“OMG, did you see David and Liz’s Facebook fight?” This was one of the first things a friend said to me during a recent hometown visit.

“Of course not, you know I’m better than that smut.” I replied, only half-joking. I’m not on social media, that part’s true, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy feeling smug about it.

A few minutes later, she was airdropping me the whole ordeal: twenty-nine screenshots of a digital dogfight between two of our high school classmates over identity politics, the possible weaponization of freedom of speech and the responsibility of political figures in the fostering of a divisive or harmonious society. Sure, this will go well.

On one side we have Liz, locked and loaded: Bible verses in the original Greek (apparently malakoi means ‘soft ones’), scientific studies, historical references, and the tone of someone with nothing left to prove. On the other side we have David meeting her with broad proclamations about morality, a few Bible verses of his own, and sweeping concerns about the fall of American values. To be clear, Liz is the liberal in this story because where I come from – sweet home Alabama – even liberals quote scripture.

Within hours, half our graduating class had jumped into the thread. Some posted cheering emojis from the sidelines, others rolled up their sleeves with a ‘put me in, coach’ attitude, certain they’d be the one to deliver a win for their team. In the end, no minds were changed, no one even budged an inch. Of course.

What struck me wasn’t the argument itself, but my friends' utter shock that David refused to concede. They were baffled that Liz’s carefully constructed, seemingly airtight case failed to persuade him. To them, her opening salvo alone was so precise, so exacting and so irrefutable, they couldn’t believe David even dared a retort, let alone that he stood his ground. I didn’t have the heart to tell them outright, so I eased into it: “Oh, honeys... oh, bless your little hearts…” (Alabama, remember) “…that thread wasn’t a debate built to persuade anyone. Persuasion was never on the table.”

As if debates like these have winners and losers. As if facts, logic and polished delivery act as a magical cheat code to dismantle someone's deeply held beliefs. I mean, does it really seem like someone who says things like, "I'd bet the house that most of the folks in the 'community' you're referring to haven’t a clue about the founding principles of this country. They've been spoon-fed their beliefs by a soft society. They may say they’re liberal but in reality, they’re completely intolerant of hearing anything that may alter their way of life," is even remotely open to changing their mind?

Facebook rants, podcasts, Bill Maher, YouTube panels where twenty strangers sit in a circle and pretend they’re the only rational one in the room: they’re all performance. We may call it debate, or even “the news,” but it functions more like theater. Identity theater. Persuasion isn’t the point, validation is. This isn’t a crisis, nor is it evidence of the collapse of democracy or death of reason, it’s simply humans being human. We just now have tiny computers in our pockets so instead of honor-defending duels or public shamings in the town square, we cancel our enemies via social media pile-ons and thinning-veiled thinkpieces. And while this phenomenon isn’t cause for alarm, to truly understand it–learn from it and grow–we must first acknowledge its true nature. We must be honest about our own roles within it.

Liz’s post might have looked like an argument, but it wasn’t constructed for David, it was constructed in confirmation of her own values, beliefs and identity. And while she did everything “right” – cited sources, stayed calm, made her case – that’s not what David was responding to. He wasn’t there to be convinced, he was there to perform loyalty to his own values, beliefs and identity.

Nobody steps onto the field thinking they might change teams. Why would you? And even if you did, your brain thinks its number-one job is proving you’re right. Your brain is quite literally a “know-it-all,” built to reinforce the outcome you already believe is true.

This protective mechanism is what Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert coined as the psychological immune system. This isn’t your brain's way of being an asshole, it’s actually a suite of unconscious processes, not dissimilar to the body’s immune system, which kicks in to defend the self from ego-threatening or emotionally painful realities. It draws upon established cognitive strategies such as confirmation bias, a tendency to favor information which supports our existing beliefs, in order to manage cognitive dissonance. It’s our brain’s handy-dandy tool to smooth over internal contradictions and preserve our identity and emotional health. A kind of ego antivirus. Not only does it protect us from self-doubt, it makes us feel virtuous while doing it.

So even when presented with facts, thoughtful counterpoints or well-cited scripture in the original Greek, our minds do the same thing: they run the equation backward. We start with the conclusion, the one that protects our sense-of-self and signals membership to our tribe and then works in reverse, plugging in whatever logic we need to arrive back at the same place.

It’s not ignorance. It’s not stupidity. It’s a highly intelligent system of cognitive dissonance management. And once you understand it, the surprise isn't that David didn’t change his mind, the surprise is that anyone ever thought he would. The surprise is that anyone ever does.

What’s really impressive is that, thanks to social media, we can now parlay our psychological immune systems into social currency. We offer up our opinion or rebuttal, reaffirming our identities and legitimizing our seats at the table. “See? I still believe the right things. I still hate the right people. Please clap.”

And they do. They clap. Not necessarily to build a bridge, but because they need to reaffirm their seat at the table, too. This doesn’t make us evil or doomed, it makes us human. Social belonging is a biological need, not a moral failing. The problem isn’t that we crave identity reinforcement, it’s that we’ve convinced ourselves we’re doing something nobler than that. We believe we’re educating the other side. Enlightening the masses. Standing for justice.

So what do we do with all this?

Well, if you're hoping for a tidy call to action, beyond the essential need for individual self-awareness, I’ve got bad news, there isn’t one. I’m not writing this to offer a grand solution for society’s woes. I’m writing this because I finally realized there’s nothing to fix.

The way I see it, we’re not broken. We’re creatures of ego, insecurity and groupthink, wrapped in podcast merch and bumper stickers about truth. That doesn’t make us hopeless; again, it just makes us human. We build “in groups” by defining “out groups,” only now but we’ve traded torches and pitchforks for comments and quote tweets. But hey, compared to medieval torture, a Facebook fight is considerable progress.

So rather than a collapse of democracy or death of reason, maybe this is simply an awkward stage, a cultural puberty, if you will. It’s messy, theatrical and kind of embarrassing. We think we’re asserting maturity when really we’re just trying to impress our friends and prove we’re not like our parents. And like any teenager, we’ll have to cringe our way through it before we grow out of it.

But in the meantime, we could at least try to be honest. Honest that our passionate online debates aren’t fundamentally about truth. Honest that our moral outrage frequently serves identity more than ethics. Honest that persuasion isn’t really the point, connection is and nothing united us quite like a shared enemy.