Self-Silencing and Performative Work Bullsh*t

Good article in Axios, perhaps inappropriately titled “What Americans Really Think,” about the idea of self-silencing. That’s defined as “people saying what they think others want to hear rather than what they truly feel.” Indeed. You could also call it “performative discourse,” i.e. the “yard sign makes me a good person” argument. In sum, a lot of people claim to care about certain things, but in the reality of their day-to-day lives, they don’t actually care that much about those things. This GASP AHA WHAT moment scaled for people when Trump won. A lot of people thought, “Oh God, my neighbor kept saying what an asshole he was… but … I think my neighbor … VOTED for him?” Indeed, your neighbor probably did. You know why? Taxes. Brashness. SCOTUS. Any number of reasons. So yea, he said “This guy’s a fucking asshole,” and he still flipped the lever for him. There’s a big disconnect. How big? Glad you asked. From that article:

“When we’re misreading what we all think, it actually causes false polarization,” said Todd Rose, co-founder and president of Populace, the Massachusetts-based firm that undertook the study. “It actually destroys social trust. And it tends to historically make social progress all but impossible.”

Yep. Feels that way right about now, don’t it?

How big are some of the gaps in modern society? Again, glad you asked.

• On COVID-19, only 44% of women privately feel wearing masks was effective at stopping COVID-19 spread, though 63% felt they should say they did.
• An astonishing four times as many Democrats say CEOs should take a public stand on social issues (44%) than actually care (11%).
• On education, Americans overall are privately more supportive of parents having more influence over curriculum (60%) than proclaim this publicly (52%).
• Americans are actually less concerned about teachers talking about gender identity or how much public schools focus on racism than they say publicly.

All of that makes sense. There’s a thing you say, a performance you put on for online, or for the moms in your neighborhood, or for the dads at sports or the club, and then there’s what you really believe, and oftentimes the performance side and the belief side aren’t entirely the same. You can call it self-silencing, performative stuff, or just outright lying. That’s up to you. But not a lot of people are living wholly accurate lives on core social issues.

And, of course, why would they? It seems like you can get cancelled for virtually anything these days, from a semantic mistake to something you shared 11 years ago. People are out there literally hunting for mistakes on some people, for better or worse. Once again, for those in the back: cancel culture needs tiers.

So yea, people are two-faced. Hardly breaking news. Seen this in your neighborhoods?