JaviOfEarth on Nostr: 🌿 Thoughts on Nuance 🌿 In the order of how I am most notably perceived, I am: ...
🌿 Thoughts on Nuance 🌿
In the order of how I am most notably perceived, I am:
-Biologically Female
-Hispanic
-Indigenous
-An Immigrant
-Genderqueer
-Autistic
-ADHD
-Queer
-Disabled
-etc
Left-wing perspectives often emphasize the importance of embracing all identities. Yet, I’ve noticed that the only voices truly elevated are those that fit one, maybe two labels.
The algorithms of most social media platforms are designed to deliver content as relatable to you as possible. In their effort to retain engagement, many of these left-wing creators end up producing content geared toward a single label, effectively tokenizing themselves.
When you think about what these labels are and begin to deconstruct their value in our world, each label is a dimension of a social reality that allows people to categorize you.
This has a useful function: it creates expectations for how you’re supposed to perceive and react to the world and it allows for a social cohesion in the form of solidarity.
However, creators have a pressure (social or economic) to deliver what the algorithm demands, often by exclusively focusing on how one dimension can robustly define them and their target audience.
This practice further entrenches the stereotypes associated with that label, reducing those it describes to a monolith online.
In the end, this lack of nuance becomes strikingly similar to how right-wing creators reduce the world into rigid categories. Both sides flatten complexity, creating echo chambers that perpetuate oversimplified narratives.
I suppose that’s why I have always struggled to find community. I grew up in a town that was primarily affluent and white. I was neither, and that brought me a lot of strife. I had difficulty making friends, and each time I made a social misstep, my mother would remind me that I had to be a good representation of our race.
Later in life, I was diagnosed with autism, which gave me a new dimension to perceive the social challenges I experienced as a child. That’s just one example of the interplay between two of my identities, race and neurodivergence, which underscores the importance of intersectionality.
However, these are merely the apparent dimensions: those that can be seen and categorized immediately. There are many more subtle dimensions to the self, such as your interests, aspirations, the empathy you carry, the trauma you hold, the relationships you nurture, the values you uphold.
All these identities shape who you are.
Yet who you are is intangible, undefinable.
You are a collection of your past and how that past shapes your present, where every single moment of your past was once your present.
Labels are useful for making sense of the world and for finding community within an SEO click, but they often become a veil that hides the essence of the person inside.
We are complex beings and yet so simple.
We are logical beings and yet so emotional.
My hope is that, as we progress as a society, we learn to embrace nuance, not just in how we see others but also in how we see ourselves.
Then, we can move beyond shallow representations and create a culture that truly celebrates the depth of human experience.
In the order of how I am most notably perceived, I am:
-Biologically Female
-Hispanic
-Indigenous
-An Immigrant
-Genderqueer
-Autistic
-ADHD
-Queer
-Disabled
-etc
Left-wing perspectives often emphasize the importance of embracing all identities. Yet, I’ve noticed that the only voices truly elevated are those that fit one, maybe two labels.
The algorithms of most social media platforms are designed to deliver content as relatable to you as possible. In their effort to retain engagement, many of these left-wing creators end up producing content geared toward a single label, effectively tokenizing themselves.
When you think about what these labels are and begin to deconstruct their value in our world, each label is a dimension of a social reality that allows people to categorize you.
This has a useful function: it creates expectations for how you’re supposed to perceive and react to the world and it allows for a social cohesion in the form of solidarity.
However, creators have a pressure (social or economic) to deliver what the algorithm demands, often by exclusively focusing on how one dimension can robustly define them and their target audience.
This practice further entrenches the stereotypes associated with that label, reducing those it describes to a monolith online.
In the end, this lack of nuance becomes strikingly similar to how right-wing creators reduce the world into rigid categories. Both sides flatten complexity, creating echo chambers that perpetuate oversimplified narratives.
I suppose that’s why I have always struggled to find community. I grew up in a town that was primarily affluent and white. I was neither, and that brought me a lot of strife. I had difficulty making friends, and each time I made a social misstep, my mother would remind me that I had to be a good representation of our race.
Later in life, I was diagnosed with autism, which gave me a new dimension to perceive the social challenges I experienced as a child. That’s just one example of the interplay between two of my identities, race and neurodivergence, which underscores the importance of intersectionality.
However, these are merely the apparent dimensions: those that can be seen and categorized immediately. There are many more subtle dimensions to the self, such as your interests, aspirations, the empathy you carry, the trauma you hold, the relationships you nurture, the values you uphold.
All these identities shape who you are.
Yet who you are is intangible, undefinable.
You are a collection of your past and how that past shapes your present, where every single moment of your past was once your present.
Labels are useful for making sense of the world and for finding community within an SEO click, but they often become a veil that hides the essence of the person inside.
We are complex beings and yet so simple.
We are logical beings and yet so emotional.
My hope is that, as we progress as a society, we learn to embrace nuance, not just in how we see others but also in how we see ourselves.
Then, we can move beyond shallow representations and create a culture that truly celebrates the depth of human experience.