My friend keeps sending me social media videos that make me anxious. How can I tell her to stop? |Friendship

A friend of mine of 30 years keeps sending me social media posts and videos that he doesn’t find funny or that he finds offensive. We live far away and don’t get to see each other often, so we kept in touch through a messaging app. I told her many times that I like positive things and cute things and that I don’t follow American politics.

Although her life is difficult, we can understand why she spends so much time on social media. For the past week, she has been sending me a number of videos every day, including one of women slapping each other, which I am not interested in at all. She often buys into conspiracy theories until I disprove them. All of that upsets me. She doesn’t seem to know who I am. I haven’t responded to these messages but she keeps texting me.

I don’t want to throw away this friendship, but it feels like we’ve been going in different directions for years. I don’t blame her or blame her for that. I don’t think she considers my feelings. How should I answer?

Eleanor says: Many of us know people who have fallen down the algorithmic rabbit hole, but the strangest thing is that it’s not even clear that they’re attached to what they’re sharing. It doesn’t feel like it’s underpinned by any genuine beliefs. It looks rather like a strange combination of entertainment, imitation and boredom, sincere and insincere at the same time.

It sounds like a big part of what’s bothering you is that you get annoyed when she does this. you She just sends you stuff. you’re probably right. It is input and output without thought. It turns you from a friend to a spectator. Instead of “I want to say this,” “I want you to listen.”

Telling her that I prefer positive videos didn’t help. Silence, a pointed non-response, sounds loud to you, but to her it’s – well – silence. Instead of approaching this as if it’s a serious problem in your friendship, or why don’t you just signal to her that this bothers you a bit by pointing out why you don’t like these videos? Strange?

Philosopher Harry Frankfurt usefully distinguished between lies and bullshit. A liar at least knows that what he is saying is a lie. Therefore, the truth still plays a central role for liars because they have common sense defined in opposition to the truth. Bullshit completely eliminates the concept of truth. It is simply indifferent to it. It doesn’t help. A bullshit person could be telling the truth, or he could be saying something wrong, and it doesn’t matter. Either way they say it has nothing to do with veracity. It’s all flotsam and nonsense and doesn’t mean anything.

Much of the social media content that feeds off the minds of bored and angry people is more malicious than falsehood: it’s bullshit. I think that’s part of why so many people who go through their day watching this movie end up letting it go as easily as they got hooked on it. Oh, that conspiracy theory wasn’t true? Didn’t like that post? Ah, the next one is coming. We don’t feel this amnesia-like restlessness when it comes to things we share nonsense with, like a favorite movie or a piece of writing that resonates with us. average something for us.

If that’s how she shares this content, like bullshit, quickly forgotten and indifferent to the facts you is her interlocutor – you might have better luck interacting with it strange Rather than being disturbing or false. Perhaps that means moving away from the cautious, sombre tone of disagreement that says, “Hey, I want us to be close…” and instead approaching a tone of bemused bewilderment. teeth this? “

People down the rabbit hole don’t necessarily realize that their experience is not universal. Social media is designed to make consumers think that others share their particular visual language, attitude toward what they see, and preferences for how they spend their time. Your other strategies aren’t working as well as you’d like, so you might have some luck showing that you’re a perplexed outsider to this world she’s trying to show you. If this content is random, you can treat it as such.