Is social media your church?
In atheist philosopher Chris Stedman's book IRL: Finding Realness, Meaning, and Belonging in our Digital Lives, there is a chapter where he asks "has social media become our new church?"
Has social media become our new church—the place we turn to in search or answers about where we fit in and what makes us who we are? It can certainly feel like it. As author Briallen Hopper says in a conversation with the Revealer, there are countless ways for "forms of media to become religion: ecstatic consumption, collective textual study, cultural edicts about what is or is not permissible to consume, the instinctive clutch of your phone in your pocket as if it were a handful of beads." Instead of moving our fingers from prayer bead to prayer bead in times of trouble, many of us [...] now flip from app to app to find consolation.
Like the evangelical Christian church I ended up in as an adolescent [...] sometimes it feels like the internet demands an almost dogmatic kind of faith. One that urges us not to interrogate what we're seeing and doing and to just adopt the practices and ideas we encounter online—the memes, the callout posts, and, worst of all, #ThrowbackThursday[.]
But there's reason to question. Religious rituals and communities offer people regular, structured, and often effective opportunities to reflect on their lives and the needs of others. Yes, someone can approach tarot or religion dogmatically, but these frameworks for understanding the self can also open people up and prompt them to see things in a new way.
[I]f many of us are turning to social media for the things we once got from the [religious] institutions we're leaving—meaning, belonging, a sense of real connection—that requires putting trust in something new and largely untested.
I highly recommend picking up the book from a bookstore or library and reading the full chapter. He discusses how when you're neither religious nor purposefully an atheist, just "nothing in particular," there is a way for corporations to prey upon the void in your life left behind by religion; and the importance of non-religious people to be active, mindful, and intentional about where they look for meaning, belonging, morals, and connection. If you aren't paying attention, you might be allowing Disney and Twitter to become your religion and exploit their role in your life to form you into the kind of person from whom they can earn the most profits.
Even though I'm very much not an atheist, I absolutely recommend anyone and everyone read the works of Chris Stedman. This book really changed how I thought about a lot of things, and this chapter in particular has stuck with me for years since I read it.
Where do we get our morals and values?
One of the major things religion is known to give people is a source for deriving what is right or wrong. A lot of moral philosophy is not based in religion, but most religions offer some sort of moral philosophy or ethical code as part of their doctrine. From the most elaborate 613 mitzvot and centuries of halakhic responsa, to the most simple "do no harm." Many people have never seriously considered the source of their morals outside of religion.
Outside of religion, we have moral philosophy. Moral philosophy is probably most well-known these days through The Good Place among the general population. Obviously, nobody has exactly solved moral philosophy, but thinking about different moral philosophies does help you reflect upon and understand what you value and how you decide what is right or wrong. I knew an atheist who believed in a modified utilitarianism. Rather than right and wrong being determined by what "creates the most good for the most people," she derived her ethics from what "gives the most people the most agency." We spent a lot of time debating it, but it was clear that she had thought very hard about this, which meant that in general she was thinking about how her behavior aligns with a moral compass.
If you go around asking people what are Jewish Values—especially if you're on Google and looking at websites like Chabad Ask A Rabbi—you'll inevitably see "integrity" or perhaps "moral monotheism" come up.
Integrity
Integrity is being consistent about sticking to your morals and values. Someone with integrity won't make exceptions just because they don't like someone, or play favorites and take bribes. Someone with integrity doesn't overlook harmful behavior from loved ones. Integrity is the opposite of hypocrisy. Someone with integrity is careful not to criticize someone they don't like for something that they do themselves.
I think that Democrats and Liberals are sometimes—rightfully—criticized for being more concerned with process, decorum, and procedure than they are doing the right thing. I think that some people these days see integrity as being the same thing. It's now commonly believed that to disapprove of doing immoral things to bad people is always the same as defending and agreeing with the bad person, regardless of who the bad person is or what the immoral action is. Democrats do not have integrity when they refuse to end the filibuster. I don't think Democrats have any integrity at all. They profess certain values and beliefs and promises, and then instead take bribes and do things that align with what their friends want. They're corrupt, and the obsession with process and decorum is just an excuse. They have no moral philosophy that says it's wrong to push bills through the senate. They just genuinely do not want to.
When someone insists on freedom of speech for "everyone, even the people I disagree with, including fascists" that is integrity, it's just integrity for a value which I disagree with. Integrity is not the same thing as having good values, it just means you're consistent about them. You can at least respect when someone is consistent about their wrong beliefs. I always try to have integrity, because even if people hate me for my positions on things like lashon hora, at least they know where I stand and can see that I'm consistent about it.
I really believe in integrity as a value. "It's okay when me and mine do it, but immoral when you and yours do it" is generally unacceptable for morals. There are certainly actions that are okay for some groups to do and not others, such as reclaiming slurs, but that has to do with the specific act, and not the base underlying moral behind them. The immorality of white people saying racial slurs is based upon racism being immoral, and hurting people impacted by racism. It's not based on "anyone ever saying these sounds" being immoral. It's the context that matters. But the context doesn't change the core underlying value.
And sometimes, more basic morals like "don't kill" can be complicated by certain situations, but you can have a system for more consistently working through those complications, and that brings us to moral monotheism.
Moral Monotheism
Moral monotheism is having a consistent method of deriving that moral code, and not changing what you see as right and wrong without squaring it against that method. If you derive from your religion or moral philosophy that it's always wrong to kill someone, and then you kill someone, you have to be accountable to that religion or moral philosophy. If you change your mind and decide killing is okay in self-defense or when you're killing someone who is evil, because now that you've killed someone you need to feel okay about it, that's unacceptable in a moral monotheistic framework. You have to re-engage with your religion or moral philosophy and justify your change in beliefs in the same framework you used before, or else you're a hypocrite. If you previously believed killing was always wrong because one of the ten commandments is "thou shalt not kill," it's okay to change your belief to "killing is justified to save someone's life" if you derived that from the talmudic concepts of rodef and pikuach nefesh. It is not okay to change your belief just because you need to feel better about having killed someone to save a life. (Within a moral monotheistic framework, which you can disagree with, I'm just describing the concept according to Chabad). For an atheist, this would mean that if you're a Kantian, and you believed "Killing is wrong because if everyone killed people society would suck ass" then if you're going to change that belief, a moral monotheist would say you still need to use the same method. "Killing to save a life is justified, because if everyone intervened to save another person's life, society would be very good."
My stance on moral monotheism is that it's not wrong for you to be inspired by something from a different religion. Jews can learn from Buddhists and Atheists can learn from Jews and Buddhists can learn from Atheists. But if you're going to have a "moral smørgåsbørd" you need to still square those values and morals with everything else on your plate. You can't ignore that something contradicts everything else you believe. You also can't change your morals freely without a thorough examination of how you can justify something so major. But I don't think you're obliged to be a Faithful Kantian your entire life, so long as you're being very active and intentional in thinking about why you believe what you believe.
The Moral Code of the Church of Twitianity.
Ever since I read IRL by Chris Stedman, I have thought a lot about the concept of social media as religion, and how that affects the "nothing in particular" people, who have inadvertently allowed social media to fill the void of religion and philosophy in their lives. In particular, I have often observed a lack of integrity and moral consistency among people who seem to have given no reflection into their base underlying morals and values and how they are derived.
It's good to hurt bad people
This first really stood out to me in how stupid leftist cliquey infighting would constantly play out on Twitter as more of a team sport than legitimate discussions. It seemed like a lot of people believed "if communists/anarchists do it, then it's okay" and "if anarchists/communists do it, then it's wrong." "When America/China does it, it's wrong, when China/America does it, it's okay." It was one thing when discussing the historical actions of different countries, but it got particularly egregious when it came to the actions of living activists and organizers, or whatever you call a leftist twitter personality who just tweets takes all day and gets into arguments. "It's okay that they did this, because they're an anarchist, like me, and if I don't defend them, if I criticize them for their actions, then I'm actually condemning anarchism itself. All criticism of an anarchist is a criticism of my team." (replace "anarchist" with whatever tendency you'd like.)
There's also "It's okay to do this, because the person being targeted is an annoying anarchist." "It's okay when a Marxist does it to an anarchist." "It's actually morally good and justified for the Red Guard to beat up an elderly DSA member because he was a member of the DSA."
This sort of "team-based morals" seems particularly encouraged by Twitter and other social media. People seem to be discouraged from having integrity and moral consistency, and encouraged to get into fights and arguments and target whatever bad person is being targeted that day. It's one thing to go after people who do bad things according to your own moral code... it's another to have your entire moral code be that everything is fair game when it's against a bad person and nothing is fair game when it's against a good person.
Likewise, I think that some people have taken "it's morally good to punch a nazi" and extended it to "it's morally good to hurt bad people" in the abstract. They never worked through a process to think through why punching a stranger is wrong but punching a nazi is good; past that "nazis are bad and it's okay to do bad things to bad people."
It's morally justified to doxx, harass, stalk, punch, and fuck up fascists groups because fascists are a danger to the lives of millions, potentially billions when you consider war and climate change. The halakhic concept of rodef says that if you see a man pursuing another person to murder them, then you are morally obliged to stop him, even going so far as to kill the one who pursues if that becomes necessary. The halakhic concept of pikuach nefesh says that saving a life is always more important than following any other law. Fascists are also destroying the world, and the planet, and there is a mitzvah to repair the world. So defeating fascism is necessary to fulfill the mitzvah.
A utilitarian atheist might say that the pain caused to one nazi is outweighed by the pain prevented by deplatforming him and preventing him from recruiting and building a fascist movement, which would harm millions or billions of lives.
But Twitter Morals have used no such process to derive this conclusion. Twitter Morals are that when good people do things it's good, and when bad people do things it's bad. And if you do something to a bad person, that's good. And if you do something to a good person, that's bad. And there isn't a lot of consistency or code regarding who is good or bad, perhaps besides that some people just are a type of bad person, such as an "abuser" or a fascist; but still not much consistency in what constitutes "an abuser" past "someone who has hurt a good person, in any capacity."
This is the kind of moral reasoning promoted by social media, especially Twitter, but also Mastodon and Facebook. Engagement and activity are good, and people fighting and arguing all the time drives engagement, so this institution called Twitter which has supplanted religion in the lives of so many has inadvertently pushed a moral code which drives engagement and conflict. There's no room for "that was wrong, and so was your response, and so was their response to your response.
This is not a moral code which allows for integrity. It is not a complete system of morals. It is team sports.
The worst part of this moral code is that it's very easy to justify anything. All you have to do to justify your behavior is convince everyone that the person you're hurting is "bad." And nobody can criticize you, because if they do, then they're defending and siding with the bad person. If they were on your team, they'd defend everything you do. If they don't always take your side, they must be on the other side, and therefore a bad person who you're allowed to hurt. If you want to hurt someone, just kick them off the team, and now they're bad and everything is fair game.
Sarah Schulman wasn't entirely wrong to say, in Conflict is Not Abuse, that this mentality is commonly associated with cluster B personality disorders, and yet has become widely adopted by the general population on social media.
Like-Based Moral Relativism
How do people derive what's right and wrong through social media? By what's popular of course, and who is popular. Behavior that gets a lot of likes and retweets/shares/boost/reblog is encouraged by the platform. So if it's encouraged, it must be right. People see it being supported by their peers, and lean towards agreement.
Moral monotheism as a concept is all about criticizing that leaning towards agreeing with your peers. When Jews spend a lot of time with gentiles, they begin to assimilate, and that can include assimilating their morals and values simply because it's what everyone around them is treating as okay. If you spend a lot of time online, and have no intentional system for thinking through what's right and wrong that you hold yourself accountable to, then you're very prone to just agreeing with whatever the group around you is doing.
And social media absolutely encourages a mob mentality.
So if you're popular enough that anything you say will get a lot of engagement, then you can just kinda decree anything you want to be right or wrong. What determines if you're correct is how much engagement you get. It's a like-based moral system. It's okay to hurt someone if a lot of people like and share the post. It's okay to be a bully if it's funny.
It's not quite "might makes right" but rather... "like makes right." It's okay to do what you want if enough people approve of it online. There is no consistent moral code. You can be a hypocrite all you want, if you have fans.
Conclusion
So then, where are you getting your morals and values from? Is it a trustworthy source or system? Is it the wisdom of your ancestors? Is it philosophy? Are you thinking about it?
Are your morals being driven by a for-profit corporation that likes it when you're angry. Are your morals being driven by charismatic randos who are good at whipping up a frenzy around whatever they feel like starting an outrage about that day. Are your values driven by people whose entire platform consists of being the loudest person to criticize somebody else for something dubious. When your entire timeline has taken a side, is that what makes them right? Or do you have a process for thinking through if you agree?
I really do implore you to think about this stuff. If you're not religious, then what are you? If you're agnostic, do you have life philosophies? Do you have a moral code? Do you believe some things are right or wrong even when your friend is the one doing it? Do you believe in your team because your team aligns with your values, or are your values derived entirely from whatever is being done by your team? Would you criticize someone on your team for going against your values? Is Communism/Anarchism/Democratic Socialism correct because it aligns with your values? Or is it correct because most of the people you follow are of a particular political tendency and they all posture as being correct really good?
If someone in your community is a really important community leader, but also a fucking asshole who treats everyone like shit and is a total hypocrite, do you fall in line with them on every issue because they're always the first and loudest at criticizing the bad people in your community? Or do you respect the people in your community who consistently behave in line with your shared values?
If a bank leaked the bank details of someone you didn't like, would you still trust that bank with your business? Do you trust that you'd always remain someone who they like?
I hope this has given you something meaty to think about and reflect on. Even if you feel you have a pretty good set of morals and values, it's always worth it to just name them to yourself privately and think about them, so that you're not letting social media decide them for you.
It's not the social media is eroding our morals, plenty of Americans never had them to begin with, but if you don't intentionally fill this place in your life, the corporations will do it for you, and social media is the likely culprit to do it.
Also, definitely read IRL by Chris Stedman!!! It's so fucking good and gets into all the other stuff from that excerpt real deep that I didn't touch on.