i seriously need to delete tiktok, not because of how much time i spend on it, or because of how my attention span has diminished, i need to delete tiktok because of the lack of critical thinking on that god forsaken app. some things i read make me question how society will progress. mainly this gross simplification of topics that require a heavy amount of unpacking. this is severely disorganized but it’s exam season so i deserve a little stream of consciousness as a treat.
i saw a tiktok of someone saying that calling someone pretentious for having a wide vocabulary and wanting to have complex, nuanced discussions is stupid because those are two very valid things to have and do. i went “yeah” then opened the comment section to see it filled with people saying “this has to be satire” and “this is not a real argument i refuse to believe you people are real”. i was pretty taken aback by this because the tiktok seemed like the most lukewarm take on the planet. like obviously discussions about culture and politics should be nuanced and complex, but apparently saying so is classist and pretentious according to a wide majority of people on the internet. but a lot of the sentiments people online carry is that, when having discussions you should have to gear it in a way that everyone can easily and immediately understand, otherwise it is not accessible. the issue with having these discussions online is you have a limited time frame and can (rightfully) assume that people can do research outside of the 3 minute tiktok they (hopefully) watched all the way through. “big words” do serve a purpose and it is not to confuse people or scare people who aren’t familiar with it away. it’s because these large words have very precise and intricate meanings that get to the heart of what someone is trying to say. people online love the “why say many word when few do trick” mentality but as soon as it becomes easier to use one large word instead of a whole sentence it is “elitist” and “exclusionary” because not everyone is college educated and knows what you mean. a) you’re already on the internet, open your browser and start googling, b) no??
i think the idea that anyone who doesn’t have a college education will have trouble understanding or partaking in the discussions, is more elitist than the original discussion themselves. assuming that because someone uses the term “zeitgeist” people who have never formally studied at the university level will never understand and that they’re being excluded is far more elitist than using a 5 dollar word. and the fact that it is being treated differently is absolutely wild to me. but this sense of gross simplification in the name of not being elitist leads to a much scarier conversation around the lack of critical engagement with media and art we see present in today’s climate.
i’m not being dramatic (i most definitely am) when i say that if one more person makes the “maybe the curtains are just blue” argument i’m throwing myself off the bell tower. i see too many “it’s literally not that deep'' reactions to people critically engaging with media and art because more often than not, it is that deep. if through analysis you can find a deeper, hidden meaning that has a more large scale application, it was probably intentionally put there. assuming that it’s not seriously underestimates how much effort creatives put into their work. people don’t make art just for it to be mindlessly consumed, works have an objective and actively dismissing that is very dangerous. if we normalize saying “it’s not that deep'' anytime someone engages critically with a piece of work. if we stop questioning things and just rely on taking everything at face value we set ourselves up for a society in which we can just consume rhetoric and ideologies without challenging them. and for the record i don’t think the vast majority of people are unintelligent so i’m not going to go into detail about why critical thinking is important and why we should value it. critical thinking impacts how governments run, how systems of belief function, and how we interact with people on an everyday basis. critical thinking is vital to how our society functions and without it, we could seriously regress as a society. i also wonder if critical thinking just takes too much brain power sometimes, if people just want to turn their brains off and mindlessly consume. if we continue to promote and environment where it’s okay to stop engaging with things because it requires a little bit effort then we still see that we lose people to this “i don’t have time for this” mentality, which is in turn also very dangerous.
which is why it is vital we have the complex conversations, and engage critically with media and art. even if you see them as pretentious and elitist, they still hold value because at least someone is doing it. this is also how i feel about the notion of “useless degrees'' as a philosophy major i feel i am very qualified to discuss this because all i get when i tell people my major is that it is useless and i’ll live in poverty for the rest of my life and i deserve to because i didn’t choose a stem major (all of this can be reconciled with the fact that i could go to law school). the key is that in current modern day rhetoric surrounding university is that you pursue higher education as a means to get a better job and have a career. if you go to post-secondary to learn instead of for a career you are wasting your money and should be ridiculed for your choices. i could turn this into a “the arts aren’t valued enough'' take but i’ll save that for another time. instead i’m going to argue that anti-intellectualism as we’ve seen discussed earlier does not value education, it values labour, and what we can consume as a product of that labour. education as an act and learning for the sake of learning is no longer valued in our consumerist world because it’s not a tangible thing where the outcomes are laid out in front of us. the benefits of education as a result of self-enrichment and a greater understanding of how things work and how we all kind of hang together are not the results we are used to when we are told it will benefit us in the long run. there is no promise of a lucrative career, or material goods, or respect from our peers. education is seen as something you struggle and push through to the promise of something greater and not the actual experience. because of the lack of respect towards the value of learning just for the sake of learning and nothing more, education in something not “useful” is seen as a waste of money and anyone who values that waste of money, is classist and elitist.
there are countless examples of classism and elitism in academia. post-secondary school IS inaccessible, but not because of those who value education and think it's important. you can take issue with higher education, and intellectualism, that is fine, but what you cannot do is lobby elitism and classism, and other very real problems to make your point. it’s inaccurate and dangerous for our critical thinking. but hey, maybe it’s not that deep.
This was a good read(was giving uni essay). Tiktok isn't the only place where people are desensitized to larger issues. Twitter is also a terrible place for that kind of matter. People taking the most intricate and well meaning matters and finding a way to make it seem terrible to suggest them. Deleting both would be a favor to myself(I literally can't fathom deleting them)