How to be Stoic on Social Media
Applying Stoicism to Online Debates
I run several online groups, including the largest Facebook group for Stoic philosophy — it currently has over 78k members. I’ve been running large online discussion forums since way back in 1999, when I created my first Yahoogroup. Since then I’ve written several books on applying Stoic philosophy to modern life. The most recent was called How to Think Like a Roman Emperor: The Stoic Philosophy of Marcus Aurelius. A good Stoic would follow Epictetus’ famous slogan when on social media: endure and renounce. So when it comes to getting sucked into arguments online or wasting too much time on Twitter and Facebook — I should probably know better by now.
I am convinced that Stoicism is especially relevant to the challenges of coping with social media.
I guess I do have the excuse that social media has been an important part of my job for as long as I care to remember now. So maybe I can’t avoid it completely. I’ve been thinking for a long time now, though, that I should be applying the teachings of Stoicism more consistently to my own online behaviour and the way I deal with arguments, etc. I get plenty of practice. If you write books then trolls will eventually come after you online. Also, if you run forums often…
