This is an extremely online style of writing—cryptic, meme-driven, and jokey even about serious or disturbing issues. Was the alleged shooter helped toward his act of violence by the communities he was in online? And are millions of Internet users helping or hurting their own moral and civic identities by watching detailed video of the murder, which was immediately shared on social media?

As his press conference wrapped up, Cox made a plea for everyone to follow Kirk’s tweeted advice (which he cited). He said that “we are not wired as human beings—biologically, historically—we have not evolved in a way that we are capable of processing those types of violent imagery… This is not good for us. It is not good to consume.”

And he added that “social media is a cancer on our society right now. I would encourage people to log off, turn off, touch grass, hug a family member, go out and do good in your community.”

This could have been useful to Extremely Online People like the alleged shooter, who was turned in by some of his own family members and who might have been dissuaded from his actions had he engaged more directly with them. (Of course, simplistic advice like this is often wrong; difficult family members and broken relationships might mean that in-person connection is also unhelpful for some.)

It might also be good advice for the kinds of Extremely Online People who lead the country by posting social media threats to unleash the “Department of War” upon Chicago, shown burning in the background.

Treating cancer

At its heart, though, Cox raises a question about whether social media is 1) a powerful force capable of both great good and terrible incitement and misinformation, or whether it is 2) a mere cancer.

I assume Ars readers are divided on this question, given that the Ars staff itself has differing views. One can point, of course, to the successes: The powerless can call out the lies of the powerful, they can gin up “color revolutions” to topple dictators, and they can publish their views with an ease and at a cost that not even the printing press—itself an extremely disruptive technology—could manage. On the flip side, of course, is all the “cancer”: the floods of misinformation and bile, the yelling, the “cancel culture,” the virtue signaling, the scams and hoaxes, the ethnic nationalism, the casual sharing of both gore and pornography, the buffoonish natures of the tech overlords who run too many of these services, and that feeling you get when you log in to Facebook and realize with a shock that your aunt is a closet racist.