Enlarge image
Cute!
Or?
Photo: Nailia Schwarz / imago images / Shotshop
There's this thoroughly wonderful video of a puppy on a patio.
He plays clumsily with a ball next to his mother, dearly.
Then he takes a step back and sees a twig, which of course he has to deal with immediately, super cute.
Then his stomach itches, he scratches, adorable.
But he's still so dizzy that he falls over, super cute.
This brings both the twig and the ball into view.
He looks back and forth, decides on the ball, gets up, runs towards it, tenths of a second later he loses interest, awwwwh, but instead sees the person filming and rushes towards them.
Video over, you have to watch it again immediately and then again.
We, the digital societies in liberal democracies, have a problem, a meta-problem that has to do with almost all other problems and, above all, with their solutions.
As far as our social attention goes, we are that pup.
Firstly, we are unable to deal with more than one major issue at a time.
Secondly, we are not in a position to follow a major topic over a long period of time if there are not constantly new developments that are as sensational as possible.
Third, we are unable to distinguish the urgent from the important.
I call it the puppy problem: In the digital media society we have not been able to develop a principle of sustained attention.
The puppy problem has a number of difficult consequences.
For example, the pandemic was over the moment the Russian invasion of Ukraine began, precisely because there is only room for one major issue in our minds.
We are only partially able to maintain the enormously important corrective function in the form of public pressure.
Even before this pressure can effectively develop on those responsible, the next sow is driven through the village.
The best trick for avoiding taking on political responsibility, such as resigning, is therefore to simply wait until the energy of outrage has dissipated and the outraged have moved on.
Sitting out was already possible in Kohl's time, but today it no longer takes months, but often just hours.
Media topics have an extremely short half-life, their urgency fades too quickly.
Getting used to the unacceptable
Another difficult consequence of the puppy problem is that even with monstrosities we seem disturbingly easily bored.
In mid-April, the current German authority for the declaration of war, Carlo Masala, twitterer, podcaster and professor of international politics at the Bundeswehr University, tweeted: »German society is slowly becoming war-weary.
Nothing more dangerous can happen to Ukraine«.
This war weariness is a form of getting used to what is actually unacceptable.
This can be seen as a protective function, because no one manages to be permanently alerted unscathed.
At some point, however, a defense against guilt can be added to getting used to it.
Because we don't want to allow ourselves to get used to the monstrous, we look for and find arguments why the monstrous isn't so monstrous after all, or why turning away is right for other reasons.
We would like to be on the side of Ukraine with full force, but the ambassador is so cheeky.
Perhaps the most bitter consequence of the puppy problem, however, are the many catastrophes, radicalities, incomprehensibility, which are therefore not even an issue.
They remain a side note, although they should become major issues.
A drop of residual attention
A case like that of George Floyd, whose murder caused an uproar around the world and led to the formation of the Black Lives Matter movement, could only have developed in Germany.
In Mannheim, a man with Turkish roots died after being violently arrested by the police.
There is video footage of it, which is hard to take.
So far, the topic hasn't really gotten big.
In addition to racism, one of the reasons for this can be that not all details are clear yet – but that is rarely the case anyway.
In fact, I think the main reason is that a large part of the attention is currently being absorbed by the topic of Ukraine, including the accompanying debates, the open letters, grotesque Russian Nazi comparisons and the worldwide discussions about the consequences of the war.
The few remaining drops of residual attention are being absorbed by the late-pandemic turmoil.
Otherwise it is only enough for themed small flames and straw fires.
A variety of issues would deserve much more attention.
The fundamentalist religious right in the United States is on the verge of radically restricting abortion rights for people with wombs.
The most influential online publication in the world, Politico, which now belongs to Axel Springer Verlag, has published a highly spectacular leak: the draft of a judgment by the Supreme Court, the highest, politically extremely powerful US court.
The right-wing majority on this body, tricked into being by Trump, is not only pushing for the abolition of the general right to abortion, but is also laying the foundation for a future of "The Handmaid's Tale" light variety: Up to 30 states could ban gay marriage, up to twelve even homosexual intercourse.
In Texas, which is key because of America's somewhat edgy legal system, a woman desperate for an abortion was recently charged with murder.
The charges were dropped, but these actions must be viewed as snarling.
As extremist as this development was, it caused so little response in Germany because – oh, a ball!
And a branch!
catastrophes peter out
The puppy problem is probably most dangerous in relation to the climate catastrophe.
A few weeks ago, what was actually a highly alarming IPCC report was published, but it hardly found any echo.
At the end of April, parts of India had temperatures of up to 62 degrees Celsius on the earth's surface.
While this is not to be confused with the air temperature (which was nearly 50 degrees), the spring heat is so extreme that parts of the country are on the brink of being uninhabitable.
It's early May and India is being hit by the fourth heatwave - this year.
In the medium term, life-threatening sensations could also be reported from the ice melt at the North and South Poles.
And they are also reported, but they only touch the public attention threshold for a short time and then bog down in the professionally interested circles.
Niche topics become visible
The question remains why this is happening.
It goes without saying that our attention is a finite resource.
And also that the news from social and editorial media is exchanged so quickly and in such a ritualized manner that the same content can neither be in the trending topics nor on the home page of large media for more than a few hours, at most a day.
Here I would like to put forward a new, perhaps surprising, theory.
The puppy problem is not meant to be the thousandth complaint about a world that is becoming increasingly fast-moving, complex and superficial.
Because the puppy problem is actually a sign of structural improvement.
Social media has helped bring issues to the public that previously had little chance.
This primarily benefits minorities and social groups that could previously be ignored by the editors.
This can be clearly seen in gender diversity.
Trans people repeatedly report that they are astonished, which is why they are suddenly supposedly taking place so intensively in public.
Right down to the anti-trans assumption that it is a »fashion«.
The truth is that there have always been trans people, just as there have always been non-binary people.
But through the structural improvement of attention flows through social media, two effects occurred: On the one hand, a minority that had been largely ignored until then was able to fight loudly for their rights and often enough for their lives.
On the other hand, many people found out that they are not alone and were able to develop a sense of belonging to a group.
Such mechanisms of the digital, social-media society are identity-forming and sometimes life-saving.
We have to learn
The puppy problem is therefore the concomitant symptom of a much larger, predominantly positive change in social attention flows.
We do not yet fully understand how to make the new, by and large fairer, distribution of attention more sustainable.
We perceive this gap in social progress as a problem.
Advertisement
Sasha Lobo
Reality shock: Ten lessons from the present
Publisher: Kiepenheuer&Witsch
Number of pages: 400 pages
Publisher: Kiepenheuer&Witsch
Number of pages: 400 pages
Buy for €22.00
price query time
05/04/2022 2:29 p.m
No guarantee
Order from Amazon
Order from Thalia
Order from Weltbild
Product reviews are purely editorial and independent.
Via the so-called affiliate links above, we usually receive a commission from the retailer when you make a purchase.
More information here
But solutions are already on the horizon.
It's no coincidence that movements like Black Lives Matter or Fridays For Future have grown with and through social media.
In the 20th century, both black and young people were severely underrepresented in the media public.
However, both groups always manage to penetrate social awareness with their essential topics.
Her secret consists of tenacity, expertise, net-collective zeal and very effective narratives.
There is probably a way to approach the puppy problem.
These are probably the building blocks for the longed-for long-term attention.
And that's easier analyzed than implemented, but - oh a ball!
