A truth about the term "hot take" and the people who use it

Friday 8/7/26

It's impossible to think in conversational metrics of "hot takes" or preface any remark with the words "hot take" (which is akin to both a formal announcement of one's stupidity and that an example of this is now forthcoming) or use the term within a statement and not be a moron.

One can cease to be a moron if one wishes to make the effort, because being stupid, sounding stupid, and not thinking are usually a choice, even if the person is too stupid to understand the concept of their own agency and role in this matter, but the chances of this are very low, whereas the chances of getting angry ("FUCK YOU !!!) and doubling down in idiocy upon having born witness to the expression of this truth--like right now--are very high.

There's practical applicability in suggesting, "Redeem thyself, moron," and the moron could, but the moron would rather keep being the moron than a smarter person, which is within their control, even if being the moron that they are makes their life worse and the world as well, and the world for their children, etc.

Often, they will gripe about the very things that they have a role in helping to have created, and certainly to have helped keep going. But they'll never go, "Hot take: someone like me is a huge part of the whole devolution problem!"

Anyone who uses the term "hot take" at all also uses it over and over again, which is tantamount to repeatedly saying, "I'm an idiot, you know." And then you're like, "I got it." But they keep telling you anyway. It's tantamount to going all in on a massive marketing campaign--you know the kind; where you turn on the TV or go online and the ad is waiting there for you and subsequently finds you everywhere you turn in life--about how dumb you are. How uninteresting. Uncreative. Unoriginal. Indistinguishable. Clueless. Including even in terms of what you're actually putting out there about yourself and what that means, as well as whatever subject you're trying to speak on, which isn't even what you're truly trying to do.

"Hot take: Hear me out...George Harrison is a better guitarist than Eric Clapton."

You don't know anything about that subject, and you don't even know what knowledge and insight are conceptually, what they entail. If you knew what these things were, what it means to possess them, you wouldn't be playing around. They're just words to you, which you don't understand. So they're more like sounds with these associations. Kind of like how it works for your dog when you talk to it.

Nothing is serious to a person like this because they aren't a serious adult person. They're just playing around on a jungle gym rather than doing a thoughtful job occupying they world they're a part of. Giving it some spit and polish to help others appreciate and better understand the good things in it as well, and also identify the bad things that need to be seen for what they are so that they can be addressed, which itself requires language and thinking skills. That is, not being a moron who thinks and speaks in terms of "hot takes."

This isn't someone who has respect for what life can be. The precious things in life. Like truth. Beauty. Wonder. Depth. Substance. Realness. The power of an idea. When you don't understand the value of things, because you don't know anything, you've never been serious about learning, immersing yourself in that manner, moving past your screen in today's world, you aren't even aware of what you're trashing.

It's like people who make fun of things they can't understand. Like a "big" word. Maybe they mockingly use that word within their friend group, never mind that none of those of people in are actually friends. People use the announced hot take in similar fashion. There's less risk, in their minds, of having their paltry mental abilities judged because they've put it this way, the same as the person who mockingly says the big word does it in this affected language, because they don't even know if they're pronouncing it right but if they opt for this technique that can't be called out so readily as a boob.

It's a very insecure person who says "hot take." But they probably should be insecure, for the reasons we've been discussing. If you don't want to be smarter, and less insecure about your intelligence, your knowledge, the be smarter and learn more.

You can do it if you want. Learn something. Learn something else after. Stop saying "hot take." Use your words and your words alone. Work to find them. Don't rely on phrases other people say. Think before you speak or write. Think again. And then again. Speak and write to contribute in good faith.

And of course they keep telling their fellow idiots just what they are as part of that marketing campaign, with their comrades in idiot arms being too busy being idiots to know what is happening or what anything is, as they make the same idiot noises. Then it's just all the idiots going hot take hot take hot take hot hot take hot take hot take hot take.

Soon, this is the whole of society. That has already happened. We're well past that point now. Then there are no standards, the ceiling is the floor, the floor sinks deep into the muck, idiocy is rewarded because there's nothing else and someone has to be awarded/touted/celebrity-fied/hyped/made public, and there sure as hell aren't people who can discern what things are and discernment itself no longer exists. (Idiots reading this and insistent on that doubling-down thing of which we spoke above will declaim, "It's just two words asshole," to which I would say, 1. You need a comma before "asshole" and 2. This isn't just about two words, but a way of being, which is a way of not-being, which is a way of never-cogitating and simply taking up space and burning oxygen--to keep the "heat" theme going--as someone who opens the mouth that is more like an ass and speaks from it for the point of 1. Doing so to do so, which is to say, no viable reason at all 2. Getting attention which would be indiscernible anyway from all the other morons doing this very same thing and 3. Adding more babble to the grand idiot cacophony of babble.)

Take away the ability to discern, and nothing might as well have any meaning because its inherent, organic meaning can't be seen and understood, which means truth might as well not exist. And then it's all hot takes with everything being equally valid because, again, there are no standards, awareness, discernment, recognizable truths and realities. Nothing has meaning, it's all the same, and then it's just about what we want to call things and people, with all of that just being so much made up shit with no basis in what anything or anyone is.

(You see how I put the space before the exclamation points? They're that kind of people. That's how faithful my rendering was. Nice. Also: the people who first post an image of Norman Rockwell's Freedom of Speech--that's the one with the guy standing up while everyone else is sitting at the town hall meeting--before announcing that they are about to do a "hot take" and indirectly announcing their idiocy, are probably irredeemable.)