I am just gonna come right out and say it: I am a pretty big fan of “The Big Bang Theory.” People bash that show a lot, and often with good reason… but so what? I like it. It isn’t the greatest TV series of all time or anything, but it’s a funny enough show, and I like the characters (and even relate to them on occasion), so I like it.
At the very least, “The Big Bang Theory” hasn’t slowly morphed into a running political commentary nobody asked for, one that doesn’t even realize how far right of center its politics are, where every other joke positively oozes with unacknowledged privilege… at least not yet. That isn’t to say that I am necessarily repelled by TV shows and movies that are infused with political messages that often go unnoticed by casual viewers, because I’m definitely not… I guess I am just saying that I am glad “The Big Bang Theory” isn’t (intentionally) political, because if it were, I would probably not like it as much as I do.
But I am not here to talk about TV and movies I like or don’t like (or wax pseudo-intellectual about “liking” or “not liking”), I am here to talk about why I quit Facebook again .
And yes, it’s partially because a good 50% of what I’ve been doing there lately is read about TV shows and crap. The other 50% is split between being genuinely amazed and awed at the level of myopic egomania from folks who have convinced themselves that they are guided solely by “reason” simply because they reject religion and people virtually shouting at each other over politics.
Before I go on, I should say here that I have a great many things in common with the online atheist community. For example, I agree 100% that religion has no place in government, and that science education should not be compromised in any way because of anyone’s religious beliefs. To their credit, nobody in this loosely-organized online community disagrees with these ideas.
But there’s definitely a lot of disagreement in this community… and a lot of it is pretty silly, in my opinion. Many of the best things in life, like it or not, are completely irrational. Love, for one. Whether it’s a sad little crush yours truly still clings to, or the desire to legally bind yourself to one sexual partner for life (at least nominally), “love” doesn’t exactly make rational sense, if you think about it very much.
That’s not to say science can’t “explain” what “love” is. It can, or at least it can in a post hoc sense. I.e. science (ideally) can tell you after the fact *why* you’re attracted to this or that person (a lot of it depends on personality types), and it can predict to some degree which type of person you’ll be attracted to, but it can’t really predict which individual/s you’ll “fall in love” with.
Some scientists readily acknowledge things like this. Others don’t.
Some of them even attempt to correlate “science” with the way they treat other people. For many people in this online community, “political correctness” is somehow antithetical to science. If you discourage the use of slurs and epithets, these people believe, then you are (somehow) moving society backward instead of forward.
This online community is essentially a self-contained group of like-minded people, agreeing with each other and excluding alternative points of view. Which is fine, in my opinion… but somewhat ironically, this group doesn’t really seem to realize that it functions this way.
And if you mention anything about systemic racism to them, they’ll shout at you about “identity politics” until their political views become very hard to distinguish from the views of hardcore religious people.
And I don’t mean to disparage religious people. Some of my all-time favorite people are/were very religious.
Likewise, some of my all-time favorite people are/were hardline atheists. I just find it kinda hilarious when they mock things they don’t really even have the faintest grasp of, and their only argument is “I’m an atheist, so that means I know stuff.”
But I don’t want to waste this entire post griping. Or pretending that I (as in yours truly) am not (often) the instigator of the “virtual shouting” over politics mentioned before. And I can be a bit of a smartass when it comes to political stuff, though I generally at least attempt to be civil.
Fat *@#$in’ lot of good that does, tho. 🙂 It’s more fun to be a smartass, even when I am doing so rather obliquely.
It’s more fun than writing about depressing stuff like suicide, at any rate. Or birthday messages to myself, or uber-tedious attempts at philosophizing or clarifying said tedious attempts…
It’s more fun to crack jokes. Even when (especially when?) people don’t realize they’re jokes.
Anyways, I quit Facebook for a while. Big whoop.
Leave a comment