A few years ago, I couldn't have said I thought about it at all. For better and for worse, it wasn't part of the discourse. Now, I'm not all that different, yet it comes up again and again. I'm often forced to choose a side, even when it's all hypotheticals and virtues. I feel forced because online media is permanent, each statement is my closing argument. When the litigation tries to bend toward actual experience, the thorny truths are much too thorny to accept. I've seen this play out time and time again, on a vast number of subjects. We summarize the sad state of things as "lacking nuance". It seeps into my personal life as well now, having become a part of my personality.
Fact is, it's not just a lack of nuance and it's not just conformity. It's hard boiled fear. Fear of the repercussions, fear of the judging eyes, fear of any reaction at all. Conformism requires something of a leader to follow, but with "social cooling" it's simply following nothing into the depths of atrophy and despair. Many don't even notice.
So there's those who challenge and those who accept, like always. The winners will be the charismatic and successful, but I have still yet to hear one from any side I'd follow. Am I blind? Am I missing something critical to living in this fucked up world? Am I being too rhetorical, too demanding, too focused on the issue outside my control?
At the end of the day I sleep poorly, wake restlessly, and like anyone still holding on to sanity, I find my own distractions.
The alt to reporting issues is "good news" reporting. We tried it for years and it was mostly vapid milquetoast. I was glad to see it go. I think follow-up stories to earlier issues works tho. Some of those will be positive.
note: The modern form of GNR is where the press parrots PR by biz/gov/leo - usually without any analysis.
Positive facts allow us to double down on what works. Negative facts allow us to inspect what went wrong.