Meghan Daum
Hooked on Feeling
Jussie Smollett’s story is horrifying. It’s also unleashed a torrent of “groupfeel.”
A few weeks ago, someone made an observation on Twitter that struck me as exceptionally wise (this happens every once in a super blood moon). The observation had to do with the concept of “overfeeling”:
“You’re over-feeling this” needs to be a thing we can say as easily as we suggest “overthinking” it. Yet, we talk about “Groupthink” when “Groupfeel” is the new wave transforming our public sphere.
The tweeter was mathematician and economist Eric Weinstein, who frequently has things to say about the collapse of intellectually honest conversation. And while “groupfeel,” depending on how you define it, could describe the kind of emotional stirring-up and fearmongering that Donald Trump has been trafficking in for decades (from the Central Park Five to his current hysteria about immigrants), the occasion for this tweet, as far as I could tell, was mostly ambient. Weinstein was registering frustration at the way public discourse increasingly eschews actual logic for a sort of culturally agreed upon standard of emotional logic.
It’s possible, too, that he was referring to the saga of the Covington video, a viral, Rashomon-evoking document that, from certain…
