STARS AND PIXELS

I left the house under the stars this morning. Orion blinked at me, cold and bright above the street lamps and rooftops.

I love that the stars are the furthest thing you can see. A quick glimpse before running for the bus, but in that microsecond, photons that had begun their unimpeded journey millions of years ago collided with my eyes, and told me something about my place in the universe. It is amazing that we’re here, however you look at it.

The bus was packed with people on their phones. Much shorter distance for light to travel from screen to eye. We rumbled on in the artificial blue glow, every passenger in their own digital world of stars and pixels.

I’ve been thinking about social media again. Here’s my question: is it appropriate that everyone has an equally weighted voice in every debate?

I think social media did that to us. It balanced the scales, it equalised the volume, it gave us all a printing press. And while it seems fair, I’m not convinced it’s helpful.

WhatsApp pinged at me as the sky turned pink at the horizon.

There’s another equalisation: the equalisation of expectation. But of course, I’m in many WhatsApp groups now that each require a different set of rules. They look the same, they use the same font, the same emojis, the same style. And yet, instinctively there are rules governing all of them differently.

It must be a nightmare for the neurodivergent - no-one spells out what’s appropriate and what’s not. You are you, you have a sense of humour, compassion, kindness in all of these groups, why wouldn’t it be okay to say that in one, but not the other? And yet, so much happens there.

It’s possible that my two points are at odds with each other. One, equal platform is not equal authority, even though it seems like it. Two, equal groups have unequal etiquettes. But they are saying the same thing. It strikes me that the safest thing is to be as quiet as possible, closely followed by the old-fashioned thing we used to do when we all actually talked to each other.

I like the stars. They’re permanent reminders of something intangible, ethereal, solid, in a spinning world. No wonder sailors used them to navigate. We all need some fixed points to steer our ships by.