Hooked on Feeling

Meghan Daum
Medium.com

 Jussie Smollett’s story is horrifying. It’s also unleashed a torrent of “groupfeel.”

A few weeks ago, someone made an observation on Twitter that struck me as exceptionally wise (this happens every once in a super blood moon). The observation had to do with the concept of “overfeeling”:

“You’re over-feeling this” needs to be a thing we can say as easily as we suggest “overthinking” it. Yet, we talk about “Groupthink” when “Groupfeel” is the new wave transforming our public sphere.

The tweeter was mathematician and economist Eric Weinstein, who frequently has things to say about the collapse of intellectually honest conversation. And while “groupfeel,” depending on how you define it, could describe the kind of emotional stirring-up and fearmongering that Donald Trump has been trafficking in for decades (from the Central Park Five to his current hysteria about immigrants), the occasion for this tweet, as far as I could tell, was mostly ambient. Weinstein was registering frustration at the way public discourse increasingly eschews actual logic for a sort of culturally agreed upon standard of emotional logic.

It’s possible, too, that he was referring to the saga of the Covington video, a viral, Rashomon-evoking document that, from certain angles and when viewed for certain durations, appeared to show a “Make America Great Again” hat-wearing white male Catholic high school student smirking at a Native American elder during protest marches in Washington, D.C., on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

After an avalanche of online outrage about the student’s white privilege, toxic masculinity, and whatever else people wanted to project onto the situation, it became evident there was more going on. The kids, it turned out, had gotten caught up in some verbal sparring with a fringier-than-fringe group of anti-everythingists (or just about) known as the Black Hebrew Israelites. The Native elder was apparently trying to intervene between the two groups by banging a drum in the face of the teenager. (Maybe not the best method for de-escalating a tense situation, but who knows until you try?)

After an avalanche of online outrage, it became evident that there was more going on.

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