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It is one of these weeks in which there is really no lack of topics: Sabrina Carpenter’s new record cover and the discourse (is that now feminist and sex -positive or throws it back for 1000 years? Discuss!), The death of Sly Stone and Brian Wilson (what would be pop without Sly & the Family Stone or the Beach Boys? And musical genius always comes with the price that you were at a price for this, has to give up, as in Wilson’s life?).
But also the brutality of the raids of the immigration authority and the protests in Los Angeles, Trumps’ military parade and the incredibly colorful and funny protests, on the other hand, as part of the “No Kings Day” in almost every city and every town of the USA, the SPD, your manifesto and the (naive?) Dream of coffee warriors with Putin, and so on and so on.
But I honestly tell you: I feel deaf. On Friday, the long smoldering conflict between Iran and Israel escalated, drones, explosions and bombs rained for Tehran and military goals, the Iran replied with attacks on Tel Aviv and surrounding regions. In the beginning, it hit the high -ranking military and regime bosses in Iran, now there are also very, very many civilian victims. And civilians also died in Israel: inside, blocks of houses were destroyed. I recognize videos from Tehran houses where family members lived. Neighborhoods in which, when I could still enter, I died from locally to locally tingling, in parks and bazaars. My parents tell of friends who actually live in Germany and only wanted to visit family in Iran, who is seriously ill. Now hang stuck in a war zone. While we make calls with cousins and cousins, we can hear how bombs strike in the neighborhood. At the same time, I am writing with friend: inside in Israel, who are completely finished with their nerves, which just spend almost every night in shelters whose children only cry. So much trauma – what for?
I don’t know anyone from Iran or with connections to the country who does not tell of people who are pleased that regime gangs were the goal of the Israeli attacks. But I don’t know anyone who feels the joy of destruction and believes that attacks from outside would somehow help people in the country to start a change of government. Not that these people do not exist – in the badly disputed Iranian diaspora and opposition movement there are a lot of opposite and sometimes completely absurd political orientations – but they are not taken seriously.
Except on the Internet, because on the Internet there is also an audience for every half -cooked, so abstruse opinion. At the latest since October 7 and everything that came afterwards, the discourse on the Internet has increasingly accepted wilder features. More and more I had the feeling that the politicized social media discourse only serves as a kind of entertainment and pop-cultural distinction feature, in which one can raise morally via an imagined opponent. “My team is morally pure than yours!” quasi. What fell on the track? Facts and humanism. No wonder, we all know how the algorithms work: the positions have to become more and more extreme so that they remain visible in this infinite ocean of known take.
And this is how it is now: I read “political analyzes” of people whose expertise is to generate a lot of attention to Instagram, Tikok, Bluesky, X or LinkedIn. They are unsuspecting and their supposed analyzes are not even half -cooked – but that doesn’t matter because it clicks. Because people cracked how they get the algo up and running. And thus determine the discourse. For Better, but mostly for Worse. Much, Much Worse.
I sit there and somehow try to bring together a few thousand kilometers further: inside and family members in Tehran and Tel Aviv, and are afraid for their lives, while I live my normal life here and have to take care of things like my insurance or want to clean my apartment. Is that still cognitive dissonance or already Hylloralization?
Almost ten years ago, in 2016, the “Hyllar Moralization” documentary was published by the British filmmaker Adam Curtis. The title comes from a concept of anthropologist Alexei Yauk: he describes a state in the late Soviet Union, in which everyone knew that the current system was breaking. But nobody could imagine an alternative, so you kept doing it as if everything was quite normal and fully fine. Everyone is talking about this day: starting from an Instagram video by anthropologist Rahaf Harfoush to an article at the college: inside of the “Guardian”, which I just obsessively send my friend: inside.
Everything feels like it would break – and at the same time we plan the next meeting and have to go to the supermarket. Between the cooking recipe and the wedding video of half -forgotten school friend: on the inside there is a desperate donation appeal from civilian on Tikkok: inside in Gaza, then a “political analysis” of an influencer who was primarily given a few months ago. A swipe continues to dance a person in the dino costume on an anti-trump demo, two swipes continues to celebrate the arrests of migrants: Inside, three swipes, someone else speaks about the already real effects of the climate disaster on Brandenburg agriculture, and four swipes is a video of the new Minister allowed to do everything you want.
The disconnect between what we see on our screens and how we perceive our environment, and the feeling that life continues as normal, is not really good for us. Is there a way out? I don’t know it.