Pavan, Week #4 - Do You Really Care?

We all have our own personal beliefs; some being private and others public. You probably hold these beliefs close to your heart, but if you were to see someone attacking one of them online, would you defend it? I mean, it really depends on what they’re attacking, right? It could be someone saying something about chocolate being disgusting, or they could be saying your choice of religion has no place in America. Ultimately, it comes down to how hurt you are by the other person or group, and how willing you are to put yourself in the public view to support those ideals. If you do decide to become a “keyboard warrior”, what does that say about the kind of person you are? 

Let’s just say that a person replies to an Instagram post that goes against a core belief of theirs. Why’d they do that? Do they really care about the issue? Let’s also say another person sees that reply, and they agree with it, but they choose to scroll past it. Why’d they do that? Do they really care about the issue? When a person decides to reply, it might show that they are someone who deeply cares and does not mind being attacked in retaliation. If they don’t reply, it could mean that the issue is just not as important to them. Everyone has different beliefs, and even if two people agree on an issue, one of them might have a much stronger conviction than the other. It makes up a larger part of their identity. 


Others choose to reply or not reply based on levels of attention. It matters less about whether they are trying to defend themselves or support a peer, and more about the potential rush or wave of distress they get from an online audience. Some reply purely performatively! They see a controversial topic and decide to join in on the conversation, throwing in their “two bits”. They could be someone who is very quiet in real life, but once they get online, they transform into someone who lives off of causing trouble or interacting with drama. The person could barely know anything about the thing others have spent hours arguing about, and yet, they would still reply to make sure people saw that they replied. Even when people do care about the issue, they just don’t have what it takes to reply to something and have everyone be able to read it. They’d rather keep their thoughts to themselves, even if it means someone else is left hanging, without anybody to support them. This isn’t necessarily wrong to do, but it just shows the type of person someone is. They’re the type to share out with a few friends, but nothing beyond that, and that’s okay! 


How someone chooses to express themselves, and whether they even choose to express themselves can give some insight into how much something matters to a person or whether that person will even bother to protect something that matters to them.


Comments

  1. Arya JohnsonOctober 8, 2026 at 5:38 PM

    I definitely fall under the “quiet online” category, but I understand how important sharing an opinion is to some people. I think people who share their thoughts online that reflect their core beliefs are important, as it takes a lot of courage to put yourself out there in such a public space. Is a core belief truly core if you’re not willing to defend it? These people are also important for changing things; if no one was willing to say anything, nothing would happen! Speaking out like this is what makes things change, and progresses how the topic is perceived in either of the opposing directions. People who comment on the matter in a performative way, however, can make the discussion worse as they don’t actually contribute or progress anything. So many people comment on things on the Internet, sometimes I wonder how much of it is a true belief and how much is a response to that simply to say something.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Kan XuOctober 8, 2026 at 9:55 PM

    Pavan, this was an insightful look into beliefs and identity for me. I believe, however, that for some people, while they may feel passionate in supporting their beliefs, society forces them to subdue and suppress those beliefs (in some cases rightfully so). For example, someone living in the Bay Area who supports Nazism may have those beliefs entrenched in their identity, genuinely believing in racial superiority and eugenics. However, because they are living in the Bay Area, a relatively progressive region, they cannot possibly be public about their beliefs without being shunned by the area they live in, even possibly being retaliated against. This ties into the concept of shame, which ultimately influences how we act—if shame stopped being as strong as it once was, would some more extreme, destructive viewpoints emerge? Would some be fully public about their possibly harmful beliefs? Or will a new form of social exclusion occur to prevent those beliefs from surfacing? These are all questions that are more important than ever in today’s society.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Maxwell WangOctober 8, 2026 at 10:17 PM

    Hah! That's a funny picture. I like it better than the goldfish wearing a shark fin that some teachers like to pin up to their classroom walls. Your picture is more novel. Maybe I can recommend that to some of my teachers!

    Well, what type of online persona are you, Pavan? I read lots and lots of things online, some of them kind of aggravating. But I hardly ever comment. When I do, like on YouTube videos, usually music videos, it's to say how amazing a song is and how I like it a lot or to put in my input on a video that mentions a place important to me, like where I'm from. I think online debate duels are kind of pointless, and it's sad when I see a reel talking about a sensitive topic, for example, and then some ragebaiters commenting below, making the OP react negatively and lose their cool. I'm like, "Aww, just ignore that troll! You had such an amazing post, don't let comments ruin it."

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Anirudh Week 1: An Analysis of the Modern Extension of Colonial Speech

Image
Image credit:  The Penn Review In his 1986 collection of essays Decolonising The Mind , Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o posits that the greatest weapon of colonialism wasn’t the rifle. It wasn’t the cannon nor the gunboat. It was the weaponization of language. He vividly describes the systemic tactics colonial powers used to strip down the native tongues of colonized children in favor of English, severing the children’s connections to their cultures, identities, and even self-worth. And even though these colonial empires have collapsed, the inherent framework of identity erasure has been fundamentally upgraded. Today, the maxim of colonial erasure has been repackaged by the algorithms of Artificial Intelligence. Throughout the history of AI—whether we see it as a tool of objectivity or question it with suspicion—we cannot ignore that these systems are at their core built on data. Specifically however, they are built with massive datasets scraped from the Western, English-speaking internet. It is...
Read more

Sophie, Week #1 - Why Leitmotifs are Super Cool: Building Identity Through the Language of Music

Image
When I first saw the theme for this quarter’s blog submissions, I was actually super happy! You may be thinking that I’m nuts for being excited about an assignment, but I was. I knew that I would have the chance to talk about one of my favorite things in the whole world—leitmotifs! You’ve heard the word “motif” before, a repeated idea or symbol throughout a work of literature that helps to develop a broader theme. Leitmotifs are sort of like that, but instead of a repeated written idea, they’re repeated musical phrases used to represent different things. Here, I'll discuss how they can be an invaluable technique for developing a character’s identity within a musical. I’ll give some examples from one of my favorite musicals, Sondheim’s Into the Woods. In my opinion, the easiest leitmotif to grasp is something I think of as “The Royal Fanfare.” Basically, every time the princes come on stage, you hear a trumpet fanfare. S ounds pretty simple right? The princes enter; the fanfare pla...
Read more

Arya, Week #2 - Misogyny Will Never Die: How Language Subtly Perceives Women as Less

Image
Image credit: Rusi , “ Misogyny .” I have strong opinions on my femininity. Sure, I dress as a boy sometimes, but I still have a firm identity and sense of pride around being a woman. But society does not. At practically every corner and every step, there is something inherently more difficult about being a woman. Basically, every modern society has some sort of underlying sexism. Some of it is pretty obvious like women not being able to have credit cards (essentially financial freedom) until 1974 with the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, but other times it’s not.  There are small things like how the law of Coverture made women have no legal identity at all, even being called “legally dead”. The tradition of marriage creating one simply meant that the husband was the “one”, which isn’t nearly as romantic sounding as it is today. BBC adds that the male being the default gender–called generic masculine–creates a bias, which embeds itself into our psyche so much so that a gender neu...
Read more