1) People (myself included) rarely expressed their own opinions anymore, given the easy nature of the internet to share someone else's opinions.
2) People (myself included) were starting to get really bad at articulating their opinions, instead referring to others' thoughts on the topic.
3) People (myself included) were engaging in a lot of motivated internetting in which anything that overlapped with their own opinion was shared as a "good point" even when it wasn't a very good point.
4) I was getting really annoyed with all of this.
An update on dememeifying my internet life
So I decided to start change with myself. I stopped sharing memes with quick jokes that backed up my political opinions or opinion articles of the same -- UNLESS I added in my own thoughts. What I thought or felt or knew about the topic. Why it was important to me and why I thought it should be important to others. I did the same with heavy pieces, well-researched articles. I no longer posted interesting things adding only "THIS." to the conversation. I stopped sharing things unless I had something to add to the conversation, and the time and motivation to do so.
As an update, a few things I noticed immediately (within a week or so) from this life experiment:
1) The internet immediately became a lot less stressful to me because I no longer felt like I had to educate everyone and prove to everyone that I was educating myself. I started sharing a lot less.
2) I became a lot more thoughtful in my reading. WHY did this speak to me? WHY was this important? It felt like my brain was getting better.
3) I became more and more annoyed with other people's shares where they didn't tell me why it was important to them or why it would be worth my time to read and consider.
Some longer-term updates (where I'm at months later) in how all this is going:
1) I still share fewer things, though sometimes these days, I don't add myself into the conversation.
2) When I'm busy, and let's be frank, during the school year I'm almost always busy, I reserve my thoughts and my considerations and my shares. If I don't have time to engage, I don't engage.
3) I'm developing an IRL next step that initially felt like it was not connected, but the more I think about it, the more I think it's connected.
This brings us to Sarcasm and my use/overuse of it in my rhetorical life.
I realized my life was becoming implied.
I've been thinking for months about thinking, about articulating, about expressing, about honesty and truth and opinions and beliefs, about fake honesty and fake truth and opinions labeled as facts and beliefs labeled as facts and fake beliefs used to justify action but we all know that's not what you really believe, you're just pandering to your base.
With all of this, and with my recent experience trying to dememeify my life, I started noticing sarcasm in my conversations with others. This would be sarcasm that I use or others use in order to be funny or to make the opposite point in a funny/ironic way or to take the sting out of a hard truth or just out of simple laziness.
Let me explain the laziness part, because that's what got me thinking more and more about the downsides of sarcasm. I started to realize that in a lot of my conversations, sarcasm would be the default response to things. Meaning, I didn't have to *think* before I spoke, I would just open my mouth and let the sarcasm out. Sarcasm allows for this because you're not saying what you're actually thinking, so you don't have to be careful or thoughtful about what you're saying or how you're saying it. You just speak words, and then people smirk, and then the conversation continues.
I've had long conversations recently, even about personal or political or educational or other important topics, where neither party bothered to think out and articulate a clear and rational opinion. When you speak in sarcasm, you don't have to be precise. You don't have to be clear. You say a thing, and it is IMPLIED that you believe the opposite. You don't ever have to say what exactly the opposite is. You don't have to explain it or defend it or even think about it too much.
And I realized (to grossly overstate things) that my life and thoughts and opinions and knowledge... were all becoming implied.
With everything implicit and nothing explicit, what do you stand for? What do you think? How do you feel? What do you know? What do you still have to learn? -- you don't have to focus on any of these things when the use of sarcasm becomes the lazy default in conversation.
I became concerned with how little I was being explicit in my thoughts and positions. And that's when I started thinking about sincerity. What is my truth? Can I speak it to others clearly? Can I just let people know what I think and feel and worry and laugh about? Can I just let people know how I feel about them? What I think about the world? What my position is on topics and in life?
With everything implicit and nothing explicit, what do you stand for? What do you think? How do you feel? What do you know? What do you still have to learn? -- you don't have to focus on any of these things when the use of sarcasm becomes the lazy default in conversation.
Some years ago (7 of them), I gave up complaining for Lent and it changed my entire worldview.
But this is where I'm at right now. I want to be sincere and thoughtful and honest in my words and actions. I want the rest of the world to be this as well, but I don't have control over that. So I'll start with myself.
