Why I Stopped Reading the Comments: What Social Media Taught Me About Compassion
I have a complicated relationship with social media. Like millions of people, I joined these platforms believing they were places where ideas could be exchanged, communities could be built, and conversations could flourish. As a writer, they seemed like the perfect environment. I could share my work, discover other voices, engage with readers, and become part of a wider cultural conversation. Instead, I often found myself witnessing something very different.
The longer I spent reading comment sections, the more I noticed a pattern. It did not seem to matter whether the subject was politics, music, philosophy, a celebrity interview, or even a photograph of someone’s lunch. Before long, the conversation would descend into hostility. People stopped discussing ideas and started attacking each other. Nuance disappeared, compassion evaporated, empathy gave way to certainty, and tolerance became increasingly rare.
What disturbed me most was not simply the anger. Human beings have always disagreed, and debate is healthy. Disagreement is essential in any free society. What unsettled me was how quickly ordinary people seemed willing to forget that another human was being on the other side of the screen. I began asking myself a simple question: where does our humanity go when we log on?
Over the years, I have watched complete strangers make sweeping judgments about people they know almost nothing about. One sentence becomes someone’s entire personality. One mistake becomes their defining characteristic. One opinion becomes proof that they are either morally virtuous or beyond redemption. We have become remarkably comfortable reducing infinitely complex human beings to simplistic labels that fit neatly into our own worldview.
I have not been immune to this culture either. Like many people, I have had moments when I reacted too quickly, assumed the worst about someone, or let emotion replace curiosity. Social media rewards instant reactions rather than thoughtful reflection, and it is surprisingly easy to be pulled into that way of thinking. One uncomfortable lesson I have learned is that the culture we criticise can quietly shape us if we are not paying attention.
The more I reflected on these experiences, the more I realised that social media had not created these behaviours. It had simply amplified parts of human nature that have always existed. Tribalism, certainty, anger, and the desire to belong are ancient instincts. What technology has done is remove many of the natural brakes that normally encourage empathy and restraint.
We no longer hear the hesitation in someone’s voice or see the sadness in their eyes. Instead, we respond to text on a screen, forgetting that behind every username is a person carrying experiences we know nothing about. The absence of body language, tone, and facial expression makes it easier to misread intention and easier to forget that our words can wound someone we have never met.
Perhaps what saddens me most is how little room there now seems to be for uncertainty. We increasingly live in a culture that expects immediate opinions on everything. Changing your mind is seen as weakness. Asking questions is mistaken for agreement. Trying to understand another perspective can invite criticism from your own side. In that environment, curiosity becomes risky while outrage becomes socially rewarding.
As someone who writes about philosophy, literature, music, and culture, I have always believed that curiosity is one of humanity’s greatest virtues. Every great work of art begins with a question rather than an answer. Every meaningful conversation requires the humility to accept that we may not possess the whole truth. Yet social media often encourages precisely the opposite kind of behaviour.
These platforms reward certainty, simplicity, and performance over reflection, complexity, and understanding. The strongest opinion often travels further than the most thoughtful one. The sharpest insult receives more attention than the most generous response. In this environment, being loud can appear more valuable than being wise, and moral certainty can become a performance for an audience rather than a sincere attempt to understand the world.
I also worry about what this constant exposure to outrage does to us emotionally. Spend enough time reading hostile comments and it becomes easy to believe that the world itself is hostile. Cynicism slowly replaces generosity. Suspicion replaces trust. We begin expecting conflict before conversations have even started. The comment section stops feeling like a meeting place and begins to resemble a battlefield.
This is one of the reasons I have become increasingly selective about how I use social media. I still believe these platforms have enormous potential. They allow writers, artists, musicians, and ordinary people to connect across continents in ways that would have been unimaginable only a generation ago. They can create friendships, inspire creativity, spread knowledge, and give people a voice.
But I have also learned that not every argument deserves my attention, not every comment deserves a response, and not every opinion deserves to occupy space in my mind. Protecting my peace does not mean refusing debate or shutting myself away from the world. It means recognising when a conversation is no longer a genuine exchange of ideas and has become an exercise in humiliation, hostility, or point-scoring.
If there is one thing social media has taught me, it is that compassion requires intention. Empathy does not happen automatically online. We have to choose it. We have to remind ourselves that behind every profile picture is a complicated human being with fears, hopes, insecurities, and experiences invisible to us. We have to resist the temptation to reduce people to labels or define them by their worst moment.
That, perhaps, is the quiet challenge of our digital age. It is not to become louder, more certain, or more skilled at winning every argument. It is to remain human in spaces that so often encourage us to forget what humanity looks like. It is to remember that listening is not surrender, uncertainty is not weakness, and compassion does not prevent us from holding strong convictions.
In an age where algorithms reward outrage and certainty, choosing compassion, empathy, and tolerance feels almost rebellious. Yet I have come to believe that these qualities are not signs of weakness. They are signs of emotional maturity. They are what allow disagreement to remain civil, curiosity to remain alive, and conversation to remain worthy of the name.
If The Deep Dive Society stands for anything, I hope it stands for that: slowing down, thinking carefully, listening generously, and remembering that behind every opinion is a person. Not an enemy. Not a stereotype. Not a label. Just another human being trying to make sense of the world, just as we are.
