Someone Step Outside

In the summer of 2009, I sat down to write a short story.

Everyone woke up one morning to rumors spreading on Facebook and Twitter that terrorists had dropped a chemical bomb and the air outside was toxic. People looked out their own windows, squinting to try to discern the composition of the air. People online claimed that they could clearly see the particles in the air from their windows, confirming the attack. Others thought the air was clear. But either way, no one stepped outside, and instead stayed glued to their screens, paralyzed by a perverse combination of fear and entertainment at the stories flooding into their feeds.

I ran the story outline by a few close friends. People thought it had potential, but mostly it was received with a furrowed brow accompanied by the assertion that “Of course someone would step outside to check, and the whole thing would end quickly.” It just wasn’t believable that rumors and reports could spread about the same topic without people easily determining whether they were true or not.

I abandoned the story.

But in the past few weeks, as I find myself on Twitter late at night, anxiously scrolling through tweets in a vain attempt to simultaneously keep up and figure out what is going on in this country, I am reminded of it.

It strikes me that, in the versions of the story I drafted, it never occurred to me that the government might be the perpetrator of the attack, the one spreading the rumors online, or both. At the time just after the Iran Election in June 2009, where Twitter was the hero, this was a difficult thing to imagine. I grew up alongside the Internet and have always seen it as a force for good. And Twitter was a tool for the people against the government. It was fundamentally good.

But the past few weeks have showed us the ugly side of technological progress. Technology is neither good or bad, it just is — and can, and will, be used for malicious purposes. I imagine this is how scientists felt in the 1940s after the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. To quote a friend’s grandfather, “The world is more beautiful than you ever imagined. It’s also sadder.”

Sad!, indeed. Here we are, huddled on our devices, unable to truly know what is going on. It should be easy to figure out what the administration is doing. But the sheer volume of news is too fast for any of us to keep up. Aided by technology, the government is carpet bombing us with misinformation.

It feels impossible to figure out what’s true anymore. This is their goal, of course: to make us question our own perception of reality, and to take away our ability to verify what we see with our own eyes. Even if we do step outside to protest, we’re told we’re not seeing as many people as we think we do and that there are many more people who don’t even know the protests are happening, never mind agree with them. Our perception of reality is questioned. It’s the time-honored strategy of many a narcissist, and it’s working. It drives you insane, and the only solution is to escape — if you dare step outside and bear their full wrath.

Someone, step outside.

Something I was never able to sort out was how that story ended. One person stepping out on their own could confirm the existence of the attack on their own, but if it were true, they would be dead within some short amount of time, and their experience would never get out. But if it were false, and they were to run through the streets proclaiming such, banging on people’s windows to convince them that the air was truly fine, people could easily spread rumors that they were an agent of the terrorists, and just baiting people to step outside to their deaths. I just couldn’t find an ending where the story truly ended, with everything returning to normal again.

I don’t think it does.

But it might we step outside together, and decide we’d rather be on the outside regardless of the consequences. If we each do everything in our power to resist the flood of information and empower verifiable reality. Acting Attorney General Sally Yates did so last night. We all need to join her, with whatever skills and resources we have. There are consequences, but they are small compared to the tragedy of losing three centuries of Constitutional democracy.

Everyone, step outside.