Disparaging Umair & Jessica
Or should we just move forward?
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My feed has seen an increase in articles belittling Umair Haque and Jessica Wildfire. Here is a recent article on this theme, by Berna Tural:
When I joined Medium in April 2019, Umair and Jessica showed up on my feed. So, I clicked and read. I had to agree with much of what they were saying. But I had doubts whether the message of these two writers will ever be reaching the people that needed to do some rethinking about how the world should work. In other words, these two writers are — in my opinion — in their own echo chamber and really not changing the world very much.
I stopped reading Jessica after about 10 articles. Her stories go too far with “hair-on-fire.” Umair is more reasonable with his sensationalism. And I had some success dogging on to Umair’s articles in promoting my alternative democracy: I got a few Umair readers to read my flagship essay.
What I, Berna, and many other Medium contributors find wrong with Umair’s and Jessica’s approach to their articles is there is no solution to this mess we are in. They tell us about the mess over and over — but there is nothing helpful toward the cleanup. Since we already know something is wrong, these articles are kind of empty.
I also believe that Umair’s and Jessica’s articles are — subliminally — letting many of their readers off their democratic responsibility. It’s not hard to predict that some readers will see these articles as “The world is going to hell, and it’s all the other side’s fault.” This thinking then leads to “There’s nothing we can really do.” So, these readers will happily watch the ship sink not making any effort to stop the leak. The trouble is they are on this ship.
I do have a solution. For three years, I have been promoting my alternative democracy on Medium. I admit that I see a big paradox in the popularity of Umair and Jessica (with no solutions) and my lack of popularity (with a possible solution). We can’t blame a lack of available time: my book takes…
