Don’t build your house on the sandy land, they said, don’t build it too near the shore. Except what if you really like the view? Yes it might slip into the sea during the first winter winds, but until then, it’s lovely near the shore. Lemonade sun twinkling off the water as you sit out in the morning with your toast, the gentle plip of waves against the patio. What’s a little death for a life like this?
This is the conclusion I come to when I read the regular urgings to exit my echo chamber. To listen to opposing voices, to read the views of Trumpers and uncles, to pierce our conceited, content bubble. To live in the real world. Which if we’re being clear, I think, means, “one with racists in”. So I come to the conclusion that no, I don’t want to. This cosy echo chamber might not be perfect, but at least it’s home.
I understand the argument. I see what John Oliver meant when he talked about a “healthy media diet”, and when Barack Obama said that fake news online makes it “very difficult to have a common conversation”. I understand the concern that social media algorithms have fragmented society, and that as well as showing you slightly too many kitten gifs they might be destroying democracy. And I’ve felt the shock that comes from believing only what I choose to click on.
I can remember at least three of those dusty mornings waking up to news on my phone that everything I’d thought before had been wrong. Three silent journeys into work, on tube trains of darting eyes asking, “Was it you?” Arguments as computers warm up about whether it’s too soon to joke. Three dawn text messages from my mum, still averse to text language even at times when only emoji will do. Three mornings of stunned surprise that I’d managed to rainproof myself to the extent that I had no idea what half the country wanted, or who they were. But I will say this for rainproofing – it’s cosy.
The walls of our echo chamber are tastefully decorated with limited-edition prints, and drawings by four-year-olds that make us chuckle: “Oh the wisdom of children!” There’s underfloor heating, and from a £20 candle, the smell of figs. We are all very considerate about how each other prefers to be addressed, and nobody buys goods from shops that advertise in the Mail, even if we really want them. Our phones are charged, our hearts are full. A percentage of our incomes goes straight into a charity fund, which means we never feel bad saying no to beggars or when keeping the radiators on at night.
In an echo chamber the acoustics are amazing – our voices sound booming and tremendous, and even the most awful music sounds all right, especially when someone explains why you should like it in a chirpy online review. We are not compelled to debate for sport, to tear apart our long-held beliefs in snappy retorts unless we really fancy a workout. Some of us don’t even have opinions about politics, and that’s OK. The weather in here is always, if not warm, at least of sufficient drama to enable conversation when the communal dining room goes quiet. If news reaches us of a surprise president or explosion of racism, at least we have each other. And every episode of 30 Rock and a massive strudel.
But we have built this place for a reason. They say, educate yourself on the reasons people are rejecting the “elites”. We say, until a word can exist outside of its own quotation marks it is irrelevant. They say we can only feel empathy if we put ourselves in strangers’ shoes. But we end up walking around in bile. They say our problem is that we choose only to listen to voices that validate our own. Their answer seems to be “befriend the people who call you a ‘libtard kike’.”
Rather than an ignorant default setting we find ourselves inhabiting, living in an echo chamber right now is like putting on a jacket before stepping outside. It’s self-care in an unholy storm. And no doubt soon our bubble will be pierced from the outside by a huge bayonet, so until then, until I’m forced to mingle with strangers and argue face to face about what it means to “do the decent thing”, I’m going to tuck myself in with my lovely mates and agree to just… agree.
Email Eva at e.wiseman@observer.co.uk or follow her on Twitter @EvaWiseman
