Was reading this post, by Ferrett, where he writes about not really knowing the reality behind things. His article is in response to the Charlie Hebdo attacks (which is something I still know zero about), but I read it in response to the latest tempest-in-a-teapot controversy in the YA world, which was the Stacey Jay Kickstarter thing (author tries to kickstart sequel to book series after publisher drops her; fans object to the framing of her kickstarter and subsequently harass her).

I first heard about the SJ thing yesterday (I think?) but what was weird about it was that my Twitter feed was full of people decrying the fans for harassing her, but I simply could not find any harassing tweets. Like, I knew they must exist somewhere, but Twitter is not a very good interface, and it’s hard to find tweets from the past, and my skills just weren’t up to it. So until someone linked to that storify (the one I’ve linked to), I had zero idea what the harassment actually consisted of or how severe it was: all I had was reaction.

And I piled on there too and added my own two cents and was like, “Yeah, harassing authors because you dislike the terms of their Kickstarters is bad” but in the back of my mind, I felt like I didn’t really know the whole story and that there was a chance I’d be embarrassed.

That’s why I usually don’t opine on political-type things. Because I either don’t know the whole story, or I only know the story because my friends have told me the story, which means that what I think is pretty much the same as what everyone around me thinks. In general, I get a bit exhausted of all the political “me too” on social networks. It’s particularly comical when every single post in my FB feed is about something, and then someone posts, “Why is everybody so silent about…[that thing].”

I mean, I guess I understand. We all view different Internets. My feed is different from everybody else’s. And our feeds are an aggregation of what each individual person we follow thinks is a worthwhile thing to put out into the world. But doesn’t that explain lots of perceived silence, too? Like, I don’t speak out on things because I feel like they’re taken care of. But probably I have followers for whom my voice would be the only one that’s talking about…something. Some issue of major political import. And now they are sadly uninformed, just because I assumed everyone already knew about…that…err…that thing.