Social media does little to encourage listening

Published 1:30 am Wednesday, November 19, 2025

The age of social media has left our society with copious outlets for outrage and little room for nuance. The hope is that once a controversy ebbs, we can look upon it as a learning experience and an opportunity for individual and communal growth.

Such is the case surrounding a Halloween costume worn by Pat Jollota, a local historian and former Vancouver City Council member. Jollota attended a costume party dressed as a masked U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent, and a photo of the costume was posted on social media.

Several online commentators took issue with the outfit, believing it made light of the fear felt by millions of people throughout the United States and calling it “insensitive” and “profoundly offensive.” Community activist Hector Hinojosa said, “tensions are high, nerves are raw” and “ICE is scary, especially to the families being destroyed by Trump’s insistence of vilifying hard-working people.”

Jollota said the costume was meant to be “commentary, not an endorsement.” She later posted: “I now understand that my choice was insensitive, regardless of my intentions. The trauma and fear experienced by real people affected by immigration enforcement are not abstract concepts or costumes, and I regret that my actions may have caused offense or hurt.”

In the broad scope of things, the issue is not about Jollota, nor about people who were offended by the costume. Jollota long has been a public servant and a community asset. A costume choice that draws public attention and that she later regrets does not change that.

Nor is it about people who were offended by the costume. Who are we to tell community members how they should feel or to dismiss their personal experiences and fears? All too often in American history, those in power have addressed the concerns of marginalized communities with a pat on the head and a dismissive “Don’t worry about it.”

Instead, the broader issue involves how our society can have deep conservations that move us toward understanding rather than outrage.

That can be difficult, if not impossible, in the modern age. Thanks in part to social media, we live in a world of soundbites, slogans and headlines — with the occasional cat video thrown in; the deepest of thoughts are constricted to 280 characters. And thanks in part to partisan national media, we live in a world of information silos, where “news” does little to inform and much to reinforce preconceived ideas.

The result is a populace primed for indignation rather than conversation, leaving little room for details and context, accuracy and facts. As columnist George Will of The Washington Post observes, “the velocity of stupidity” is driving America’s bitter polarization. And as commentator Carolyn Stewart once noted, with the power of social media, people “have taken an expectation that previously applied to the private sphere — control over our environment — and are increasingly applying it to the public sphere.”

In other words, seemingly no private action can be expected to remain private or free from public scrutiny and commentary. The result, in too many cases, is that technology hailed for bringing us together has had the opposite effect. We are simultaneously better and worse for it.

All of which points out the crux of modern society and the polarization by which it is being frayed. While social media allows each of us to have a voice and speak out, it does little to encourage the listening that is essential to growing as a community.