If you’re into video games, the last few weeks have been… tumultuous, to say the least. There’s a lot of vitriol, a lot of hate, and a lot of both things disguised as armchair academics, to say nothing of the overall exhaustion people are expressing with any given issue, or even all of the issues combined.

The exhaustion is, I think, very telling. People are tired of a lot of things, and are more than happy at this point to loudly express it. Otherwise forward-thinking, open minded people sigh and avoid discussion, or attempt to change the subject entirely. There’s very little question that this is harmful for everyone involved, but I don’t think a lot of thought has gone into the reasons why.

Being tired of something, to me, suggests one of three things: change is not occurring, change is occurring but too slowly, or too much change is happening too quickly (assuming we’re talking about being tired of change itself). I don’t think you can make a cogent argument that things aren’t changing, though I think in many ways they’re changing for the better and for the worse in equal measure. The Internet gives a voice to the formerly voiceless, and those voiceless people can be underserved groups or overserved, entitled brats — both have a much louder voice than before.

I think, however, that there’s a break in the discussion, where people shouting at one another precludes communication, to the point where the same arguments are being made over and over and people are getting fatigued. The essential arguments — internet communities are toxic, sexism is real and present, racism is real and present, all have not changed enough for us to even remotely suggest that they’re “solved problems”.

However, what we lack is effective means of communication. Arguments get bogged down in semantics and debates over trivialities, and the discourse doesn’t move forward as a result. Much of this is the result of intentional muddying of the waters, attempting to prevent the discourse from even beginning for any number of reasons.

A lot of this, I think, stems from a cultural issue we have with being wrong. We fight being proven wrong at every turn, and when evidence presented portrays us as wrong unequivocally, we attack the evidence. This is ingrained in us at a young age– a student who is never challenged in grade school is “scored” far better than one who struggles but ultimately learns, and coming from the perspective of the former, I think the latter is by far the more laudable. This constantly continues throughout life, and the Internet only exacerbates the problem. Be wrong once, and any future rightness is called into question.

People are tired of the arguments because they clearly present one side as wrong, and we don’t have a good way of handling that, either from the perspective of the person who is wrong or from the perspective of the person looking at someone else who is wrong. Wrong = bad, and more open-minded sorts will frequently “forgive” someone for being wrong, or thinking the wrong thing, as if that weren’t something we all do constantly.

I’d like to see our discourse move away from attacking whoever is wrong and seeking to find blame, and start looking for solutions. We are far too quick to punish errors rather than laud the discovery of solutions, and it stunts our growth– as people, as a culture, as a nation, and as a species.