Making room for the inbetween
i’d like to start
by sharing the story of carson king
carson was a spectator at a college
football game
who could be seen in the background of a
game day broadcast
holding up a sign saying his busch light
supply
needed to be replenished conveniently
it also included his venmo username
viewers chuckled decided to pitch in
and in a few hours the story had gone
viral
carson used the money that poured in to
buy one case of beer
and then pledged to donate the rest to a
local children’s hospital
anheuser-busch and venmo agreed to match
the donation
and carson was offered a one-year supply
of bushlight
within just a few weeks a 24 year old
making a comical plea for beer money
had raised roughly three million dollars
for charity
this is a great story one with an
unassuming hero
who used an unlikely and unanticipated
platform
to do tremendous good but the story
doesn’t
end here social media posts that carson
made in high school
containing racist content were brought
to light
anheuser-busch and venmo quickly
distanced themselves
and then the journalists who discovered
the posts
lost his job after offensive social
media content from his own past
was revealed many following the story
had whiplash
from just trying to distinguish the hero
from the villain
so i’d like to ask a few questions was
the choice
that carson made when bestowed with a
windfall a good one
is it okay that prior to this act of
extraordinary generosity
he made choices that were discriminatory
and hurtful
toward others should the hospital have
declined the donation
do one’s actions in the past negate good
will
in the present i share this story
because it illustrates our basic human
tendency
to take complex information from our
environment
and break it down so it fits into simple
categories
categories like good and bad red
and blue and hero versus villain
thanks to social media we now have
unprecedented
access to the views and daily activities
of others
and this sheer amount of information can
be overwhelming
when we put people into categories we
eliminate the need to think carefully
about them
as individuals or the unique
circumstances
that give rise to their choices and
actions
but people are complex the issues that
matter most to us
are complex and what has evolved into a
collective
aversion to complexity i would argue
is contributing to some of our growing
divides
so how did we get here i’m a social
psychologist
who studies how our identities shape and
are shaped by
our interactions with others drawing on
this work
i’d like to share three insights the
first
is that social media is as much about
affirming
and communicating our identity as it is
about connecting with others
in other words it helps us figure out
and express
who we are and it’s not just what we
write
in our social media posts what we choose
to like or dislike
who we’ve included in our social network
and the groups we allow ourselves to be
linked to
all convey information about who we are
and how we want to be viewed by others
the second insight is that identity is
communicated in very simple ways on
social media
social media allows us to share our
deepest and most defining beliefs
on some platforms and 280 characters or
less
our profiles state our attitudes
preferences
and life history as concrete and
unambiguous facts
and we use hashtags a string of just a
few
letters to underscore our positions on
complex issues these structural
characteristics of social media
also contribute to the quick and
intuitive judgments we make of others
which are now more than ever based on
single social media posts
the third insight is that identity is
about who we are
but it’s also about who we are not
parked in my driveway at this very
moment
is a vehicle with the license plate duke
hater
i completed my graduate work at duke
university and
this is not a reflection of
self-loathing the proclaimed ducator
is my husband a chapel hill native and
graduate of the university of north
carolina
duke’s archrival from eight miles down
the road
as this demonstrates we sometimes affirm
important aspects of our identity by
emphasizing what it is that we are not
and this when communicated on social
media
or a license plate can facilitate the
simplification
of our identity and our social worlds
so how do we move forward
one way is by resisting the urge to
simplify
if we can stop and think twice before
unfriending an acquaintance with
differing views
or cancelling a celebrity whose actions
or social media posts
don’t align with the ideals we hold them
to
we can begin to open ourselves up to the
complexity around us
we can challenge ourselves to stop
thinking of republicans and democrats or
those who are wealthy and those living
in poverty
as one-dimensional entities that are
either entirely good
or entirely bad instead
we can do the more difficult work of
seeing others as
multi-dimensional beings who are many
things
at once we can recognize that people can
and do make mistakes but they also have
a remarkable capacity
to learn from them maintaining
meaningful relationships with people who
see the world in a very different way
can be frustrating uncomfortable and at
times
downright infuriating but if we can
challenge ourselves to acknowledge and
maybe even embrace
nuance and complexity i think we’ll be
moving in the right direction
in a universe of eithers and oars let’s
make some room for the in-between
thank you
you