Tribes, Traitors, and “A Bargain for Francis” (II)

But the choice to be friends is not the antidote to tribalism; it can, of course, be implicated in tribalism as well.  When we become friends with someone in real life—a spouse, a family member, a kindred spirit—that friendship means trusting them.  But such friendships inevitably go through a period of vetting.  Adults know that every potential friend is also a potential Thelma (a lesson Francis learns to her grief), and so it rightly takes a while to figure out how reliable another person is.  In romance, this is called courtship; but of course there are equivalents in platonic friendships and work situations as well.

But for whatever reason, this slow process rarely takes place in extrapersonal contexts.  If, for instance, I encounter an opinion maker, or a website, or a news outlet, or a social media page—in other words, a thing which is primarily spewing content, however much it may be dominated by a given personality—I am liable to latch in and trust rather quickly.  It starts when the content agrees with me; and as the content agrees and thereby flatters me, I am apt to spend more and more time with it.  And since content providers make their money and/or get their good feels from getting more clicks, they continue to turn out content that flatters me more and more.  They become, in essence, my best friend.

Except, of course, they haven’t really proven themselves trustworthy.  When a person you know shows signs of being false, it’s rarely a one-off.  There are repeated signals and, eventually, even if you ignored some of the signals (usually because they also involved flattering, i.e., agreeing with you) you will eventually pick up the scent of falsity, and the incipient friendship will wear thin.  But when a content provider shows signs of being false, we rarely recognize it, because, well, they are in agreement with us all the time, unlike a real human being.  They are permanently comforting.  They are better than our best friend.

It’s almost unavoidable that this should happen, to all of us.  We’re all drawn to agreement with ourselves; a source that provides constantly agreeable content will therefore be constantly agreeable.  The only way I know to deal with this is to be very careful about what we hold and value, such that what we find agreeable is limited.

For instance: I hold a good many things to be true, but I have varied degrees of certainty about them.  I hold my religious beliefs, for instance, more firmly than my political ones.  But this by itself only means that I am less likely to be seduced by political friendtraps than by religious friendtraps.  Real resistance to being freindtrapped comes with being deeply committed to the pursuit of truth.