Where Can We Still Discourse?

From TikTok to YouTube, finding where genuine conversations can still happen.

How many programs we use on any given day is wild. I often reflect back to 1999, when the scant programs I used could be counted on one hand. Now, it takes all my fingers and toes and someone else’s to count the programs I use daily. And, in this age of marketing yourself, figuring out what platform to use is kind of wild. I wanted to explore what I’ve found on a few platforms. But, sharing these messages is less about marketing and more about where we can talk to each other. Where in our current world can we discourse?

For YouTube, I locked the comments. I got a few rude comments about my beliefs and my looks. While, I felt nearly nothing about the rude comments, I did decide to hold a boundary. (This is a change from my 20-year-old or 30-year-old self!) I am a part of a marketing exercise group (we exercise our marketing muscles), and I was guided to hold the comments. So I did. On YouTube specifically, I hold all the comments. And, you know what? So far, no one has said anything.

My uncle said, “A locked door keeps an honest man honest.” (Ironically, he’s the one who stole from our family… I suppose he had first hand knowledge of how a locked door keeps a man honest and how an unlocked door leads to tempation…)

Locking my comments is like locking my door. People who would otherwise be inclined to behave poorly give up and move on. It keeps them behaving …. Well, not rudely … at least on my platform. It keeps them “honest”.

But that’s YouTube.

I want the world to be a better place. I have a lens through which I can see that. And I am casting a wide net on the available platforms. As such, I have begun a habit of reflecting on video. I use an app to pull the video together, add captions, and throw on a filter to disguise my PCOS facial hair or overly tired eyes. I create a quick note about the video and copy and paste it into the Tikky-Tok, YouTube, Facebook Page (lowest engagement), and Instagram. I just started scheduling choicier reflections into my Substack.

TikTok is by far the most fun to watch. It will yield comments. Watching the heart count go up is a balm to my soul. And seeing how/when people engage is fascinating. I get an average of 300 views per video. I have around 600 followers on TikTok. The people who engage are my target audience. My target audience is women about my age who want to smash the patriarchy.

Instagram engages the people I know the most if they engage at all. I’ll be lucky to get over 100 views. There are over 1,000 accounts following me on IG. And when engagement happens, I know the people personally.

My Facebook Page yields the lowest results—less than 10 views. I am not sharing it on my personal page. There are about 300 people following that page.

And YouTube is the nuttiest nut to crack. The views swing wildly, from maybe 20 to over 500. As mentioned above, I lock the comments to protect my peace. If you have civil things to write, I will approve the comments, but since locking, no one has ventured to write anything. I have ten subscribers on YT.

TikTok is also my favorite because it feels like it’s where my progressive-leaning, visionary people are, and they react generatively.

We need to be able to discourse. We need to be able to discuss real problems, real things, with real people if we want to have some control over the direction our world takes. The places where we can stand on our soapboxes and orate for all to hear have changed. The “public square” is few and far between. Instead of walking to work, we scroll on our devices.

One day in the fall, during my freshman year at Michigan State, I was walking through a pretty part of campus. I had just gotten a paycheck (yeah, I had money!) and was chipperly walking back to my dorm. I crossed a bridge, and a man with a sign, who was routinely there, chastised me for smiling. He was proselytizing some dark corner of the Bible and showing how my smiling face was evidence of the evil in the world. I did not converse with him. I ignored him and walked on. However, I cherish the fact that he was allowed to stand there and share his beliefs. He never touched me. I didn’t like what he had to say, but I didn’t fear harm to my body.

While studying Urban Design on my second try at college, we often discussed in class how the then-public square was actually the mall. However, the main focus of a mall was business, the exchange of money. People standing around shouting their beliefs get in the way of business. So, courts have ruled that these spaces can limit free speech¹. Discourse is limited when free speech is limited, regardless of the amount of people gathering.

We don’t build public squares like we used to. And, in today’s world, we spend more time at home. So the new public square is the internet. The internet, which started so scientists could freely exchange ideas, is now locked like malls. The internet has turned into a space to make money. Do you remember when Google started? They had a credo of do-no-evil, and ads were secondary instead of primary to the information searches you’d put into the query.

So, where should we discourse if our public spaces are few and far between? Where should we be discussing our values? Where should we be discussing our political candidates and ballot measures? Where should we discourse today?

We need an answer to this question, especially if we demand an active role in our future. What does this space look like for you?

1. Wolf, Marc Price. “Free Speech at the Shopping Mall.” The Daily Journal Corporation, April 2011. https://educateforlife.org/free-speech-shopping-mall/.