Quality over quantity

As hard as it may be to believe given my recent blog posts, I enjoy a good laugh. My reels often include stand-up comics telling pieces of jokes, encouraging me to follow their page and come see them live. I listened to a great setup about the Epstein files from a comedian named Jordan Jenson. I did not like her page even though I did like her comedy because on principle I don’t suffer social media fools. It’s a self-punishing boycott, really.

The reason I liked her joke so much was because it poked fun at all of us sitting in our armchairs feverishly anticipating evidence of terrible crimes perpetrated against vulnerable children. We all want to find horror in those files because we hope the men we hate have done something heinous, so our hatred is justified. It’s kind of f*cked up when you think about it. That’s what made it a great joke. There are a lot of jokes on the internet that are really veiled hopes that something horrendous will occur. I wonder how much sway these kinds of thoughts have in our collective manifestation. Can we give him dementia if enough of us make it the punchline? It seems like people are rooting for our president to fall asleep during his cabinet meeting just so they can say I told you he would. Do we want a functioning country? Or do we want to be right about the guy in charge being awful for the job?

Many years ago, my brother-in-law got married to a woman from another country who he had been talking to online for only a few months. Her first visit to the U.S. was to attend her own wedding. The rest of the family (the ones who would talk about it anyway) had concerns, but we decided that since they made the commitment, the best course of action for us was to support the marriage in whatever way we could. After the vows were exchanged, the time for objections had passed. This is the way I view the presidency. This is the guy were married to and we need to make it work. Once the train you’re riding has left the station, it’s best not to root for the wheels to fall off. Is that too many metaphors? However, my brother-in-law and his wife did split up, so thinking optimistically about their marriage didn’t help as much as I would have liked it to.

I have my complaints about The Administration, the same as any democracy loving American. I try to keep my focus on the big picture stuff; the wild xenophobia, war crimes, and the fleecing of taxpayers. I don’t really give a f*ck if he uses colorful language to address the press corps. It’s embarrassing, but only for him. Focusing on the petty sh*t he does to rile everyone up is exactly what he wants to happen. In my opinion, if he calls you a piggy, it’s because you asked a great question that he didn’t know how to answer. The best course of action there is to ignore the insult and ask it again. This time point out how cowardly it is to avoid it. No one wants to be seen as a coward. That’s what motivates them to give away more of their game. He wants you to know how brave Daddy is being for those of us with reason to live in fear. He’s dying to reveal who he’s been fighting.

Do you think someone took a swing at Elon?

I avoid a lot of media because of the circus it has become. I am turned off by the salacious presentation of this week’s erosion of constitutional norms. “You’ll never believe what they did now!” is teased ahead of a commercial break to keep me hooked by my attention, only to find the story is about the separation of powers being further blended and my country becoming unrecognizable. I wait for the conversation to become what this means for America. What does it mean for the executive branch to start a war without the support of congress, but that conversation never comes, we move on to the next story that I will “never believe” as they still use the word “President” to define him. I understand that our problem is bigger than one man.

A lot of my time spent with media is spent contemplating what has happened to my country. I ache over the pain and strife caused by cartoon men who care only about having the most things with their name on it. I think about how our media may be the change we are not accounting for when we are measuring how this could have happened.

Other than the PBS News Hour, I stick with media that is some form of audio; music, podcasts, and the very occasional audiobook. (I prefer to read books IRL.) Most of the podcasts I listen to are people trying to figure out the world by analyzing it. I feel a kinship with these kinds of people. I, too, think that if we could pin down a logical explanation for our problems, we’d be on our way toward solving them. I crave the thinking space. I am intrinsically curious about the way our systems interact. But, there is a storm inside myself when I listen to podcasts like Hidden Brain, or Plain English. On one hand, I relish the insights into my own logical and behavioral flaws—What might I be doing, saying, or thinking wrong? I find myself wanting to course correct to be ever more moral and productive. And on the other hand I think, Do I need to be this well-informed about every issue to earn my existence? Aren’t I okay as I am? I resent the push toward optimization as I am plagued by being never enough. I do enjoy The Grey Area, it presents the issues just as the name suggests. I end that one with more questions than answers.

I appreciate these podcasts because they discuss the big ideas that I think we need to spend time with to improve our situation, but I often feel like they expect me to do something. It’s something other than what I am already doing, and I’m not sure what. Occasionally, I’ll finish listening, and think I’ve “done good” in the eyes of the almighty podcast and am rewarded with a perceived step forward in life. I don’t struggle with issues of rage, for example. The level of rage I feel is on par. If I listen to a podcast about anger, I can think– I’m all set there. I am handling my anger well. But if I listen to one on addiction, I refract every word to avoid the shame. And if I listen to an episode about some ailing part of society, I panic. How can I help the education system battle screen addiction and teach math more effectively? What can I personally do to save us… that I can afford? Still I prefer this type of media that engages my thinking brain and not my monkey mind. I don’t spend time on social media for that reason. It feels like I am being played. It’s the tease before the ad break x1000 and everyone has a chance to profit through participation. Even the man himself.

Maybe we need a new word for social media that means cultural persuasion technique. Every time you consume media you are opening yourself to a change in perspective. One must be mindful of who you are open to, and we might not always have choice in the matter. At least not in the way we think. In an endless scroll of discordant content, I find myself wondering what my data says about me. What makes the algorithm think I will like this otter video? I mean… I do, but where is it getting that from in my larger data set? Are there thousands (millions?) of other middle-aged moms out there overlapping with enough of my clicks and swipes that the algorithm thought a like for this otter video was a safe bet? That assumes the algorithms goal is to keep me entertained. What if the algorithms goal was something else—otter habitat conservation, for example. What if the algorithm’s goal was to champion a cause? Could one well-timed video change my behavior? Is there anyway for me prevent that once I’ve seen it? That’s a lot of power.

The algorithm’s actual goal in most cases is to keep me engaged with the algorithm itself. I’m not interested in that, personally. I don’t find value in engaging with media just so it can get a better read on my behavioral patterns. I prefer to keep my humanity among humans. I don’t like or share the news stories that circulate on social media because they aren’t stories at all. They’re bait.

Remember when that guy passed out in his office and the story was that he stood awkwardly behind his desk? Was the guy okay?  

It seems to me that we struggle to stay with the problem because we are distracted by the next headline. We’re compulsively refreshing our feeds to keep pace with the country’s destruction. The substantive conversation required to stop it is nonexistent because we wouldn’t linger long enough to absorb it. Is that due to a FOMO panic or our truncated attention span? Does it matter? What does matter is where we choose to focus.