Neither Side Can Win This Online War
From MySpace memes to modern assassinations; a retrospective on how social media turned innocent connection into widespread hysteria.
I have spent the past decade as a regular contributor on social media; outside of times times when I was cut off from my phone while serving on a nuclear submarine, there has hardly been a day I haven’t logged on since 2008. Social media has become both ritual and addiction, and it has driven a sizeable portion of Americans—myself included, at times—into conspiratorial hysteria about the state of our nation and world. In the wake of political violence like the assassinations of Melissa Hortman and Charlie Kirk, it has become clear to me that social media is the oxygen feeding the fire of polarization. Many Americans have become locked into outrage cycles that suffocates compromise and truth.
In the early days of MySpace and Facebook, I thought social media was just a way to connect with friends and make new ones. It felt like a giant group chat where I could check in with the people I cared about. But as time went on, my friends posted less about their lives. There wasn’t much to share for a bunch of high school kids in rural North Carolina. We filled the gap with pokes, embedded games, and cringey questionnaires, most of which quickly faded away. But one innovation stuck: “pages,” semi-anonymous accounts that churned out memes around niche interests. I spent more and more time engaging with strangers who made and commented on this content than with the people I had joined the platform to connect with. Somewhere along the way, I became one of the content creators too. Social media stopped being about people I knew—it became about feeding an endless stream of people I didn’t.
By 2016, my feed had shifted again. Gone were the memes and Let’s Plays; now it was dominated by politicians and pundits. The same pages I once argued Dragon Ball Z power levels on were suddenly posting hot takes on American hegemony. I was captivated by Bernie Sanders’ critiques of healthcare, wealth inequality, and systemic dysfunctions. I jumped headfirst into online debates, arguing furiously with strangers over terms I had only just learned. I wasn’t having fun or thoughtful conversations with people I cared about anymore—I was trading insults with some figurative “Tom Smith of Nowhere, Nebraska,” a faceless opponent I’d never meet but whose posts demanded my immediate, morally outraged response.
When Sanders lost the primary and Donald Trump won the general election, the online world exploded with conspiracy theories about Russia, hacked emails, and authoritarian takeovers. I was part of the digital mob, both fire and fuel, amplifying fear and rage. Soon the Right adopted the same tactics. What had once been lighthearted feeds filled with quirky creators and Minecraft clips turned into battlefields of misinformation, partisan talking points, and outrage masquerading as news. The pace was dizzying—so fast and so warped it was nearly impossible to tell fact from fiction. Even when there was a real issue at stake, the spectrum of takes was so wide that the truth seemed to disappear altogether.
In between 2016 and 2025, the online world has become more corporatized and deliberate. These algorithms have become wildly addictive and tuned-in to your emotions- and the more you use them, the more they refine themselves to manipulate you. The internet is no longer the Wild West- it is that picture of a cow choosing which path to walk to the slaughterhouse.
With all that said, I don’t think social media is inherently evil; in much the same way guns are not evil. Guns are designed to kill, and social media is designed to keep you engaged. It populates content most likely to provoke a reaction—anger, awe, disgust, sadness, outrage—and rewards those who can keep you hooked on it. It is a frictionless glide into your brain’s most powerful emotional circuits.
But like guns, social media becomes dangerous in the wrong hands. The more time we spend online, the more we view the world through the lens of our screens instead of our lived experiences. We forget our neighbors because they are boring and imperfect. It is easier to build parasocial relationships with polished slivers of online influencers than to deal with the flaws of the people right in front of us. Social media reduces the complexity of our world into an oversimplified, inaccurate mush of ideological nonsense, meticulously refined to bypass our normal defenses. It reduces us to becoming part of a pointless, online cage match, where the only winner is the venue itself.
Americans have not learned how to use social media responsibly- including me, for most of my life. Modern algorithmic feedback loops have hardened both sides of our political spectrum into increasingly unshakable conviction, each convinced they’re saving the country while accelerating its breakdown. I’m not here to give a lecture on anyone’s politics; but, speaking plainly, there are no politics worth discussing if everyone you disagree with is a “traitor” or “radical”. Polite society requires a basic level of empathy. People will disagree with you, and that is okay. Those who deviate from this basic understanding and advocate political violence often forget they become prime targets of the same barbarity they cheer on.
The deeper tragedy in all of this is that while Americans scream at one another in comment sections, the real world quietly moves on without them. Our rent still comes due. Our families still need care. Our infrastructure still crumbles. We have forgotten, in the midst of our shouting, that we are already standing on common ground.
Too many of us have replaced the messy but vital friction of real community with the artificial clarity of digital tribalism. People have stopped entertaining the idea that there is a politics of compromise and nuance and have instead lauded the most obnoxious voices that appear on their personally curated echo chamber. Regardless of your politics, I hope you can see how the internet has become a means to showcase the worst parts of our people- provoking outrage and stoking your worst fears, while failing to provide you any solutions.
It is driving us to a polarized madness, and it’s a fool’s errand to think we can get any better without change. A nation addicted to digital hysteria is incapable of self-correction.
If there is a way forward, it begins with re-centering our lives in a shared reality. It means choosing to talk to your neighbor, even when you disagree or find them altogether boring. It means recognizing that a family barbecue or a town hall meeting does more for the health of a community than a thousand furious posts online. It means accepting that the people who you share your life with are imperfect and messy- and so are you. You must realize that your sassy electrons, pithy calls for civil war, and snarky tweets about how it “isn’t your job to educate others” aren’t what we need right now. Stop demonizing your fellow Americans, lest you want them to demonize you. The assassination of Kirk and Hortman speak prove the danger- when we depict others as monsters, someone will eventually imagine themselves a slayer.
I’ve deleted social media from my phone, and I encourage you to do the same. The solution isn’t to escape the world by scrolling—it’s to re-enter it. Cook dinner with friends. Volunteer. Join a book club. The only way out of this hysteria is by choosing reality, over and over again.
If we keep letting algorithms dictate our emotions, the assassinations of Kirk and Hortman won’t be outliers—they’ll be previews.