I'd Rather Elevate the Good Than Play Whack-a-Mole With the Bad

Some thoughts on platforming, encouragement, and what we can learn from the Secret Service’s money memorization.

Photo by ahmad kanbar on Unsplash

I thought about calling this piece “For The Love of Everything That is Good In This World, Stop Quote-Tweeting Marjorie Taylor Greene” but I felt that using MTG’s name in the title kind of defeated the purpose of my thesis.

Instead of invoking names of conspiracy theorists, then, let me ask you this: if we all have a responsibility to call out what is wrong and unjust and ugly in this world, don’t we also have a responsibility to elevate what is good and true and beautiful?

I’m not prepared to answer the question of which one is more important, but I am pretty comfortable with comparing one to cultivating a garden, and one to running on a hamster wheel.

You’re pretty smart. I think you already know which is which.

Bear with me as I walk us both through a very overused analogy. (My apologies if you’ve heard it in a dozen motivational speeches or sermons or Ted Talks already. If that’s the case, feel free to skip ahead a few paragraphs.)

When agents for the U.S. Secret Service train to spot counterfeit money, they go through a rigorous process that involves studying real U.S. currency in minute detail. Learning every single feature of every single bill — plus how the paper is made, how the ink is blended, and which security features are embedded into the newer bills — helps them to spot fraud. (Ordinary citizens can sharpen their counterfeit-detection skills, too, with tools like this.) They don’t waste time learning the layout of every possible fake on the market in order to know those are bad; the act of memorizing the real deal is enough to identify a false one a mile away.

There are too many variants of bad bills to keep track of, but there’s only one gold standard (get it? because we don’t use that anymore? Thanks, I’ll be here all night) for each real bill — and that’s what needs to take up a Secret Service agent’s brain space.

This principle of knowing the good so you can spot the bad is applicable to many other areas of life, which is probably why it’s such a popular analogy, and why you may be sick to death of hearing it. (Thanks for bearing with me.)

I’ve recently been thinking about how we choose to engage with false information and harmful rhetoric online. One popular method among many thoughtful people that I follow (on Twitter-now-X, Medium, Substack et. al) is to highlight particularly egregious examples of untruth and meticulously pick apart the logical flaws. Effective, you might say. Hits the mark. Gets the job done. “Here’s the problem and here’s why it’s a problem. If you disagree, you’re part of the problem. Please like and share. Nothing else to see here.”

Quippy cliches aside, I am unconvinced that this method of refuting falsehood and pointing out toxic ideas is really helping anyone. But before you take a screenshot of that statement in order to prove me wrong in a mile-long Twitter thread — sorry, Xread — hear me out.

When we elevate toxic ideas, we inadvertently hand their perpetrators a larger audience on a silver platter. Sure, people like Douglas Wilson and Marjorie Taylor Greene and Andrew Tate already have huge followings. But they gained their influence by making inflammatory statements that garnered a lot of attention. (Okay, MTG got elected to a public role in government. But she didn’t do so in a campaign office vacuum without any word-of-mouth rise in popularity.) When we use them as an example of What Not to Say, we’re giving them a boost: launching their ideas to live rent-free in even more people’s heads.

Suppose Bertrude McDork gets on Twitter and writes a pompous and over-long post to her 14 followers about how feeding formula to babies is akin to murdering kittens and that a Real Mother would breastfeed until her child is 11 years old, while also working full-time, homeschooling her older children full-time, selling essential oils in the evenings, writing a novel at 2 AM during breastfeeding sessions, and being an Instagram influencer on the side.

Then suppose I, righteously incensed by this ridiculous statement and the assumptions it makes about motherhood and productivity and perfectly good baby nutrition, write an angry commentary about how wrong Bertrude is and share it (along with her original post) to my 200,000 followers.

(What? It’s an imaginary scenario. I can be an uber-popular bestselling author in my own fantasy if I want to, thank you very much.)

Though it’s generous at best and deluded at worst to imagine that all 200k of my made-up followers would read a post dunking on Bertrude, it’s reasonable to assume far more people would see her unreasonable words than if the fantasy version of me hadn’t given her the extra attention. And even if, say, 199,950 of my followers agreed with my take on Bertrude’s nonsense, what about the 50 people who read Bertrude’s words and thought she had a point? That’s 50 more people ready to attack formula-feeding moms, 50 more people telling women they aren’t doing enough if they aren’t burning themselves out, 50 more people clicking “follow” next to Bertrude’s name and signing up to get more of her asinine opinions delivered straight to their newsfeed.

What if, instead, I rolled my eyes, muted Bertrude’s posts, and wrote my own heartfelt encouragement to every mom who’s doing the best she can with what she’s able to do? What if I took that time I might have spent arguing with Bertrude’s friends in the comment section and went back to writing the brilliant and captivating novels for which I have already achieved the Nobel Prize in Literature in this daydream?

Our time on this earth is finite. Our time on the Internet is even more limited (or at least it ought to be). If we’re pouring a significant amount of energy into disproving every untruth that crops up, are we using that time and talent wisely?

As a Christian, I think about the words in Philippians 4:8 about where our minds should dwell. “Finally, brothers and sisters,” Paul wrote to the church at Philippi, “whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable — if anything is excellent or praiseworthy — think about such things.”

If I am thinking about what is pure, what is admirable and lovely — funny and interesting, honest and kind — then the natural overflow of this train of thought will be more excellence and purity, more good-natured humor and exhortations to live in a way that is admirable and generous. If I fill my cup with beauty, my space for frustration and scorn will dwindle — and perhaps begin to seem pointless.

Perhaps, instead of raging against every piece of obscene graffiti, I could plant flowers. Metaphorically speaking.

Perhaps if I spend those nighttime nursing hours reading essays by people who are smarter and kinder and more thoughtful than I, I will begin to emulate them, rather than stooping to the level of insults and falsehood.

Perhaps if I stop reading the comments so I can seethe inwardly, and instead retweet the people who are saying things I want to remember, I will have more wise friends and fewer keyboard adversaries.

Please don’t misunderstand me. Just as the Bible says to think on good things, it also tells us in no uncertain terms to fight against sin and oppression, to denounce evil and stand up for those who cannot speak for themselves. But though there is important work being done in the world of justice advocacy, I’m hard pressed to believe that every social media post calling out something problematic is actually doing that important work — or if it’s just fueling the fire of Internet rage.

And, of course, that is where discernment comes to play. What looks like good and noble work in service of the truth may look different for each of us. My friends know I have their backs and will defend them against bigotry and cruelty, but I hope they also know I won’t needlessly bring angry drama to their doorstep. …Or at least that I’m doing my best.

I love a good bit of witty repartee. But if I’m being honest with myself, someday I’d like to look back on my digital legacy and see that it was one of truth and beauty — that instead of running myself ragged trying to argue against every conspiracy theory or sexist comment or mean joke, I used my words to bolster the people who were saying what was noble and excellent and praiseworthy. That I thought on these things, and what I wrote helped other people to think on them too.