War of Opinions

After we matched I went back over his profile. There was something about it that didn’t quite sit right with me and the most tangible evidence of this gut feeling was the photo of this relatively attractive American boy holding a massive gun. I knew what that meant, and I knew then that this man was probably not my soulmate.

My opinions on gun rights was pretty set in stone, and while I had watched the episode of The Bold Type on gun rights — where the characters argued for and against it, I still stood firmly on the side of no guns.

Nevertheless, I didn’t unmatch him.

I knew I was exposed to a bias that I needed to overcome. I was actively trying to avoid the habit of shutting out people who had a different opinion to me, even if that opinion was blatantly wrong in my eyes.

The conversation was surprisingly easy, we chatted almost constantly for a few hours. And in that time, the red flags started popping up.

It became more than just having a photo of a big gun on his profile.

I noticed that the guy was overly pessimistic, and complained too much. He said he hated London and when asked why he wouldn’t just move back to his home town, he couldn’t come up with a good response.

By this stage in the dating game, I knew the markers. I could spot something leading to a dead end miles before it hit the brick wall. And while I was certain of the imminent ending, my scientific mind and overall general curiosity never allowed me to end the conversation. I always needed to know what would be the last nail in the coffin. It was curiosity that killed the cat after all.

It eventually became obvious why he hated London. He was living in a city of millennial liberals, and he was a republican that had “proudly voted so since 2012”.

And there was my nail.

I pointed out my shock at this, not because he was a Trump supporter, but because I was fairly certain my Hinge account knew where I was politically oriented. By now I knew my social media had a more accurate picture of me than my therapist did.

When I mentioned this, he expressed his disappointment and said this was how most of his conversations ended; it would be going well and somehow his political orientation would come up — or evidentially, he’d bring it up — and it would all collapse.

But I was adamant that I identified more as an open minded person than a democrat. And after all, maybe he had some sort of reasoning. There must be some logical explanation for his political affiliation.

So I asked, bluntly: “Can I ask why you voted for Trump?”

I knew minutes later when I didn’t receive a reply that I had been unmatched. I was almost tempted to message him on Instagram to advise him to change his political status on his Facebook, to make it somehow more obvious on his social media where his allegiance was and maybe that would save both of us the time in the future.

But eventually, I decided not to. He was young, he could figure it out himself.

I sat there in slight disbelief at the exchange.

I knew objectively, I had more of a right to unmatch him than he did me. No one was that oblivious to what Trump had done to my country and how badly he had set my people back. Yet here I was, ready to hear his side, ready to give him a platform and he had rejected the opportunity. He had mistaken my willingness to listen for a preparation for argument.

He wasn’t alone in this snap judgment though. I had experienced this prejudice before and for a few years now I was becoming aware of the negative effects of social media, beyond the obvious ones we know and talk about.

While we wanted to believe that social media had opened doors to the rest of the world, the algorithms were built on the fundamentals of engagement which meant that we were only shown content they thought we wanted to see, i.e. content that reinforced our beliefs. And I understood the need for this algorithm first-hand because I had lost a few ‘friendships’ because of my willingness and ability to argue with and call people out on their beliefs.

As I sat there, I couldn’t decide if it was entirely the social media companies’ fault that we had become trapped in this eco-chamber. After all, it was a relatively fundamental need to be validated for our beliefs. And very few people enjoyed being challenged on their beliefs like I did. In fact, the only time I had seen debates like the ones that had ended my relationships be encouraged were within the walls of the science buildings where I studied.

It was in those buildings that I learned to argue with reason and logic. It was in those hallways that I learned that a challenge was not an insult and a difference of opinion merely meant a mutual opportunity to grow.

Yet somehow, these lessons had not made it to the outside world. Somehow, people had become conditioned to agitate, not encourage. We had become accustomed to being validated, not challenged. And we had learned to deflect, reject and cut out anything that wasn’t 100% aligned with our beliefs.

It was like people had decided to shove earplugs in their ears and refuse to hear anything they didn’t agree with and yet wondered why change wasn’t happening.

And while many social injustices we see today give us no choice but to cry out in anger, we have to remember that intolerance breeds intolerance. And while the opposing opinion could be the literal opposite of yours, the only way — I believe — we can incite true change is to actually hear the other side out, as unnatural, bitter and painful as that sounds.

Because the truth is, if we keep rejecting every person, opinion and fact that we do not like, we will end up in an impenetrable eco-chamber, surrounded by people of exactly the same beliefs, unable to reach the other side, eternally wondering why change will not happen.

P.S. it is my personal belief that social media companies have an inherent and growing responsibility to shed light on and break down these eco chambers that feed their engagements rates. For as long as engagement and the hours we spend on these apps is the commodity, we will not be able to have open conversations with the opposing sides.

Originally published at https://www.monologuesofalondongirl.com on March 16, 2021.