How Social Media Turns Our Political Enemies Into Caricatures

Understanding the enemy, how social media absolutely ruins this understanding of the enemy, what to do about it, and an admission that I may have strawmanned?...

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How do you know you actually understand the enemy?

If you’re looking to win an argument, you need to know which buttons to press that they don’t have any good answers for. But if you’re looking to find the truth, you need to understand the arguments they make. And if you want to understand the arguments they make, you need to understand the person making them. And as I’ll explain, in today’s day and age, social media has absolutely ruined our understanding of the political opponent.

Our brains don’t have neat lists of arguments labeled under each worldview that we can individually update—oh no, of course they don’t. Instead, our brains hold clusters of personality traits and beliefs, conjured up from what we imagine the average member of a group to be.

What makes an anarchist tick? How young are they? Who is a conservative; do they like sports? Why? What does a leftist think the biggest evil in the world is? Most importantly: why do they all believe what they believe, and why do they all do what they do? What very real emotions led them to the politics they have today? How justified are these emotions? Are you swayed?

If you don’t understand the motivation behind political beliefs, if you cannot comprehend the enemy, then the only thing resting in your head is a field of strawmen.

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I put out a post a week ago about how a group’s attitude doesn’t indicate how true its beliefs are: Just Because They’re Annoying, Doesn’t Mean They’re Wrong.

Consider this the other side of that coin: the beliefs of a group are best understood in the context of the real person holding them. Don’t get me wrong, the actual truth of an argument is indeed completely separate from the person. But people are generally bad at articulating the real reasons that they believe what they believe, so only by understanding the motivations of a person can you properly, truly dismiss their claims on their terms. How do you build this mental image of a person in the modern day? Well, you certainly don’t ask your coworkers for their diagnosis of the recent Trump bill unless you already know they agree with you politically, so of course you build your enemy from the internet and social media.

Social media sucks, and it especially sucks to build a proper example of someone who believes X in your head. I’m probably the first person to ever criticize social media.

I don’t mean “the average person on social media sucks,” I mean, “the system as a whole encourages the most low brow, signaling content over any attempt at honest communication.” Some may even say There’s No Intelligent Consumption Under Social Media, so let’s diagnose what social media says about Insane Political Discourse.

Twitter maximizes engagement. Engagement is a punchy word that basically asks “how long can we keep this poor citizen’s eyes glued to our app.” As it turns out, when Twitter reaches into the almighty algorithm and pulls out the content that’s going to make you stay on the app the most, it’s probably going to be something that makes you angry. Anger is the best human emotion for keeping the app in your mind. Joy isn’t that far behind, for sure, but trust me that anger is up there. When it comes to politics, the thing that will make one angriest is seeing the most insane, obviously wrong political take imaginable. Importantly, at least some people need to actually believe it (this “strawman-believer” is actually technically called a “weak man”¹), and it needs to be plausible. A scissor statement — maximized for disagreement. These insane takes get shown to the most people possible, and thus get individuals the most likes and clout. Twitter is not a place for safe, measured takes.

So you have the worst takes from each side, magnified so more people respond, sent to their political enemies, which poisons the well. Remember how I just said “some people need to actually believe it?” Actually, you just need to believe that some people actually believe it, so as your faith in the other political side drains, the algorithm sees the opportunity to show you even worse takes, knowing you’ll eat it up. It’s a vicious cycle, an endless loop. A perfect breeding ground for a field of strawmen. This is why I’m so insistent that you don’t fall victim to the trap of this SMBC comic here², lest you fall further than you think.

In this light, it’s no wonder people overwhelmingly think their political enemies have gotten worse than they used to be. The algorithm isn’t testing your opponents’ points, it’s testing what it can get you to believe, and the more your standards fall, the more incoherent and demonic of a take it can show you and get you to bite. And if you’re fighting a demon, more dire action is justified, so I think the average political belief actually does get worse from this cycle, as discourse gets taken to Cloud Cuckoo Land.

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So social media is a terrible, terrible place for avoiding having false images and the worst parts of your political enemies’ beliefs in your head. If you’re looking for the truth, looking to refine the image of your enemy in your head, where should you go? How can you better understand the other side?

Well, the first bar is that you should assume they have a powerful emotional reason for doing what they’re doing — the world makes a lot more sense viewed through a lens of incompetence and selfishness rather than overt evil. Second, find good-faith communities which try to understand others in good-faith. Third, while you can counter the poisoned well, make sure you don’t conflate the worst of Twitter with “the other side” in your head.

And now let me tell you the easy one, the one that’s helped me more than any other. Don’t go to social media platforms that engage in this process. Remember how I said earlier “No Intelligent Consumption Under Social Media”? Well, unlike the phrase I countered yesterday, you actually cannot engage with social media! And if you do engage, you can choose the good ones, and curate your feed there, because there’s a bunch of them!

Twitter is a lost cause unless you only subscribe to a specific niche (like sports) and never go on the For You page — even deep into a niche the For You page shows me the most insane people on the internet occasionally. Reddit, by virtue of weighting downvotes and upvotes, is at least not going to show insane strawmen directly, it’s going to be articles disagreeing with insane strawmen. But it’s much more doable on Reddit to subscribe to the good subreddits and only go on Home, so I recommend it. Bluesky is probably the same as Reddit’s popular page, just by virtue of only having one political side and talking lots about politics without a commitment to good-faith, so I’d avoid.

I have lots of friends from different political sides in real life (this will link to my article encouraging making politically different friends when it’s out later this week), and this is hardest one to do and the best option, because when I discuss politics I get the distinct impression that my friends are good and decent people who have real emotions and arguments guiding their beliefs.

Finally, I want to apologize for adding straw to the strawman in your head. Yesterday, I put out a post complaining about the phrase “There’s No Ethical Consumption Under Capitalism.” In it, I complained about people on TikTok who use the phrase, and I also complained about leftists who engage in absolutist thinking and “slacktivism.” I stand by that my critiques of both of these groups are true and good³, but it doesn’t matter that I specifically, deliberately said the phrase is only misused by “some leftists” if the image of a leftist in your head groups people who misuse the phrase along with the other, absolutist thinking group, because the absolutist thinking is way, way more common — many leftists are acutely aware of all the harm they cause indirectly, and wouldn’t use the phrase I said in the article in the main way I critique it. I should’ve made these critiques two separate articles. I said all the correct words about how it’s only some leftists, and it still wasn’t enough, because we don’t communicate with words, we communicate with the impressions we leave behind when you click off the article.

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The images we hold of our enemies are precious and must be defended from the weak representatives that social media slings at us. Without understanding the enemy, without figuring out what makes them tick, you are lost in your search for truth just as if you charted an expedition with a compass that’s missing its needle.

Pave over the field of strawmen in your mind, and you may find that people are more rich in color than you thought. And with a more cultivated field, the more you’ll know where you belong on it.

(Liking is the best way to support me. Also, subscribe by clicking that button if you like kittens, or if you believe the endless cycle of demonizing our enemies will continue to get worse because of the nature of social media companies’ incentives until political sides have to move to Mars and Venus to get away from the other side’s opinions.)

1. But you’re damn right that I will be using strawman for the rest of the article instead of weak man because using the less cool phrase would like, cramp my vibe, man. Putting that in parenthesis instead of a footnote hopefully communicates the semantic point I’m making for everyone, so they know what I’m talking about.

2. I cut off the bottom panel of the comic when I inserted it because it’s funnier without it. Comic artists please stop adding too much text, show don’t tell or whatever.

3. I received a good amount of criticism for yesterday’s post’s arguments, too. Some said I was unfair about how common the “justifying consuming blindly” interpretation is used, and it was primarily used for one of the two more generous interpretations. Another, fifth interpretation I didn’t mention was proposed, where it’s mainly meant to be used as a defense against people who tell leftists, “oh, if you hate capitalism so much, why do you still buy from companies?” Some said it was just meant to signal that you’re a part of the left, and there’s not much deeper there.

I talk about conflating different types of leftists in the post, I think the fifth interpretation doesn’t really hold any water if all of the interpretations signal completely separate advice, and I think signals are most useful when true and good, so my distaste for the phrase is good. Mostly I regret not broadening it to phrases like “defund the police” and how the content of words vs intent is very interesting in a motte-and-bailey way, because I think that would be a fun post, and “defund the police” is way worse when it comes to what the words mean vs the stated interpretation. Read the motte-and-bailey post. I will link Scott Alexander until I die.