We are all living in a multiverse.

That was once science fiction, something for Doctor Strange and his Marvel Cinematic Universe colleagues to navigate. But somewhere along the way, this has become our civic reality: Different versions of the same moment, unfolding simultaneously, depending on which dimension — er, media ecosystem — you happen to occupy.

Today, events don’t just happen. They take on entirely different meanings. The footage is the same; the facts may be consistent. But the story you see depends on where you’re standing, and which version of reality has been built around you. 

Our modern information systems have fully merged with our belief systems, and they feed each other constantly. 

Today, as in decades past, the media is usually the first to tell us what is happening. Unlike in decades past, now there are instant narratives across a constellation of platforms, locking in on what the event means, whom to trust, what to fear, and what to dismiss. This happens primarily online, but it’s also found across talk radio, podcasts, cable news, streaming platforms, and a growing number of corporate journalism outlets. For the average American, it can feel like stepping through a portal and finding the laws of physics have completely changed; once you get used to your version of the truth, other realities feel foreign, disorienting, even impossible.

Which leads us back to a deeper question about civic life that has been on our minds: Have there ever really only been two sides to every story? Or was that just the understanding we employed back when the conversation was smaller and slower, when media gatekeepers still could distill a nation’s complexity into a single evening broadcast?

Because now that we can talk to everyone (and be talked to by everyone), it seems that nearly everything can and inevitably will have dozens of sides, hundreds of angles, and infinite interpretations. Which is not entirely bad, mind you – in a pluralistic democracy, it makes sense that people experience the world differently, and share their experiences and contexts with larger narratives.

But what happens when those different meanings become so self-contained that we stop even trying to understand one another? That’s what we’re concerned with today, as examples from our own American “multiverse” constantly stream through our national dialogue and influence how we live, interact, show up, advocate, and vote.

Martyr or menace?

Last December, Luigi Mangione shot and killed an unarmed man in Pittsburgh. The man he killed, Brian Thompson, was the CEO of an insurance company that had denied a claim filed by Mangione’s family. To some, this was the desperate act of a working-class man pushed to the brink – his violence interpreted as a symptom of economic injustice, unchecked corporate power, and institutional indifference.

Others saw a man who had absorbed too much anger, who turned personal grievance into justification for murder, with the act framed not as desperation but as dangerous escalation. Still others noted how quickly Mangione’s story was abstracted and rebranded, stripped of its specificity and reshaped to fit broader cultural scripts. Within hours, message boards, commentary threads, and even cable segments recast the incident according to what those respective outlets seemed to want to confirm. As bad-faith actors amplified and distorted those interpretations, the shooting became less about what occurred and more about what people needed it to mean.

A tragedy refracted through ideology

In July, catastrophic floods killed more than 130 people in central Texas, including dozens of girls and counselors at Camp Mystic. Some interpreted the disaster as a preventable failure, pointing to public-sector understaffing, delayed alerts, and gaps in emergency coordination. Others framed it as another painful chapter in the story of a changing climate, worsened by unchecked development and weakened infrastructure. In communities closest to the devastation, the focus was on mourning and survival: volunteers in boats rescuing neighbors, churches and schools opening their doors, and families clinging to one another. 

But not all reactions were humane. Some observers, far removed from the grief, treated the tragedy as political currency, cruelly suggesting that the community had brought the suffering upon itself through prior voting choices. The same tactic played out in reverse during California’s wildfires or blackouts in the Northeast. When bad-faith voices weaponize these moments, they deepen the chasm between those simply trying to survive and those performing certainty.

Denim, discourse, and distortion

A recent ad campaign featuring Sydney Sweeney, set to nostalgic Americana aesthetics and the tagline Good Genes, quickly became a flashpoint. Some saw it as a well-styled nod to vintage branding, an innocuous commercial moment designed to evoke a simpler time. Others argued the language and imagery tapped into deeper, uncomfortable histories: eugenics-era messaging, whiteness as aesthetic default, and beauty as a coded hierarchy. 

Still others simply shrugged, confused by the backlash or skeptical of the claim that an ad for jeans could carry such weight. But as the discourse accelerated, more deliberate misuses of the ad emerged. Fringe networks repurposed it as a kind of cultural banner, claiming it as a rejection of progress, an ideal to be preserved. Like the other examples, the ad became less about what it was and more about what it could be made to signify. It functioned less as a product pitch and more as a mirror, reflecting back each viewer’s cultural assumptions, biases, and hopes.

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In the face of this kind of narrative fragmentation, a concept like bothsidesism — which, not long ago, was the primary rhetorical culprit in our national discussion — now feels almost quaint. At least bothsidesism presumed a shared reality; today’s challenge, by contrast, is a breakdown in what the sides even are, and whether those on the “other side” exist in a reality close enough to engage.

So here we are: living side-by-side, but also living in alternate timelines. In Marvel’s multiverse, dimension-hopping heroes can find points of connection across timelines, but in our world, the task is harder. There are no portals, just the slow work of conversation, curiosity, and listening long enough to hear what someone else’s world is made of.

To return to consensus reality, we’ll first have to get past the idea that instant opinions have outsized value simply because they were first. Similarly, we need to quell the notion that the loudest voice in an “attention economy” always wins. Patience, humility, and a shared commitment to naming reality, not only for ourselves, but alongside others, is a path to shared clarity.

A modern, robust democracy requires shared understanding. Not lockstep agreement or conformity – but a shared view of reality itself. When we lose that, we lose all possibility of consensus and common cause. In 2025 and beyond, we are all called to keep building back toward a semblance of shared meaning. Because if we simply concede that everything now means whatever each of us wants it to, then we risk democracy meaning nothing at all.