There Is No Bubble
Can we stop with this “silo” shit?
Let’s start at the start: There is no fucking bubble. There is no fucking silo.
Okay?
If you go by CNN segments and opinion columns written by elderly nepo babies, everyone who isn’t in favor of The Purge is living inside a bubble. You think that the climate crisis is bad? You’re living inside a bubble. You think readily available guns are the foundational problem of mass shootings? You’re living inside a bubble. You think trans kids should have the right to exist and get medical treatment? You’re living inside a bubble. You think society has devalued black and brown people’s worth so horribly that a person being killed on the subway is treated like solving a minor inconvenience? You’re living inside a bubble, baby!
Most often, this bullshit comes in the form of some weird distinction between city dwellers and those in the mystical wilderness of “Real America.” Somehow American cities are both protective bubbles in which people never hear anything they don’t want to hear, but ALSO the most dangerous places on the planet which have the same number of rules as an Outback Steakhouse. Literally, they hold both ideas in their heads at once: Living in a city means you’re a weak avocado-toast-eating sapling of a boy but also living in a city is the scariest thing you could ever do in your life.
This creates some insanely backward bullshit. When a man on the subway killed another man because he was having a mental health crisis, this was treated as normal and right by a lot of folks. After all, cities are dangerous! You can’t even step into a subway car without being mugged! We’re asked to believe that “disorder” requires deadly force as if we’re living in Judge fucking Dredd and everyone can’t wait to say, “I am the law.”
Meanwhile, a large number of people who actually fucking live in New York are being told that we’re somehow in a bubble for not wanting people to be killed on the trains we use every day. No, not every opinion in New York is the same. New York is full of shitty people of every persuasion in the universe. But those of us who’ve lived here for decades or years or even fucking months can attest to the many times someone annoyed us on the subway that we didn’t end a human life.
Even one millimeter beneath the surface, the idea of everyone living in a “bubble” or “silo” is fucking dumb. Very few people live their entire lives in one city without ever venturing out or changing the channel to someone they don’t normally watch. I’d say almost none. And a lot of us who are constantly screamed at that we don’t know what - again - “Real America” believes literally came from those same places and went, “Fuck this shit.” Like, motherfucker, I grew up in Florida. I’m not missing out on what Florida is serving. I got it.
Conservatives and the media have seemed to have convinced themselves that the reason people don’t want to see Trump doing a town hall is because they simply don’t like Trump himself. “Orange man bad!” Or some shit. The assumption is that the only reason the audience doesn’t want to see or hear something is because they’ve been told otherwise by some shadowy deep state collaborator. Despite the media regularly carrying water for controversial events that pull in viewers - including very recently - there’s still a ghost story that the same media is telling everyone to not listen to Trump’s talking points. Or that the libs and the left and the whatever put their hands over their ears and shout until the bad man goes away.
Which is fucking stupid. Come on. Maybe it’s because we’re not in a bubble at all that we want bad shit to go away? It’s possible that people have spent over seven years hearing every single one of Trump’s talking points. It’s possible we’ve been hearing the same excuses since Columbine happened over twenty years ago. It might be the teensiest tiniest possibility some people might not have wanted to give Trump a platform after he tried to overturn an election and was found legally liable for sexual assault.
If there’s a bubble protecting us from things that alarm or upset us, then that bubble is pretty shitty at its job. If the bubble existed, the “liberal” New York Times wouldn’t be publishing weirdo transphobic opinion columns. We wouldn’t have to see people on social media justifying death in service of convenience. We wouldn’t hear someone at work say “It happened again” and know there are five or six different terrible things that could be “it.” If we lived in a bubble, we wouldn’t have to see death and tragedy again and again and again.
Where is the bubble? What is the function of the silo? Am I in a bubble because I don’t like child marriage laws? Or is that outside the bubble? We seem confused about that. Am I outside a bubble because most Americans want women to have the right to an abortion? Or am I in a bubble because Real Americans (the ones who count) think women should be forced to give birth? Where does the bubble start? The fun thing is that we’re all accused of living in a bubble while someone else gets to decide what that bubble means and what it covers.
The whole concept is a backdoor into being half-baked arbiters of “the truth.” You may be in a bubble, but because I’m not based on my undefined parameters, I have a better understanding of reality. I’m logical, you’re emotional. I’ve got all the info. You’ve got what you’ve been told. It’s not important that I’m the one who decides who’s in a bubble and who isn’t. What’s important is that I’m right and the people in the bubble are wrong. That’s how bubbles work!
Except, again, we’re all hearing the same shit. The reason I think Qanon conspiracies were and are dumb as fuck is because I’ve actually heard about them and read about them. It’s impossible to not.
Half of the time, the news treats the concept of the bubble as if it were a fact of physics that must be explored and explained as much as possible. But they’re just the same stories again and again and again. We’re coming up on an election; there will be thousands of articles set in diners treating human beings who happen to live in small towns as if they’re aliens bringing wisdom from the Heavens. They’re not in the bubble because they watch TV somewhere else.
I certainly don’t think Fox News or its ilk help, but nor are those closed off from my personal experiences. Shit, there’s a giant fucking Fox News building right in the middle of Manhattan with its own little news scroll. There are right-wing protesters in New York every day. In fact, I would almost certainly assure you that we see the Proud Boys more often than a small town rural community sees the lightest touch of leftist protesting. Those aren’t even comparable, but I guarantee you we see the Proud Boys more.
Not wanting to see horrible shit happen anymore doesn’t mean you’re in a bubble. It doesn’t mean you want it hidden from your sight while it still happens. That would be a bubble. Rather, it simply fucking means you don’t want the mass shootings and the medical battles and the bad water and the lack of resources. Make no mistake, we understand why bad things happen. We understand the reasoning behind the bad things happening. We all know Daniel Penny’s justification for the killing. We all know Republicans’ justification for banning books. The fact we think it’s bad does not mean we don’t have all the information available. It doesn’t mean we’re hiding our heads in the sand.
It just means we’re noticing shit is bad and saying, “Hey, shit is bad.”