The Work of Posting About the Conflict in Israel

For some reason, everyone is entitled to your opinion, so give us a take!

a famous photoshop — the original is Portland’s beloved Hot Cake House

In an earlier piece, I discussed the nuances of the ongoing conflict in Gaza, employing the tenets of traditional forensics. As someone whose background is steeped in both legal argumentation and the decorum of formal debate, I prefer to dissect issues based on their merits rather than participate in the more fickle world of online "hot takes."

The Tribal Nature of Online Discourse

However, few of my readers have the time or desire to follow this approach.¹ Many operate in the so-called "extremely online" sphere, where communities are fragmented into various ideological strongholds—Left-wing, dirtbag Left, DSA Left, idpol Left, center-Left, post-Left, center-Right, dissident Right, based Right, alt-Right, art-Right, and so forth.² In these spaces,³ what matters most is crafting the "correct take" or the "right opinion," often at the expense of nuanced, factual argumentation.

Despite protests from some members that they are engaging in "dialectic" and collaborative idea formation, these communities often become echo chambers. Ironically, it is often within these homogenous groups that the fiercest conflicts arise, specifically when the discourse aligns so closely that minor differences become Somme-grade battlegrounds.

I've remained largely external to these insular spaces.⁴ I attribute my detachment to the significant periods of my life spent in solitude—decades lost to homeschooling and remote work, cast away like Tom Hanks chattering to the Wilson volleyball. Yet, my background in marketing inclines me to study these behaviors, aiming to understand what motivates specific human actions in such settings. “Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing?”