A couple of days ago, I watched a video of a fight inside of a sports bar. Nothing unusual there. Human beings have been arguing over alcohol, sports, and wounded pride since someone invented fermented fruit and competition.
But the video claimed the fight happened at a Walk-On's restaurant in Madison, Mississippi.
The people that were fighting were white.
The comment section immediately turned into what comment sections always become: a tribal war.
Some people used the video to criticize Madison. Others used it to defend Madison.
Some tried to connect the behavior of two individuals to an entire city. Before long, people weren't discussing a fight anymore. They were discussing race, politics, morality, intelligence, crime, culture, and every other topic that social media can drag into a mud pit.
The funny thing is this: the video wasn't recorded at a Walk Ons restaurant in Madison. Heck, there isn't even a Walk Ons in Madison which leads me to believe this was originally posted by someone not even from the area. The video isn't even from Mississippi. It appears to be a two- or three-year-old video from a Buffalo Wild Wings in Hoover, AL. A fight that happened during March Madness years ago.
This seems to happen more and more every day.
Videos are constantly being shared with misleading locations, misleading dates, misleading context, or completely fabricated backstories. A fight in one state suddenly becomes proof of a social problem in another. An old video resurfaces as "breaking news." A random crime becomes evidence that an entire race, city, or political party is somehow defective.
And millions of people hit "share" without spending thirty seconds verifying any of it.
Why?
Because the truth is boring. The truth usually sounds something like this: "A small number of people behaved badly."
That's not exciting. What gets engagement is: "These people are all like this."
Social media rewards outrage the same way casinos reward gambling. The platform gets traffic. The creator gets clicks. The audience gets emotional stimulation. Everyone wins except society.
Around central Mississippi, there has long been tension between people in Madison and people in Jackson. Some residents of Madison point to crime and dysfunction in Jackson as evidence that Jackson is failing.
Some residents of Jackson point to examples of bad behavior in Madison and use them as evidence that Madison's self-image is undeserved.
Both groups spend enormous amounts of time collecting evidence against the other side. It's become less about solving problems and more about winning arguments. The internet has turned many people into amateur prosecutors. Nobody investigates their own side. Everyone investigates the opposition.
A black person commits a crime. Someone posts it.
A white person gets arrested. Someone posts it.
A liberal says something foolish. Someone posts it.
A conservative says something foolish. Someone posts it.
Then thousands of people conclude that one example represents millions of people.
It's like seeing one bad driver in a Nissan Altima and deciding everyone who owns an Altima can't drive.
Yet people do it every day when race and politics are involved. Bad news grabs our attention. Negative information sticks in our memory.
We remember the insult more than the compliment. We remember the scandal more than the success story. We remember the fight more than the thousand ordinary interactions that happened peacefully that same day.
Social media algorithms understand this better than most psychologists. They know anger keeps people scrolling. They know resentment keeps people engaged. They know fear keeps people clicking. And they know that nothing spreads faster than content that tells people their enemies are worse than they imagined.
This is why your feed is full of outrage and rarely full of context. Most people don't want information.
They want confirmation. They want evidence that the people they already dislike are exactly as bad as they suspected.
A misleading video becomes useful because it reinforces an existing belief.
Once that happens, fact-checking becomes inconvenient.
The result is a society where everyone is carrying around a digital bag full of stories about how terrible the other side is.
Republicans. Democrats. Black Americans. White Americans. Men. Women. All have something.
Everyone is collecting grievances like Pokémon cards.
Meanwhile, millions of decent people from every race, political party, and neighborhood are living ordinary lives, going to work, raising children, helping neighbors, paying bills, and never appearing in a viral video.
But ordinary decency doesn't trend. Who wants to see that?
