencers get platformed and praised for putting out this content that promotes the idea that if only people were as aware and awakened and smart as you, dear reader, to the real ramifications they’d really do something different. This kind of content can really appeal to safety minded and public health type people, and that’s the target market it’s meant for. It’s not meant to, and it can’t change, the cultural narrative, because it’s scolding and self-righteous and whiny and complaining, and that’s never going to win people over even if what they present is true. The truth is that content is produced and published and consumed because it garners a certain market’s attention economy. It’s for the choir, the person who’s already convinced, and it’s often got a presentation that would be an absolute turn-off to anyone not already in this mindset. It’s a combination of accelerationist tipping point hopium and frankly self-righteous self-congratulating bullshit and a bit culty making it sound like special knowledge. It’s there to make money in the attention economy of media consumption, and that’s the priority, not to change any minds anyway. And this is demonstrated in that by popular demand, Brian Tyler Cohen has started an alternate youtube channel that mirrors his content but without the off-putting clickbaity headlines! People want to share his videos with people outside their silo but know that it would just be rejected by conservatives. BTC can’t just change the headlines to something less off-putting because the headlines are what attracts his target audience, and keeps his videos being served to people, and therefore the ad revenue going.
Content for the silo is not how minds will be changed. And probably the way minds can be changed isn’t something that will generate profit or look like good clickbait, nor will it scratch that itch for people looking to be told they’re special. Exclusivity isn’t exactly welcoming after all.
The fact is that most people actually do realize covid is bad of course they do. You’re not special just because you recognize that getting sick for days on end stinks to high heaven, holy shit. Lots of people have used up their sick time, and maybe even lost jobs because of covid and covid ramifications. Consequences or knowledge about potential consequences isn’t what gets people to take precautions or demand public health measures. Societal supports (social insurance safety nets) and social network supports (peer pressure) and most importantly rules set by leadership (public health, workplace standards, and laws) – that’s what sets the standard for behaviour.
I’m absolutely on board with doing public information messaging, and trying to reach people with good, science-based information that they might not otherwise get. People do get bad information. There’s massive disinformation operations going on that are confusing people and creating censorship by noise. So it’s absolutely worthwhile and necessary to try and put out a lot of good information to counter the bad. But this strategy is not going to change the way things work in the way having laws and official promotion from leadership about something can and will. We see how a great many people will fall in line very quickly to an assertive leadership. People follow the politics, for better or for worse. Doctors are often not recommending covid vaccinations – or maybe any vaccinations – to their patients. Workplaces allow, or even force, employees to work actively sick and contagious. Doctors sometimes are not prescribing Paxlovid or even Tamiflu appropriately. All those things can be fixed with public policy using incentives or rules.
And yes, there are plenty of people who don’t know about Long Covid or cardiac complications from covid. And a public health policy that funded messaging and advertisements of vaccination and the benefits of N95s would go a long way in opposition of the anti-vax & anti-mask propaganda out there.
But let’s not forget that there are also people who vote for Republicans when their job depends heavily on Medicaid funding. There will always be those people. The answer isn’t to invest a lot of time convincing them to inform themselves in hopes that it will change the world. They already know, and they make these choices anyway for whatever reasons. Obviously attempts to inform people of something they don’t know about that affects their life is certainly worthwhile for the sake of it, because it’s the right thing to do. But convincing enough people to “take something seriously”, like climate change, or bird flu, or whatever — in order for a tipping point where something then happens – that’s just not now things really work. It’s very similar to the irrational behaviour where Dem politicians run to the right parroting all the Republican policy stances in hopes of convincing MAGA voters that their way to do those things is better and vote for a Democrat when there’s a perfectly serviceable actual MAGA Republican on the ballot, and doing that turns off their own base of voters and fails to get them to the polls. This mindset also feels familiar to the saviour syndrome hopium where people hope something will just happen when that tipping point happens, maybe by movers and shakers behind the scenes. It’s just not how things work. Change comes when people make change. Period.
Hand wringing and moaning about people not being “aware” enough or even just uninformed is not going to do anything. It feels good to vent, but doing so in public is probably actually worse than ineffective. It presents the position as weak. I’ve especially always hated the whining about “government abandonment” — “Oh the government has abandoned us!” — which sounds just incredibly weak and bellyaching. It doesn’t make people want to join in. It just sounds pathetic, sorry. It makes people want to run away and join the winning team that gets government to work for them, or just leads to demoralization and checking out. We see now how fast things can be changed in government if there’s a will for it, surely. Complaining about being powerless just doesn’t sound like a movement, it sounds like just pouting from sore losers with sour grapes who lost the culture war on covid or DEI or climate change or whatever.
People on the side of justice, democracy, and public health shouldn’t take the loser posture – we should all be standing up proudly and assertively for civil rights, for diversity equity and inclusion, proudly knowing that this is about civil rights, it’s about senior citizens having their due respect, it’s about Black people being recognized as equally human, it’s about disabled people having options and not being shut out. There are people standing up assertively for justice and human rights, and how about don’t chastise and tut-tut them? These aren’t fringe issues – they touch everyone at some point. We should assertively embrace championing Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, scientific research, public health and climate & infectious disease mitigation – all that DEI!
I really appreciated someone voicing out loud the explanation about the far right thinking that Elle Reeve has observed in her long reporting on the extreme right, and that Elle Reeve described recently in an interview with Chris Hayes. She mentions how people want to join something that’s presented as strong and assertive and attractive, and that this right-wing milieu is mostly all based on vibes more than any of the particulars. This is really just a human condition thing. And then Reeve mentioned how these people put up a really angry nasty front to their perceived opposition, but if you see their private chat groups they’re all full of beautiful pictures of families frolicking in light-hearted wheat fields and whatnot. Their dreams are of love and community. And I’ve long tried to tell people, they may hate you, but they love each other. You won’t reach those people by scolding them when they’re being offered love in a comfy cozy community that rubber stamps whatever they’re doing as fine.
The fact is of course that you may never have anything to offer some of those people, the people who refuse to cooperate or support the things most of us want for all of us. And so wasting time trying to find the magic potion to do so instead of spending time and energy on actually creating a positive narrative for change to attract the people who do have the same desires and goals and may have something practical to offer to the project.
And that reminds me of an interview with Jared Yates-Sexton, where he talks to Anthony Davis about the need for a new left vision. He’s not the only one talking about this, it’s being discussed everywhere I think at this point. But Jared Yates-Sexton admits that years back he had the feeling if he said the right thing or explained it the right way people would understand what was happening, and then he cites the normalcy bias problem with that. Yeah, we all who know better about something, whatever that something is, have felt this way, and so this pain gets traction in the information space among our own cohorts.
Cassandras united, we all. But we must move past wallowing in that role, assertively own our vision, and just boldly move forward with the things we know are right, because they are, and make it a welcoming thing. And so we should pledge to stop giving our eyeballs, energy, time and amplification boosting to thing that’s whinging in the loser leftism. Just give it up like a bad habit. And maybe moderate the social media usage while we’re at it. Change comes when people who know better make change. Period. Let’s go.
Don’t wait for everybody before speaking up.
