I grew up with grandparents who seemed to know everything about the natural world, even though they’d never had a lick of formal education about it. They had absorbed it in the course of their lives because that was what interested them. My grandfather was an avid gardener and my grandmother had worked in a nursery for a number of years, so their knowledge of plants was almost encyclopaedic. They knew the name of every animal that lived in their garden, from a possum down to an ant.
It was an interest I acquired from a young age and I spent many a happy hour with them in the kitchen watching David Attenborough documentaries or in my room reading books and multi-volume magazines about the animal kingdom. I became particularly absorbed with my grandmother’s Complete Book of Australian Birds, a formidable illustrated Reader’s Digest compendium that must indeed have contained every species of bird known up to that point.
One day, when I was about eleven or twelve, I had two friends over and we were in the backyard doing whatever it was pre-teens did in the 1980s. A bird landed nearby and one of my friends said, “Look at that magpie.”
“That’s not a magpie,” I said, “it’s a currawong.”
Although these birds both have black and white feathers and are more or less the same shape, that’s where the similarities end. The currawong is more robust with a thicker beak, almost like a crow, while the magpie has noticeably more white in its markings.
As I tried to explain these differences, my friends first argued and then talked over me. When I continued to ramble on they gave one another knowing looks. I was a magpie denier and no statement of verifiable fact would ever make me correct in their eyes. That day I discovered an unpleasant truth: reason is powerless when you’re outnumbered.
Ten or fifteen years later I was reflecting on this incident and the phrase that serves as a headline for this blog post popped into my head. Today, it could almost be a slogan for the world of social media.
I’ve had a Twitter account for a few years, but in 2016 I started visiting Twitter more frequently as another way to pass the time in boring situations. I soon became appalled at the slovenly intellectual atmosphere I found there. On Twitter it is easy to subscribe only to users who share your world view. The character limitation also makes it impossible to have a thoughtful, reasoned debate, and if some brave soul voices dissent, there are a thousand other users on hand to shout him down. Twitter is often criticised for being a left-wing echo chamber, which it is, but although conservatives make up a smaller number of its users they are no less susceptible to endlessly agreeing with one another.
Or, to put it another way, it’s easy to surround yourself with a thousand well-intentioned but ignorant fools who will agree that a currawong is a magpie. In less than 140 characters.
While I still have a Twitter account, I deleted the app off my phone in early 2017. For some time, my gut had been telling me it was the right thing to do, but unhealthy things can be hard to give up. What helped me quit was Stephen King’s Twitter feed. I’d always enjoyed his political commentary, even though he and I mostly didn’t share political ideals. He had always struck me as open-minded and genuine centre-left. But Twitter corrupted him. Thanks to years of adulation and affirmation from thousands of followers, he became just another snide, predictable leftist cliché.
Having your opinions reaffirmed day after day (whether they’re right or wrong) is like taking drugs: it feels good when it’s happening, but in the end it rots your mind and your soul.