Interview: Timothy Snyder Has Seen Tyrants Like Trump Before

That was a fun read! Thanks for sharing. I especially liked this part:

Speaking of social media, you advocate for practising “corporeal” or embodied politics. That could mean attending a march in-person or voting with paper ballots, all of which is bad news for keyboard warriors. How online are you?

I see social media as kind of a grim necessity—that it’s basically evil and life is elsewhere. I post, but I don’t read comments. I don’t know what my Twitter password is. If you stay offline, it’s like treading water: you may not be improving yourself, but at least you’re not sinking. I want to remember that social media is a different, non-human realm that’s calling out to us all the time, but that we don’t necessarily have to listen to it.

Like Gollum with the ring.

That’s a funny analogy because a lot of people in the tech world are big Tolkien fans. In addition to controlling our attention, like the ring does with Frodo and Bilbo and Gollum, it’s also turning us from that nice Sméagol character into that Gollum character. I dare you to print this.

I gotta learn that lesson.

2 comments

That was a great piece. Thank you for sharing it.
That was a fun read! Thanks for sharing. I especially liked this part:
Speaking of social media, you advocate for practising “corporeal” or embodied politics. That could mean attending a march in-person or voting with paper ballots, all of which is bad news for keyboard warriors. How online are you?
I see social media as kind of a grim necessity—that it’s basically evil and life is elsewhere. I post, but I don’t read comments. I don’t know what my Twitter password is. If you stay offline, it’s like treading water: you may not be improving yourself, but at least you’re not sinking. I want to remember that social media is a different, non-human realm that’s calling out to us all the time, but that we don’t necessarily have to listen to it.
Like Gollum with the ring.
That’s a funny analogy because a lot of people in the tech world are big Tolkien fans. In addition to controlling our attention, like the ring does with Frodo and Bilbo and Gollum, it’s also turning us from that nice Sméagol character into that Gollum character. I dare you to print this.
I gotta learn that lesson.