MJ MURPHY: The Spiral of Silence. "Nobody knows what the public actually believes anymore because people stop expressing what they think. They start expressing what feels safe."

The Spiral of Silence pic.twitter.com/D436q2dMS0

— MJ Murphy (@hothingsgirlsay) June 10, 2026

The spiral of Silence: why people stop talking.  I want to talk about one of the most important psychological phenomenon in modern society, and it's called the Spiral of Silence.  And if you've never heard of it, I think it explains a lot about what's happening right now.  Most people assume that when a lot of people are publicly saying the same thing it means everyone agrees.  Not necessarily.  Sometimes it means everyone is watching what happens to people who disagree.  Imagine you're standing in a field, okay.  And the first person who stands up gets shot.  The second person who stands up gets shot. The third person who stands up get shot.  Pretty soon everyone else stays down.  Not because they agree because they learned right they learned and the thing is it's not even a Battlefield it's a parking lot in broad daylight.  Everyone is watching from their car windows, and every time someone gets publicly punished thousands of people silently absorbed the same lesson.  Don't be next.  Human beings are social creatures.  We fear social isolation.  We fear ridicule. We fear rejection.  We fear losing our jobs.  We fear losing our reputations, and, most of all, we fear becoming the next example.  That's the spiral of Silence.  The punishment doesn't have to happen to you.  You just have to watch it happen to someone else. Think about the message people receive.  JK Rowling, she expresses concerns about women's rights and sex-based spaces and she becomes one of the most vilified women on earth.  Kathleen stock raises philosophical questions about sex and gender and faces years of protests, pressure campaigns, and ultimately she leaves her University position.  Graham Linehan loses professional opportunities, friendships, and much of his public career over his views.  Q Raleigh Smith questions fairness and safety in women's sport and spends years, she still is, fighting legal battles and raising money to defend herself. Women in prisons complain about sharing intimate spaces with male inmates and they face punishment, solitary confinement, extra years.  Female athletes who object to males competing in their sports are told to stay quiet accept it or leave. Girls who object to males in their locker rooms are portrayed as the problem and it isn't just public figures imagine a mother goes to a school board meeting she asks why her daughter has to share a changing room with a male student?  By the time she gets home people are calling her a bigot online local Facebook groups are talking about her.  People she's known for years are discussing her.  She never speaks at another meeting again.  Nobody hears from her.  But she didn't change her mind, right, she just learned the cost of saying it out loud, and so did everyone else watching: nurses, teachers, parents, academics, journalists, and ordinary citizens watch all of this happen.  And what lesson do we learn?  Not let's have an open discussion.  No, the lesson is what?  The lesson is be careful.  Just before filming this video I was talking to my parents, and you know what they asked me?  Do you know what they asked me?  They didn't ask whether my arguments were strong, how many new followers I have .  They didn't ask whether I was factually correct.  They asked, "You're not going to get hurt, are you?"  Think about that.  That question tells you everything.  People aren't afraid because they lack opinions.  They are afraid because they understand consequences.  Most people have mortgages, children, jobs, careers, professional licenses, businesses reputations.  They cannot afford to become the next example.  And that's what makes the spiral of Silence so powerful, because once enough people become afraid to speak silence starts looking like agreement.  The public sees silence and assumes consensus the consensus appears larger than it really is.  More people become afraid to speak and the spiral tightens.  Researchers repeatedly found that people are less willing to express opinions when they believe those opinions are socially unpopular.  Not necessarily wrong, socially unpopular. People self-censor too to avoid isolation, to avoid ridicule, to avoid punishment, to avoid becoming a target.  That's normal.  That's normal human behavior.  In fact, one of the most famous conformity experiments ever conducted showed people would knowingly give obviously wrong answers simply because everyone around them was doing it. Participants were shown a line, then three comparison lines.  The answer was obvious, so obvious a child could get it right, and yet many people still gave the wrong answer. Not because they couldn't see.  Not because they were confused.  Not because they were stupid, because standing alone in a room full of people nodding takes courage.  Now imagine that pressure attached to your job, your income, your family, your social life, your professional reputation.  That's not a debate.  That's a survival calculation.  That's conditioning.  And once people become conditioned enough, something remarkable happens. Nobody knows what the public actually believes anymore because people stop expressing what they think.  They start expressing what feels safe.  History is full of moments where everyone supposedly agreed moments where the consensus looks total permanent unshakable right up until it collapsed because it was never really consensus.  It was the silence holding.  That's why I pay very close attention whenever I hear, 

"Everyone agrees."  

"Nobody believes that anymore."  

"The debate is settled.  Only extremists think that."

Maybe.  Or maybe you're hearing the spiral of Silence because silence is not the same thing as agreement. It's not the same thing as consent.  And if enough people are afraid to speak honestly eventually nobody knows what everyone really thinks not even the people enforcing the silence.  And that's dangerous. Because reality doesn't care about social pressure.  Reality doesn't care about popularity.  Reality remains reality whether people are willing to say it out loud or not.  So the next time you hear someone say, "Everyone agrees," ask yourself one question, "Do they?"  Or are people simply afraid to disagree because those are two very different things and understanding the difference is how the spell begins to break.