How do we strip away the humanity of those involved in a tragedy? How do we forget our own humanity and turn real people and their suffering into nothing more than content fodder?
This week, it looked like this.
Several coaches/influencer types I follow weighed in on the Trump assassination attempt, which wasn’t unusual for some of them. They’ve expressed opinions before regarding media and political stories, particularly recently in Australia where we’ve had a spate of domestic violence homicides and in the past when a few state premiers resigned.
“It’s all a show! The world’s a stage”, some jeered. “Just my opinion. It was probably planned/fake”, came the others.
One really stood out to me, though. A day after the initial opinion share on their stories, they said in a subsequent story how expressing their views on the situation was fantastic for their engagement. Look at my stats and here are some reasons you should consider doing it to expand your reach, came the advice.
What I heard was, “Hey, someone almost got killed, but look how many views I got!”
I honestly felt nauseous. I didn’t look at social media for the rest of the day.
A Family Still Paid The Price For Political Violence
My opinions on governments or elections anywhere don’t matter in the context of this piece, but I generally don’t pay much mind to US politics anymore. Regardless of your opinion on Trump, if you take everything away, his actions, the things he’s said, the labels of a former president, running candidate or whatever else you want to assign to him, he’s a human. With a beating heart and a family that would never recover from watching him receive a bullet to the head on international television if the shooter hadn’t missed him.
We’d all be reeling in some fresh trauma, witnessing something no one should ever have to if the shooter hadn’t missed it’s intended target. While it was a near miss for one person, the outcome remains the same that one family must come to terms with the tragic loss of their partner, son, father, brother or colleague.
The Erosion of Empathy
There’s something seriously off when someone can discuss a televised assassination attempt that resulted in a civilian’s death with the same tone they use to talk about their morning routine. This shit isn’t just distasteful. It’s corrosive to our collective humanity. We need to remember that behind every headline and trending topic, there are real people. It doesn’t matter what you think of someone personally. They deserve better than to be reduced to an engagement statistic.
But the content machine never stops, right? Like assembly line workers, our slowly softening minds have been reshaped by the ceaseless obligation to output something to seem relevant in a sea of hype, recycled advice and hot takes. And the algorithms? They’re not about integrity. This is a case in point of how they reward the most outrageous, controversial and often senseless shit because that’s what keeps the majority of us glued to our pocket-sized black mirrors.
Trampling Dignity for Clicks
When content meets the algorithm’s hunger for controversy, we’re incentivised to exploit tragedy for engagement. It’s a race to the bottom, where the most shocking, most exploitative content often wins. A race where we abandon our humanity and ignore people’s dignity. This degeneracy is eroding our empathy and humanity, one highly engaged post at a time.
Words matter. Energy and intention matters.
We need to check ourselves more often. Is this really the kind of world we want to create? A culture that values spectacle over empathy. Where someone’s most frightening day becomes someone else’s best engagement?
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