Bubbles Were Made to Be Burst

I wrote about wearing a Tucker Carlson t-shirt in L.A. for the Federalist and like clockwork I'm getting angry emails and tweets about how I'm "defending state media" and the only reason I think the shirt is funny is because I'm white. Before you get all carried away let me make something very clear: I'm definitely making fun of white people. 

There was also, apparently, an entire hashtag campaign #whofundsthefederalist that was going around. I totally missed it because I've been offline, but I've been getting messages and DMs from people saying, "I hope you're not cashing their checks, Bridget." The irony is that these are friends who have "real jobs" at studios and banks and a steady income from corporate overlords. The audacity to tell a freelance writer--someone like myself who still literally has to choose between paying for food or paying bills--where they should or shouldn't be writing, is actually the height of privilege. 

I'd love to go on Tucker and talk to him about bubbles, but you can't have a discussion about bubbles without talking about how sensitive and intolerant to different perspectives everyone has become.

My bigger point is that constant flattery inherent to mediation has made people incapable of hearing anything that doesn't reinforce their opinions. We are all frogs boiling in the pot of confirmation bias because as the algorithm gets more information about what we like--it makes us dumber and weaker and thinner-skinned. Meanwhile, the algorithm gets smarter all the time, feeding us even more accurate, personalized everything--from news to clothes to music to movies to groupons to food. We become so used to viewing the world through our own individual lens, that when something comes along and disrupts it or makes us remotely uncomfortable, we can't handle it.

It's a lesson I remember from pre-schoool: if someone or something is pushing our buttons, yes, we have a right to defend ourselves if we are being attacked but it's also our job to look at our buttons and take responsibility for them. But instead (and both sides are guilty of this as well) people double down on their victimhood, retreat into group think and assume the world owes them something. THE WORLD DOESN'T OWE US SHIT. 

Whether or not most citizens realize this, instead of challenging themselves, they've retreated further and further into their bubbles, uniting with other bubbles that think like them to create bubble tribes.

I like bursting bubbles, my own and others. Bubbles rob us of the ability to think critically. Bubbles obliterate nuance. We must destroy the bubbles ...before they destroy us.