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Mon, Oct 07, 2024 | Rabiʻ II 3, 1446 | DXB 
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How Jonny Thomson became a modern legend talking about philosophy
Thomson runs a page called philosophyminis where he breaks down philosophical concepts for a wide audience
- Mahwash Ajaz
- Updated: Mon 7 Oct 2024, 5:04 PM
There are social media success stories and there are social media success stories that give you renewed faith in humanity. When you look at Jonny Thomson’s instagram account, a page called ‘philosophyminis’ you will not only appreciate what Thomson’s doing, in terms of breaking down academic concepts for a larger audience that sparks enormous interest in philosophy, it will also lead you to read into how the learning community on the internet is as active as, well, the trolls.
Thomson’s story is fascinating. He was a teacher at Oxford for ten years before he decided, one day, that he would break up his notes and share them on Instagram as posts (this was before Instagram was completely taken over by reels). His work met with appreciation and as his community grew, as Instagram launched reels, Thomson grew with it. He began making bite sized videos explaining philosophical concepts relevant to daily life. With an almost three hundred thousand following strong, he often shares questions that make you think (when have you been the loneliest?) and shares complicated concept in a simple, straightforward way that involves the average Instagram demographic (anyone looking for simple, engaging content).
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So how did Jonny amass a huge following talking about philosophy on Instagram? “I’ve always used the ‘social’ part of social media, than the media part,” he says smiling. “I used social media to connect with friends. I was anonymous for a very long time. But then when my book came out, I stepped out of anonymity. That’s when it kind of shifted for me. I’ve learnt so much on the job, while doing this on social media and I tend to think most people who are good at most jobs tend to have worked from the bottom up. True wisdom and intelligence is to learn what to do and what not to do.”
Did anonymity help him? What happened when he emerged with his face?
“99% of the people are generous and lovely. I try my best to reply to everyone and the community really is lovely. You do get that one percent strange or aggressive commentors. I used to get a lot of those on my articles on Big Think. People would want to vent on my articles and would find my Instagram and comment negatively there. What I saw was that when you replied kindly or politely, within seconds most of the people would melt and say I’m really sorry. I’m sure you must have faced this in journalism as well, lot of people read an article and think of an organization, a faceless bureaucratic setup, they don’t see the person writing the article. When you reply as a person, the humanity comes out a little bit.”
“But I’m very block-happy,” he continues. “Life’s too short. Originally I wondered, am I violating my own principles of free speech? But then I said to myself, no. I’ve earned and built this platform here, and if people are going to use it to abuse each other or me – I’m not there for that.”
With a vibrant community centered around his Instagram, there’s a lot to be thankful for and Thomson agrees. “This is a good opportunity to be grateful for the community and the platform and the success,” he says, :The first thing is community. I’m meeting people from every walk of life, from almost every country in the world. They’ve got different point of views in philosophy, sometimes it’s very personal and refreshing. Quite recently someone shared a story about their grandmother who had Alzheimer’s and she passed away and it was really touching. And for whatever reason, people feel that they can talk to me, I wonder why that is. It's a phenomenon I witnessed at school when I was teaching, that when you discuss intellectual concepts in say an intellectually mature way, it elicits great emotion and people feel that they can unload and examine their lives. People often say that we wish there were more spaces in our lives to have these conversations, the deeper, meaningful, more important conversations. The second thing which I’m very grateful for, which is kind of selfish, is that I love learning about so many things here. There was a research that suggested that the act of teaching allows you to retain it better. Another aspect to that is when you talk about intellectual concepts, you elicit personal stories.”
As a purveyor of philosophy, what is Thomson’s take on how we’re all a part of the social media matrix now? Is it doing us more harm than good? “Social media is such a large category,” he answers. “Let’s say there’s a guy called Ron whose wife has just died and he’s at home, depressed and lonely. And he’s using social media to connect with his family and friends and he’s looking at photos of his grandkids. I don’t think anyone listening to that would say that’s a bad thing. Let’s say there’s Becky, a fifteen-year-old anorexic at school who’s looking at photos of people who are really skinny and are telling her to eat less. That’s obviously a problem. I honestly think that most people who are vaguely intelligent or clued up, know when they’re usign social media badly. When they’re looking at social media at 2 am rather than sleeping. I think social media, in the main, is good, as most technologies are. But they can be used for ill. There’s a recalibration period now, parents and schools are slightly more aware now.”
What would be the equivalent of social media in the days of yore, according to Thomson. What could we compare social media to, if we were to refer days when philosophy had just begun? “You know, Plato hated books,” Thomson says, “He thought books were the end of education. His thought was that books are essentially in a monologue form and they were the end of philosophy because philosophy was dialectic: a lot of back and forth, challenging, building, accepting, conversation. But given how social media works, how different ideas come together, Persepolis would be a great example, or Rome, hubs where people would come together and discuss ideas. These empires had great moments of cultural innovation – what Hegel talked about, the thesis, the anti-thesis and the synthesis. Having ideas to debate and then to agree upon, that’s essentially what social media also can be and what those places also were.”
What is Jonny working on now and what are the exciting ventures he is about to embark on? “There are so many avenues emerging,” he says. “I’ll be looking into a podcast and a book. I’m also seeing courses, long form videos where people can learn about concepts in a deeper way.”
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