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Does the truth still matter?

2026-02-03 · letter vlog · John · 4:47 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Internet & YouTube (also: US politics & society) · mode: Personal essay · tags: timely hook, heavy topic

Distressed by federal immigration enforcement in the US, John tells Hank he does not know how to talk about it online when people are siloed by information systems that reward attention over accuracy, but finds thin hope in evidence that the truth still has power, as public opinion on ICE shifts.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — John's difficulty talking about the US: a two-year-old taken despite a court order, deaths in immigration custody, officials' lies

  • ★★ John says he is having a very hard time talking about what is happening in his country, and also a very hard time not talking about it. — 00:00:00 · United States
  • ★★★ John says that about two weeks ago a two-year-old child was kidnapped by the federal government despite a court order not to do so. — 00:00:00
  • ★★★ John says many people have died in the custody or at the hands of US immigration officials, and official accounts are hard to trust because officials clearly lied in the two videotaped cases. — 00:00:00 · United States

00:00:29 — Siloed information systems: unrepresentative audience, Census voting result, hearing only the worst takes, MAGA family members

  • ★★ John worries that merely saying this has lost the small share of viewers he most wants to reach. — 00:00:29
  • ★★★ John says he doesn't know how to talk about this online because we are profoundly, unprecedentedly siloed in our information distribution systems, so we don't hear or really listen to each other. — 00:00:29
  • ★★ John says the video won't reach a representative sample of America: a recent Nerdfighteria Census found more community members voted for Jill Stein than for Donald Trump. — 00:00:29 · Donald Trump, United States, Nerdfighteria
  • ★★★ John says he can't reach across the aisle: the other side won't hear him, he hears only their most outrageous takes, and he extrapolates them to everyone, hardening his silo. — 00:00:58
  • ★★ John says he can't even convince his own MAGA family members that people who were murdered were in fact murdered. — 00:00:58
  • ★★★ John says Alex Pretti had both hands on the ground and was disarmed when he was shot ten times, yet to some of John's family it doesn't look like murder. — 00:00:58

00:01:27 — Minneapolis homicides; historical view of the rule of law and the new executive detention powers; a religious view

  • ★★★ John says 67% of this year's (2026) homicides in Minneapolis have been committed by ICE, yet his family members feel the streets are unsafe and need to be made safer. — 00:01:27
  • ★★ From a historical view, John says the rule of law in the US has never been applied fairly or justly: state-sanctioned killing, from witch hunts to lynchings to executions, has long been part of the American story. — 00:01:27 · United States
  • ★★★ John says what is new, in his view, is that the executive branch claims, and is allowed to claim, widespread powers to detain people in the US without much interference from the other branches. — 00:01:56 · United States
  • ★★ From a religious view that might resonate across ideological lines, John says he believes in a God who chose to be born human to poor parents in a foreign land. — 00:01:56

00:02:26 — Preaching to the choir, memes and deepfakes, no precedent for the social internet, fear, and whether to be on Twitter

  • ★★ John says this God preached good news to the poor, hungry and imprisoned and literally said 'I was a stranger and you took me in'. — 00:02:26
  • ★★ John fears he is only preaching to the choir, which hardens silos, and says he has unchecked cognitive biases he cannot check given his information system's architecture. — 00:02:26
  • ★★ John doesn't know whether answering memes and deepfakes with one's own is right: it may undermine credibility with opponents or encourage resistance to an increasingly authoritarian government. (unsure) — 00:02:55
  • ★★★ John says he doesn't know the right strategy and doubts anyone does: among many precedents for this moment, none had a social internet as big, and past information distribution was slower and less fractured. — 00:02:55 · social media
  • ★★★ John says he is heartbroken, enraged and scared: the divisiveness, easily disprovable lies, blaming of disenfranchised communities and institutions' failure to rein in government overreach should scare us. — 00:03:24
  • ★★ John says he doesn't know whether this means he should be on Twitter or X, or whether this video makes anything better or worse. (unsure) — 00:03:24 · Twitter

00:03:53 — Real-life collective action matters; polling shift on ICE suggests the truth retains power; thin hope; sign-off

  • ★★★ John thinks real-life collective action matters (protests, videotaping, making one's voice heard inside and outside the ballot box) but doesn't know what to do online. — 00:03:53 · collective action
  • ★★★ John says there is mounting evidence that the truth retains power; he often feels the social internet only reinforces worldviews, but is starting to think it's not that simple. — 00:03:53
  • ★★★ John says polling indicates real changes among the US voting public, which has shifted by over 20% on the subject of ICE in the last few months. — 00:04:23 · United States
  • ★★★ John thinks the truth still has some power he feared it had lost amid memes and deepfakes; for now that is where he finds hope, if a thin one. — 00:04:23 · hope

Threads in this video

Mentioned

Central: echo chamber · U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement · United States

Also: People: Alex Pretti · Donald Trump · Jill Stein

Projects: Nerdfighteria Census

Works: Gospel of Matthew

Organizations: Federal government of the United States · Twitter

Concepts: authoritarianism · capital punishment · cognitive bias · collective action · deepfake · hope · Internet meme · lie · lynching · political polarization · rule of law · separation of powers · social media · Trumpism · witch hunt

Places: Minneapolis

Myths: Jesus

Only in the description or credits: attention economy

Also centred on echo chamber: My Post-Election Thoughts · Are We Making Things Worse?

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