On simple solutions

Every now and again, a post I read on Mastodon weeks ago pops back into my head. It said:

We should keep the bigots out and let all the good normal folks in.

It does sound simple, doesn’t it? Everything is such a shitshow. Why don’t we simply keep the bad ones out and let the good, normal ones in? This was in the context of social media, but why stop there, I wonder? This solution applies to everything. It’s so simple and effective.

I keep thinking about this tweet because to me it embodies one of the core issues I have with general social media discourse: the lack of depth. The idea expressed in that single sentence is so devoid of details and substance that it is effectively meaningless.

Call me insane, but I believe two things when it comes to the other ~10 billion human beings out there:

They are complex and multifaceted
Their ideas and beliefs exist on a spectrum

The whole concept of being able to divide people into “the bigots” and “the good normal folks” sounds so insane to me. And by the way, I have zero doubts in my mind that I’d be left out and not be labeled as a “good normal folk” in this scenario.