We Miss You Out Here
Social media is loud, lonely, and broken, but it might still be a place to leave lanterns for one another.
The exodus is real. Not just the lurkers who drifted away quietly, but the heart of online communities: organizers, artists, caregivers, mutual aid providers—people who once filled our feeds with beauty, clarity, and care. Many leave without fanfare—just gone. Exhausted by hate, disappointed by silence, and disillusioned with platforms that promised connection but delivered conflict, they leave without fanfare.
They're not wrong to leave.
But something else is true: when people disengage entirely, they also lose access to updates, relationships, shared resources, and real-world opportunities to plug in. The question isn't whether to stay or go—it's how to hold both truths. How might we reclaim even a sliver of digital space, not to chase engagement, but to signal connection and mutual aid?
🕰️ The Long History of Fear as Currency
This manipulation isn't new. Long before Facebook existed, negativity sold newspapers.
The phrase "If it bleeds, it leads" emerged in American journalism by the early 1980s, but sensationalism was already prevalent. In 19th-century America, yellow journalism thrived on scandals. Even Benjamin Franklin published crime accounts in The Pennsylvania Gazette in the 1730s and 1740s, because sensational stories drove readership.
The telegraph didn't curb this trend; it accelerated it. Telegraph companies charged by length and speed of transmission, creating pressure to prioritize information that would move quickly and draw readers. The Associated Press, formed in 1846 to share telegraph costs among papers, focused on breaking news—wars, disasters, and conflict—that could justify the expense of wire transmission.
Television doubled down. By the 1970s, local news had pivoted to what media critic George Gerbner called "mean world syndrome"—the idea that constant exposure to violence makes viewers believe the world is more dangerous than it is.
The internet didn't invent this logic. It digitized it, sped it up, and made it interactive. What used to be a one-way stream of manufactured crisis became a participatory spiral designed to keep us reacting, replying, and consuming.
🧠 Anger Is the Algorithm's Fuel
Perhaps you've noticed that the comments section feels toxic even when a post receives dozens of positive reactions. Angry replies, sarcasm, and dismissiveness show up more prominently and seem louder. Since 2016, they've become normalized.
This isn't accidental. It's engineered.
We're naturally wired to respond more strongly to negative stimuli—what psychologists call "negativity bias." Social media algorithms exploit this by rewarding any engagement, especially the emotional, reactive, polarizing kind. Anger drives more clicks than joy, so that's what gets amplified.
Zeynep Tufekci, a sociologist who studies technology, explained that these platforms were "built not to strengthen our communities, but to maximize time spent on site—even at the cost of increasing polarization and harm".
After 2016, this got worse. What once would've been considered fringe or unacceptable became the default. Harassment, bigotry, and cruelty weren't just tolerated—they were modeled by those in power. That toxicity seeped into every comment section, every discussion thread.
This isn't just about angry strangers. It's about a fundamental shift in what's allowed to thrive online—and a machine that rewards those who thrive on harm.
🎭 Distraction as Method
The cruelty we're living under thrives in this chaotic digital environment.
It's not just about suppressing the truth. It's about burying it under manufactured outrage. While attention fixates on gold-plated private jets or celebrity feuds, the real machinery of harm keeps grinding:
Mass ICE raids are escalating across the country
Temporary Protected Status continues to be revoked for vulnerable communities
Budget proposals slashing Medicaid, SNAP, and nonprofit funding while public attention is elsewhere
Major cultural agencies like NEA, NEH, and AmeriCorps face complete elimination, and thousands of grants have already been canceled.
Steve Bannon called this "flooding the zone with shit"—an intentional strategy to overwhelm civic attention with spectacle. (You can read more about how this plays out in my essay "He Doesn't Love Us—He Owns Us".)
This isn't dysfunction. It's strategic chaos, deliberately making digital space so toxic and exhausting that only the loudest, cruelest voices survive.
👥 The Humans Behind the Screens
It's easy to forget that there's a real person behind every angry comment, cruel takedown, and inflammatory post.
Research supports what many of us have observed: people behave differently online than in person. Psychologist John Suler coined the term "online disinhibition effect" to describe how individuals behave with fewer social restraints online than in face-to-face interactions. Studies show that anonymity, lack of eye contact, and physical presence are significant factors in this phenomenon.
Some of us work hard to bring our best selves online—to show kindness, share thoughtfully, and support others. Others seem to use digital spaces to vent their worst impulses, to say things they'd never say face-to-face. This isn't just a matter of "trolls" or "bad actors." Research reveals that even well-intentioned people can engage in hostile behavior when they feel shielded by anonymity.
The absence of nonverbal cues—tone of voice, body language, facial expressions—creates what researchers call an "empathy deficit." Without these social signals, misunderstandings multiply. Fear and anger travel faster than nuance and empathy. The notification system rewards hot takes over thoughtful reflection.
Understanding this doesn't excuse cruelty, but it reminds us that the person typing hate might be dealing with their own pain, isolation, or fear. Studies indicate that people often act on their existing dispositions in anonymous settings—aggressive individuals are more likely to escalate. At the same time, those inclined toward empathy may offer more support than they would in person.
This recognition matters not because we should accept abusive behavior, but because it helps us remember why building genuine community, both online and off, remains so essential.
🔇 The Silence of the Good
When people love something—a community program, an act of kindness, a helpful resource—they often just tap "like" and move on.
Not because they don't care, but because:
The interface encourages minimal interaction
Positive speech feels vulnerable when trolls are watching
Many people are emotionally exhausted by the manufactured crisis
Meanwhile, those seeking to dominate conversations feel emboldened to speak up. That imbalance skews perception. You might post something compassionate and receive 100 likes and 3 angry comments—but those three are what others see, what the algorithm boosts, and what wears you down.
🛠️ What We Can Do Now
We stop pretending social media is neutral. We stop trying to make it something it's not.
Instead, we ask: Can we use it as a signal fire—a tool, not a home, for interdependence and mutual aid?
Immediate Actions:
Post with intention, not performance. Share context, emotion, and invitation—not just noise.
Host your real work elsewhere. Use newsletters, websites, in-person gatherings, zines, or porch drops as your primary organizing spaces.
Name the exhaustion explicitly. Tell people they can be quiet and still be part of the community.
Directly invite positive responses. Ask questions like, "What's one thing that gave you hope this week?"
Help people reconnect through non-corporate channels. Share community radio frequencies, local email lists, and physical bulletin boards.
Building Better Infrastructure:
Start a low-tech email bulletin for your organizing group
Create safer group messaging on trusted nonprofit tools like Mattermost or Discourse
Support local writers, artists, and mutual aid crews—whether they're on Substack, their own blogs, or the library wall
We don't have to scream into the void. But we can leave a lantern on. We can say: We're still here. We miss you. Come as you are.
P.S.
Even in these difficult times, new mutual aid networks continue emerging in unexpected places. Communities support each other, proving that care and resistance persist. Resistance finds a way.
*P.P.S.
The line that keeps echoing for me comes from Gwendolyn Brooks' poem honoring Paul Robeson: "We are each other's harvest; we are each other's business; we are each other's magnitude and bond." Brooks wrote these words in 1970, celebrating a man who understood something profound about human connection—that our worth is measured not just in what we accomplish, but in how we tend to one another.
Paul Robeson, the Renaissance giant equally at home on Broadway stages and picket lines, lived this truth. Even when McCarthyism destroyed his own career, even when his passport was seized and his voice silenced in America, he continued to believe in our interconnectedness. He understood that we are indeed "each other's magnitude"—that our individual brightness is amplified when we recognize and nurture the light in others.
Brooks, our first Black woman Pulitzer Prize winner, knew this too. Her poetry consistently illuminated ordinary Black lives with extraordinary dignity, showing us how to see each other's worth even in the most overlooked corners of society.
Their words feel especially urgent now, when social media can make us feel more alone than ever. But perhaps that's exactly where we need to remember: in every tweet, post, and comment, we have the chance to be each other's harvest. We can choose to leave lanterns—small acts of kindness, genuine encouragement, authentic witness—for the next person scrolling through the darkness.
Both Robeson (whose legacy continues to inspire) and Brooks (who remains celebrated for her life and literary contributions) knew that even in the most challenging times, we remain each other's business—not in the sense of interference but in the deepest sense of care—that what happens to you matters to me, and what I offer into the world might be the light someone else desperately needs.