When I was young, I mean really young, we were privileged to have adults around us who were willing to talk to us and really engage, which meant that they were willing to criticize. Quite forcefully too, without condescension or holding back. Because that’s what respect means – you tell the truth. And in a weird way having your point of view dismantled can be catnip, for a child. It means that the adult is really listening.
When Suey Park had her brief moment in the social media sun, I thought a lot about being brought up that way. Park’s explicit belief was that hashtags could “dismantle the state.” And so I said, at the time, that real respect meant telling her the truth – that no, they couldn’t, and that the belief that they could was a juvenile delusion. That’s what real respect required. It says a lot about contemporary culture that most progressives instead chose to “honor” her by celebrating her campaign even though they knew it was doomed. And so it was. Somebody told me she has since found Christ.
So: when a very sympathetic person says “The highest and noblest purpose of social media is revolution and social change,” what is the proper thing to say, to believe, to do? What does real respect require?
