For the past several months, millions of Americans have had their spirits boosted by a young librarian, Mychal Threets. Mychal is the supervising librarian at Fairfield Civic Center Library in Solano County, Calif., and he became social media (and general media) famous for sharing snippets of his life as a librarian on various platforms. Mychal is a breath of fresh air—a self-proclaimed library superfan with an array of literary inspired tattoos, including Arthur the aardvark.
In a world of gloom and doom, where that doom is magnified online, Mychal was the light we didn’t even know we needed. Never mind that he makes books and reading cool. Something we desperately need more of.
In recent months, as Mychal’s profile grew—including write ups in the Washington Post and the New York Times—so did the hate. In late December 2023, Mychal started receiving bulk hate with people commenting on his appearance (he’s a biracial Black man, who proudly rocks an afro), his mannerisms, his voice—you name it. Millions rushed to his defense but in recent months…well, it seems that despite all the love, the hate took its toll and this week, Mychal announced that he was stepping down from his job to tend to his mental health.
In other words, the hateful people who live on the internet pushed this beautiful young man to the brink and he is stepping back because in today’s world, librarians and anything remotely good and wholesome without an agenda are vilified.
As sadly unsettling as this story is, it also doesn’t surprise me. Today’s social media is overall a cesspool—a place where unhealthiness and darkness thrive. It isn’t by accident either.
When social media first launched in the early 2000s, the idea was to create a more accessible world—a place where the walls of society were torn down. In the heyday of social media, it was a place of community, information, and connection. Movements were birthed on social media. Arab Spring. Black Lives Matter. And more.
As I have shared often, early social media allowed me to shift my career and expand my reach. For years, I wrote for local publications, but social media allowed me to build a national following and to make connections across the world as a racial justice activist and speaker.
That same social media now actively suppresses anything political. In fact, have you noticed that you see less news or social justice information on your Facebook, Instagram, or Threads feeds? Well, in case you thought you were imagining that you are seeing less, it’s not your imagination. Adam Mosseri, the executive in charge of Instagram and Threads, announced that the company doesn’t want Threads to “proactively amplify political content from accounts you don’t follow”—in effect, announcing the company hopes to limit how “political” content is spread and shared.
Mind you, these platforms over the last two decades have damn near killed the world of mainstream news and journalism. People have come to expect that they will hop on a social media app and be served up a mix of news and connections with family and friends and, increasingly, that isn’t happening. However, in the new world of a la carte news, most are bypassing news altogether.
At the same time, these apps reward awful and questionable behavior. TikTok, which blew up in the early years of COVID, is where you can put all your personal trauma and questionable decisions on display and if you play your cards right, you will be catapulted into a new income bracket.
The latest TikTok viral sensation is Reesa Tessa. A Black woman who created a 50-part series on TikTok explaining how she married a pathological liar in 2020, who took her on an emotional and mental ride. Last I heard, big brands are lining up to court her.
After I watched the first 10-minute episode, I didn’t have any desire to watch the other 49 parts. But I have read several summaries, and it seems like she ignored an immense number of red flags, which is not something I’d want to share. And just generally speaking, while I have definitely had a few relationships go south in a big way, I have never felt the need to share publicly any details because I worry about the long-term implications of sharing the personal details of one’s life on the internet, where nothing is ever forgotten and you can go from being beloved to being a villain in a nanosecond.
As a longtime blogger, I have seen too many beloved bloggers build up huge followings and success, only to crash and burn after the reality of being an internet celebrity sets in. Rarely is the short-term success worth the long-term hassles. There are women who started blogging when I did in the early 2000s, who still have people minding their business and judging them even though they stopped blogging years ago.
No, social media has rearranged us, even in our most mundane activities—where so many conversations on the internet exist either in gloom, doom, or abject fear.
In an attempt to move beyond the recent break-up with my now ex-boyfriend, I started following a few conversations and groups online around dating in middle age. The bulk of these conversations are so scary that I had to remind myself that most of my relationships in the 30-plus years of my adult life have not been with scary, narcissistic abusers. There is no doubt that there are a lot of men who engage in bad behavior. So, these conversations can be useful for many, but on the other hand they can also create an echo chamber of expectations where suddenly, every man is suspect and every woman is pure of character with no faults.
The thing is nuance and listening online no longer exists.
Too often the world online is black and white, when in reality, life often exists in shades of gray. It’s why I increasingly don’t engage in extended conversations on social media apps, even though years ago it was a place I adored for learning and exchanging ideas and building community.
It has become a place where if you aren’t performing according to the standards of others, you are problematic. If you don’t use your platform to elevate the way others expect, you are problematic. Where bad actors are assumed to be the norm and even a young librarian giving hope and promoting reading is assumed suspicious and then harassed.
Social media turns on its own because the relationships are tenuous at best. This tool for the betterment has become a driver to bring out our worst selves, and often it causes us to turn on ourselves and one another. It’s an addiction and sadly, also a necessity—as we often need social media to give us real-world news at a time where mainstream media is lacking.
Since Israel started attacking Palestinians in the aftermath of the Oct. 5 Hamas attack on Israel, a number of Palestinian journalists have been at the forefront on social media giving us a front-row look into the devastation and death that Israel has made commonplace.
Bisan Owda is a Palestinian filmmaker who millions have fallen in love with as she documents everything on the ground. Motaz Azaiza is a Palestinian photojournalist who,along with Bisan and many others, have allowed us to see what our Palestinian brothers and sisters have been facing. They are brave and talented souls going above and beyond survival in the midst of the unthinkable to show the world who Palestinians are and to tell us their stories and struggles directly.
Well, the internet is a fickle friend. A few days ago, apparently a video made the rounds and some people of the social media world are declaring that both Bisan and Motaz are anti-Black and they are done with them both.
While Motaz recently left Gaza for his personal safety, Bisan is still on the ground in Gaza and while I have no idea if they are anti-Black, it doesn’t take away from the very real danger the Palestinians are in nor the fact that thousands of Palestinians have been unjustly killed. There is also the fact that anti-Blackness is pretty universal in the context of a world that operates on the principals of white supremacy culture. Shit, there are plenty of Black people in the larger diaspora globally who are anti-Black.
But the internet doesn’t do nuance, it makes accusations, it puts people on pedestals and then delights them in knocking them off.
The fickle nature of social media has made me both weary and wary. I don’t know if I would use it much at all, if not for my work.
It’s hard to be a blogger/internet writer who doesn’t use social media. My writing requires me to promote my work. Very few writers of any stature can avoid social media; it’s something that people whose work doesn’t require social media fail to grasp. We have to exist in this hellscape in order to stay visible. Or as I put it, unless I change careers, I am pretty much here. The algorithms make it difficult to even take a break, because once you stop putting anything out for any length of time, it’s damn near impossible unless you are a big-time celebrity—social media celeb or otherwise—to get your stuff seen again.
Even literary agents and publishers look at social media numbers when deciding on new writers, so there is no way out of this trap. Never mind that published authors are increasingly having to be their own PR people, which is why metrics matter.
Personally, we need to bring back humanity instead of allowing good people like Mychal the librarian to be run out of his job because of the inhumanity that thrives in these spaces. We need reliable media to be accessible and not dependent on the whims of algorithms and very rich people deciding what reality they want us to see. More importantly, we need to build in our actual spaces with people we can talk to offline.
For some, an online community is their only community, and as someone who started a blog because of the overall loneliness of being Black in Maine, I understand that.
At the same time, these spaces are increasingly devolving into toxic pits of inhumanity, where we see the worst of people and often encourage it. Where our sincere humanity is met with distrust and where our friends are fair-weather and eager to pounce and turn against us. Where movements are discarded before the work is complete because we have moved onto the latest social justice trend instead of realizing that all oppression is interwoven. Let’s try to turn the tide on that, before it’s too late.
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