Can you like the person you hate? The New York Times has explored this question with an experiment. It brought together Eve Peyser, a writer for Vice, who considers herself liberal, with Bari Weiss, one of the paper’s most rightwing columnists. The idea was that social media stokes tribalism, amplifies negativity and pits us against each other. The pair were “Twitter enemies” but, if they got together in real life, perhaps they would discover they had more in common than they thought. So, off the two went, swimming. (Yes, you read that right, Weiss wanted to swim in case Peyser was wearing a wire.)
The good news is that no one drowned. Free from the hellscape of Twitter, where debate loses all nuance, the pair got along, well, swimmingly. Elated, Weiss ended her article on the experiment with a plea for more real-life engagement and less anger on the internet.
Inevitably, the piece caused fury online. As was widely pointed out, most people can politely set aside their differences and get along for a couple of hours. It is not a groundbreaking observation. A lot of people with terrible politics can be very charming. Further, Peyser and Weiss’s politics are not exactly worlds apart. The whole exercise seemed to ignore the fact that, for many people, ideological differences are not dinner-party debate, they are a matter of life and death.
It is true we should all spend less time getting angry at each other online. But it is not helpful to suggest we all befriend people at the other end of the political spectrum. Civility is useless in the face of those who want to strip you of your civil rights. Of course, it is important to surround yourself with people who have different viewpoints. But they ought to have the same values.
