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Let’s take a look at 3 ways we can be a jerk online, so we can avoid doing these things.
1. Tribalize Tragedy
Tragedies can bring out the best in us ... or sometimes the worst.
After the murder of Charlie Kirk, for instance, many were sending the right message — condemning the violence without qualification. Some, however, took a different approach, using the tragedy to contribute to our tense, hyper-polarized political environment.
This happens with many types of tragedies, but I’ve been noticing it especially after a notable figure dies. If that person was in a different “tribe” than us, too often our instinct is write or share on post on what was wrong with that person. This is disrespectful of those who are in mourning, and inconsistent with the Golden Rule [ [link removed] ].
2. Misuse They/Them
There is a lot of pronoun confusion on the internet these days, and this has nothing to do with transgender people. Social media is full of messages and memes that ascribe a view or motive to a huge swath of Americans under the umbrella terms “they” or “them.” These types of messages can be particularly harmful because they contribute to the perception gap [ [link removed] ] and lead us to believe we’re more divided than we actually are.
When you use “they” to describe all Republicans or Democrats or progressives or Trump supporters, etc., ask yourself, do you really know all the people in that group well enough to describe their views or motives? Most likely, there is a lot more diversity of opinion within the group you’re describing than you know. And if you’re not part of that group, chances are you don’t really know them well at all anyway.
Here again, the Golden Rule can help guide us. When you see someone misstate your views using the they/them fallacy, how does that make you feel?
3. Nutpicking
Nutpicking, a term originating from a 2006 Kevin Drum article in Washington Monthly, is when we use an extreme example from a group to represent the whole group. Once you recognize, and look for, nutpicking, you see it everywhere. This may be the most common form of discourse on social media and in partisan news programs. Recently, for instance, you may find folks on the left use Tucker Carlson as representative of all Americans on the right, and you may find folks on the right use Zohran Mamdani as representative of all Americans on the left. Neither of these are accurate.
Similar to the they/them fallacy, we misrepresent large swaths of our fellow Americans when we engage in nutpicking.
What We’re Reading
Reuters: “The Charlie Kirk purge: How 600 Americans were punished in a pro-Trump crackdown”
The punishment campaign sometimes veered off course. In at least five cases, people were wrongly blamed for comments made by others. In another case, a website that drew up a blacklist [ [link removed] ] called “Expose Charlie’s Murderers” vanished after taking in tens of thousands of dollars in cryptocurrency donations. Attempts to identify and seek comment from the site’s creators were unsuccessful.
…
The tally of more than 600 people punished for criticizing Kirk is likely an undercount. Many companies and government organizations haven’t publicly disclosed terminations or suspensions.
Those punished came from at least 45 states and represented a cross-section of society, from soldiers and pilots to doctors, nurses and police officers.
In Michigan, an Office Depot employee was fired after being filmed refusing to print a poster memorializing Kirk. In Ohio, a Starbucks barista lost her job after she was accused of writing an anti-Kirk message on a cup of mint tea.
LINK [ [link removed] ]
ProPublica: “Venezuelans Were Rounded Up in a Dramatic Midnight Raid but Never Charged With a Crime”
“Soon afterward, President Donald Trump’s administration released a slickly produced video of the operation. Officials said they had captured two “confirmed” members of Tren de Aragua, including one on a terrorist watch list. Stephen Miller, the White House homeland security adviser and architect of the nationwide immigration crackdown, declared that the building was “filled with TdA terrorists,” that the raid had “saved God knows how many lives” and that it was “one of the most successful law enforcement operations that we’ve seen in this country.”
A ProPublica investigation, however, has found little evidence to support the government’s claims. ProPublica has discovered the names of 21 of the detained Venezuelan men and women and interviewed 12 of them. We also spoke with dozens of their relatives, friends and neighbors. And we reviewed U.S. public records databases and court websites, examined court documents and social media accounts, obtained audio and video recordings made that night, and attended immigration court hearings.
Federal prosecutors have not filed criminal charges against anyone who was arrested. Nor have they revealed any evidence showing that two immigrants arrested in the building belonged to the Tren de Aragua gang, or even provided their names. ProPublica was nonetheless able to identify one of them, Ludwing Jeanpier Parra Pérez, from a press release that did not connect him to the raid. Parra denied that he is a member.
LINK [ [link removed] ]
Brennan Center: “A New Era of Crony Capitalism”
Last week, a delegation of business leaders from Switzerland visited the Oval Office to meet with President Trump. They bore gifts. The businessmen gave Trump an engraved gold bar worth more than $130,000, as well as a Rolex desk clock. Trump, labeling the meeting a “job well done,” agreed to cut tariffs on Swiss imports from 39 percent to 15 percent.
LINK [ [link removed] ]
What We’re Watching
NYT: “We Followed the Rules. ICE Jailed Us Anyway.”
We heard it over and over on the campaign trail: Donald Trump’s promise of a crackdown on criminals and undocumented immigrants at a scale and breadth this country had never seen before. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, commonly known as ICE, has swept into American cities and is detaining more people than ever before.
However, 71 percent of those held in immigrant detention by the end of September did not have criminal convictions, according to the Migration Policy Institute, a think tank focused on immigration. Many law-abiding immigrants who followed the rules in their applications for visas, green cards or asylum are being taken into ICE detention centers.
In the Opinion Video above, meet three people who came to America legally, only to find themselves in ICE detention. They followed the rules — but it didn’t matter.
GIFT LINK [ [link removed] ]
NewsChannel 5: “Meet the neo-Nazi targeting kids online, teaching them to hate and to prepare to kill”
Jon Minadeo is a neo-Nazi on a mission—a mission to meet America’s children in online video chats and convince them to hate.
NewsChannel 5 Investigates reviewed hours of online videos that reveal how, when Minadeo encounters children of color, he tries to persuade them to hate themselves, often brandishing an assault weapon and warning them to expect to be treated violently.
And when he meets White kids, especially boys, the 42-year-old Missouri man frequently insists that the children need to get their own guns and prepare to “kill n*****s” as part of a looming “race war.” He also encourages them to follow his neo-Nazi websites.
LINK [ [link removed] ]
CBS News: “Videos show use-of-force violations against protesters, former agent says”
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