Why such inescapable rabbit holes?

 "Curiouser and curiouser!"

The bored girl Alice could not resist temptation nor the adventures that awaited. It has been a while since I read Lewis Caroll, but I do remember the nonsense that awaited Alice in Wonderland. The story that unfolds after she follows the white rabbit is whimsical and dangerous at the same time. My college lit class studied the book's symbols and Victorian references at length, but I still think the appeal of the story is its oddity and adventure. What if there were such a universe down a rabbit hole or through the looking glass? Would you go down the rabbit hole?

 

We started listening to a podcast called Rabbit Hole about what the internet is doing to us. Based on the YouTube radicalization of a twenty-something in West Virginia, the investigation looks at YouTube and its algorithms and how they shape thought. The content is well-researched and thoughtful, tracing how this young man oscillates from conspiracy theories and truths on all sides of the political spectrum. It is well worth a listen, especially with such a powerful platform like YouTube at the center of the discussion and knowing that its reach is unimaginable and global (see this article about Brazil). About half way through the series, I can draw parallels with which stories are and which stories are not coughed up on my Twitter, Google, or Facebook feeds. It is alarming, particularly so when we seem so ready to take what we see and hear at face value.

I want to think about this. How did we get here?

• Are we not teaching and practicing enough critical thinking? Not only our "children" but also our adults do not seem to have the media literacy to validate sources and fact check information. When our "feeds" give us like-minded and like-sourced material, it can pull us down a tunnel of misinformation in which every publication swirls together into a loop of the same lies or truths. Would we recognize real facts if they came from another source? Do we have enough practice at dissonance and adequate exposure to multiple sides of an argument? Can we teach ourselves to get out of the rabbit hole? Can we resist the temptation of an incendiary and righteous trip down the rabbit hole in the first place?
• What responsibility do big tech companies have in all of this? Have they built such perfect artificial intelligence that feeds into our vulnerabilities as humans that we do not have the will to escape? Where is personal responsibility in all of this? And, if big tech has some responsibility, how shall they enact it? Flagging or removing content is a form of censorship. What power to decide what can and cannot be seen... should this be in the hands of a company who wants you to watch and who depends on your views to generate income? should this power be in the hands of government who might easily manipulate the masses?
• Can we escape our polarization - socially and politically - to come together over anything? Can we agree that some ideas and symbols are simply hateful and should be stopped altogether? We are so encamped in our positions that I have doubts that we can recognize the Mad Hatter or the Queen of Hearts... let alone the emperor without clothes!
  
• Is this a new problem? I suspect it is a different problem. Not that talking heads, tabloids, or idle gossip did not spread its fair share of misinformation, but this is so much more instant and so much more available than ever before. Why wouldn't you believe an authoritative voice on YouTube or a Facebook post that your neighbor shared? At what time in history did we have so much information at our fingertips? How do we sit through the tea party and sort through surprising fact and absurd fiction? When did high quality journalism become something to attach? When did our media become entertainment relying on clicks and likes? What it always this way? Is there any source that we all collectively can trust with the facts? If not, truth seeking is a rather weary journey.

See? There are a lot of serious questions. As for me, I'll be on the look out for that pesky white rabbit.