Excerpt from the author’s book “Conversations in Hyperreality: Thoughts Umberto Eco and Dave Barry never had.” Footnotes are worth the read. You will laugh.
Future anthropologists will have a difficult time explaining the last two decades of the twentieth century and the first thirty-five years of the twenty-first. How else does one explain the meteoric rise and quick fall of “Disco Duck” or boring line dancing in shiny clothes?[1]
Simple: The advent of technologies allowing for the fast spreading of new forms of, well, everything, followed by marketing companies funneling people types into silos of consumerism. Yes, Marketing understands the power of echo chambers and the need to belong to Community.
Even in small villages in the Australian outback or tiny Inuit villages where nary a NOAT can be heard, echo chambers of thought have always existed and exerted power and influence. Dictators know this and enforce echo chamber thinking with threats of authentic physical torture and/or death, the kinds making people unable to walk or see or speeding them to an early mass grave, as opposed to First-World-Problem style of torture identified as when the skinny latté takes twenty seconds longer to receive than normal and makes the caring sign carrier late for the protest photo-op.
With the deployment of Social Media Platforms[2] (SMP) wherein millions of people each day would “log in” and “post”, came the new, highly focused echo chambers of the Social Justice Warrior, the Flamer, the Helpful Sharer, the Complainer, the Old Hippie, the Young Hippie, the Wannabe [fill in the blank], the Questioner, the Apologist, the Thankful, the Praiser, the Preacher, the Radical Feminist, the Queer Guy, the Straight Guy, the Gender Neutral, the Gender Spastic, the Gender Elastic, the Patriot, the Pussy-Hat Wearer, the Author, the Singer, the Actor, the Producer, the Bass Player, the Jazz Kittens, the Autodidact Polymath Genius[3], and on and on, ad infinitum and etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
Though echo chamber was not the term used, each user of the SMPs was promised a place to put opinions and thoughts and build a following in their very own special echo chamber — and that is what they did.
As a Citizen Journalist, I am happy for it because I don’t have to go too far to find language used like I could never have made up in my wildest dreams. Regular readers of my columns and those who purchase[4] my books have seen these phrasings peppered throughout as I report on and often make fun[5] of the echo chamber du jour messaging, so I won’t bore you by repeating any of that now.
Instead, this column is about the dangers of restrictions inherent in echo chambers. Echoes sound pretty in music. Using redundant amplification, sound can build upon itself to enhance its power. Concert halls are built with this concept in mind so that the quietest sound can carry strong even as it remains quiet.
With the advent of technology, though, putting an echo effect on everything in a recording makes a song suck.[6] Those with discerning ears hear a fat muddy mess, but tin ears hail the song as pure genius and purchase more of it[7].
It is the same with messaging from religious or political entities. Not God or principles of fair governing, but religion and politics attract the largest audiences to their echo chambers. It is easier to be told what to think and do than it is to apply principles of thought and action to individual instances. Many people are lazy and/or thoughtless, therefore…[8]
Those outside the echo chambers of thought are often accused by Side #1 of being in league with Side #2, and vice versa, when, in point of fact, those outside belong to neither.
Just the other day a cousin of mine in Massachusetts, brilliant researcher she is, posted something on Bacefook causing me to jot down a quick reply. Before the hour was up, several in her echo chamber jumped all over me with the same types of replies like this:
“You are wrong.”
“Yeah, what she said.”
“Yeah, what they said.”
One then proceeded to say I was “Trump ’splaining” when I had not mentioned the man at all. Another said if I knew history then I would know Russians were never Communists.[9]
When I asked what Russians were, my entire body of comments was deleted, and this self-congratulatory digital back-slapping ensued:
“We are so right.”
“Yeah, what she said.”
“Yeah, what they said.”
When visiting echo chambers, I listen with a discerning ear to what is being said. Those who live in echo chambers do not as they are in love with the echo itself.
Thank you for participating in spreading thoughtful, insightful, common-sense information and sometimes just plain entertaining columns by sharing this with your friends and social network!
Born and raised in Georgia, Angela K. Durden is an author, publisher, editor, songwriter, performer, and more, living in the Metro Atlanta, Georgia, area. Support your Citizen Journalist by visiting her Consolidated Author Page and buying a book or three. See more about Angela here. Want to watch a fun video? Click here.
[1] They will also have a difficult time in explaining the rise of “Rap” music, but that’s another topic for another day.
[2] Notes for anthropologists: In case you did not know it, Social Media Platforms (SMPs) made it possible for humans to share (via the ancient, time-consuming, and now out-of-date method called “uploading”) countless pictures of cats and babies and boobs and awesome man parts via either public postings on a digital portal or through private messaging in the ether.
It also allowed for the bragging about vacays, also known as vacations. Vacays, now out of vogue as you read this in the future, were trips taken to places one had never been wherein one proceeded to spend massive amounts of money on overpriced umbrella-decorated alcoholic drinks in order to get drunk so one wouldn’t remember the vacay in a place that was decorated to look like a theme-park version of where they were going but was in a “safe” zone. You don’t know what a theme park is? Oooo-kay. The author will cover that in another essay.
[3] The Autodidact Polymath Genius is a small subsection of the SMP user base and their posts are usually held or denied because they contain language that the SMP’s Thought Police view as “fake news”. Therefore the promise to “freely share with all their friends and followers” was a fake promise.
[4] The author hopes the buyer also reads the books, but she will not stop them from purchasing even if their intent is not to read it but merely get it out of circulation.
[5] The author freely admits she makes fun of and does not apologize for it.
[6] This explains why music is everywhere but the satisfaction level of listening to it has gone down and listeners cannot figure out why. Echo overuse.
[7] It is amazing how many “tin ears” are out there that can quickly identify crap, and all of them have money to spend on that crap.
[8] The author hopes you are of the first variety of person, namely, one who can extrapolate from incomplete information.
[9] This is but one example of an echo chamber run amuck.
