The urge to hear the hot takes - and what we lose once we do

On Wednesday of this week, ICE agents in Minneapolis shot and killed a woman attempting to defend her neighbors from them. The initial outcry bore several similarities to the George Floyd case of 2020: a senseless murder by police of an innocent, with media doing its best to twist the story into an alternative truth. Kristi Noem, minutes after the event, labeled the victim as a "domestic terrorist," while JD Vance called it "a tragedy of her own making." Vigils were held the same day for the victim, soon identified as Renee Good. Marches ensued this weekend in her name. Much like in Floyd's case, and ironically from the same home base, the entire country erupted in the aftermath of her death.

And as some of those spitfires demanded more evidence, more angles to analyze, new footage from the phone of the officer and gunman emerged online, first published to a right-wing news station local to Minneapolis. This was a 47-second video from his point of view, demonstrating an up-close, first-person lens of the final moments of Good's life.

I found myself simultaneously unable to watch the footage and yet itching to know what my "trusted sources" would say about it. Would they admit to seeing the situation differently now that a new angle of the moment had been captured and released? Would they concede that the other side was right? Now that there was more evidence to review, would everyone come to a consensus and call this what it is?

No. Of course not, because that's never how this goes.

This is a classic case of confirmation bias: where millions of individuals bear witness to the same event, but based on preconceived notions, personal beliefs and distant upbringings, genuinely see two entirely different situations unfolding. Anyone belonging to the left calls it murder in cold blood, where the right says the officer was justified to act in self-defense. Both parties, yet again, drift further into their own circles and further away from one another, doomed to repeat the same cycle tomorrow, and the days and weeks after, until the damage is irreparable. Maybe it already is.

But there's another kind of tragedy here, one that takes place on an individual level - the same one I find myself grappling with at this very moment. Why must I wait to hear what my chosen media outlets say about this - or anything, for that matter - before I can form my own opinion?

Being as deeply intertwined with media as most of us are means that we witness next to nothing on the public scale before there is conversation about it. And honestly, this isn't new at all - anything that is occurring beyond our individual scope is subject to multiple witnesses, therefore multiple perspectives and opinions. Public discourse has existed for as long as there have been tribes and communities of people. When something shocking happens - whether it's the killing of a community member or the cliffhanger of a class text (which I'll get to...), banter naturally follows.

What is relatively new is the commodification of opinion, or the ability to take advantage of current events and leverage our own takes on the virality of the moment. Because any given event is trending, it makes it more likely that talking about it as it's blowing up will score the speaker or creator more chances to be noticed - and that's what most people chronically online are striving for.

But beyond the hope of being witnessed, being talked about - or even better, being "in" on the conversation - are the multitudes of "lurkers:" those standing by while everyone else is talking about the big thing, waiting for an opinion that resonates with them to repost. "I couldn't have said it better myself" type-rhetoric takes center stage. We take the words of others and pretend they're ours, until we lose our voice, and our mind, entirely.

Don't get me wrong - it's fine to let others do some of the political discourse heavy-lifting for us for topics we really don't have the language for; that's what commentary content like The Daily Show is for. But that's about as far as I'd be willing to go in excusing it. Not much further along, and we've already entered the territory of sharing content for the sake of appearing to have an opinion, when we haven't actually read about what's going on, don't know who's involved, what's at stake, or where to begin in the storyline. There is no real, individual stake in most matters when we get to the point of defaulting to sharing other people's hot takes about them. Especially when many of us fall into the trap of "sharing as doing something," and that can replace the real activism like showing up to a town hall meeting or having a genuine conversation with a family member, the compulsion strips us of any true power.

And here's where I see it manifesting most concerningly - not in a political context at all: in my classroom just weeks ago, when my freshmen and I finished Jason Reynolds's Long Way Down. The book is known for having a frustrating cliffhanger that leaves readers clamoring for what lies ahead for the main character, a fifteen-year-old boy named Will. My students spent weeks with Will as he confronted the violent and senseless death of his older brother, Shawn, lost to gun violence before even entering his twenties. They watched as he deliberated moments and people from his past which all attempted to aid him in making a critical decision: should he seek revenge on the person he thinks killed his brother, or end the cycle of violence?

When the question is left unsatisfyingly unanswered, students of the past would immediately look around the room at each other, at me, with wide eyes. They'd churn in unison: "Wait...what?" "That's it?" They'd deliberate. They'd eventually come to a conclusion within themselves, which is great, because that conclusion is the claim to the first argumentative essay they're asked to write in high school. But when we finished the book this year, that's not what happened.

There may have been a few quick glances around the room, surveying for their friends' immediate reactions to the mystery. But rather than talking to each other about it, their gazes zeroed in on the computer screen, to Google, to ChatGPT, to ask the internet what happened at the end of Long Way Down. What happened to the fictional boy named Will.

I was appalled. The students in my first line of sight caught the brunt of my shock and disappointment (and not that they would have known this, but frustration at myself for not assuming this was what they'd do). I shook my head at them. I whined to them, "you really can't just talk to each other about this? You can't form your own opinion? Don't ask a machine...use your brain!"

And then I remembered...I do the same thing.

As adamantly against AI as I am, I'd be lying if I said I've never once fallen prey to its easy answers. Not to mention every little question or curiosity that comes up in conversation with friends is met by Google's Gemini front and center of every search query. We now live in a world that works against slow processes of any kind, and that includes brain power. The systems that run our lives favor efficiency at its highest, and we've fallen right in line with that trend ever since Google came onto the scene, ever since two-day delivery was deemed ordinary.

I mean, do you ever think about that? Do you ever think about how it's even physically possible to get a Chinese-branded bikini shipped to the other side of the world in that amount of time, sometimes less? How they get the order through their system, and the product in a box in a matter of minutes? I digress, but it stands to be questioned in this conversation.

For decades, we've had machines that can fly us across the globe in hours. We've had systems that can deliver food straight to our house, without us having to exert any energy. We can keep up with friends we never see in person, in real time. These are the inventions that have largely solved the problems of inconvenience, and they've revolutionized the human experience. So is there a threshold where the benefits start to crumble, start to hurt? What do we stand to lose when we demand an even more convenient life than the one we've already built?

During a meet and greet in 2019 for his new novel, Look Both Ways, Jason Reynolds took the question of a young audience member asking him to discuss the ending of Long Way Down, or at least to talk about how he wanted readers to interpret it. I showed my students the video of this moment, because his response captures everything I wanted them to understand about outsourcing their minds. It reminds me, too. He says "it would be disrespectful of me to give you the answer. It would mean I think that you don't have the mental capacity to reason for yourself what you believe happens."

"You read the book. You have all the information. You have to deduce for yourself based on the information given what you think happens, but I'm not gonna tell you what it is, because I need you to tap into the critical thinking part of who you are - not just that part, though, also the imaginative part - because life will do everything it can to take it from you."

A severe lack of critical thinking is the conversation we're largely having now, but I think the forgotten piece is the imagination. I'd go even further to say that I think that's on purpose.

Because humans are imaginative. Inventive. Innovative by nature. We are good at problem-solving, at creating, and envisioning different worlds than the one we live in today. We are good at revolutionizing, and that's a threat to power.

I don't expect my fifteen-year-old students to latch onto this idea and run with it. Unfortunately, the technology has too strong an allure for them to see what levels of destruction it could cause years down the line. A free tool that can do their homework for them, give them social advice, and help them optimize every aspect of their lives as quickly as possible? That's too good to pass up. In a big way, I get it.

But to you: think about how much less powerful you are when you outsource your mind - your thought, your voice, your writing, your ideas, your creativity. You are atrophying your ability to revolutionize a world power that, as it stands, wants us more under control, more distracted, more easily convinced, more exhausted, more burnt out.

I don't think that's the world we want to live in.