Monday 5/27/24
The Minnesota Timberwolves and Anthony Edwards were getting hyped, weren't they? Look out NBA! Anthony Edwards is Michael Jordan--or at least Kobe Bryant--redux! (Yes, I know, people who make these claims don't know that word. We're not going for a literal transcription here.)
People don't say things because they're coming from a place of knowledge or they have experience with the relevant subject or because they're processing information or observing well or because they're applying reason.
They say things to say them. The point for people when they say anything is the action of the saying. With the action, they want attention. For the action--not the content. For me, what I say is about where I end up, the finished product--the words as truth, and/or that which offers insight, causes one to know or to think. Or to laugh. But also to know or think then, too.
I'm virtually alone in operating this way. People also want to say what many others are saying, often in the same language. Regarding the latter, they usually don't have a choice, because their language skills, after living this way for as long as they have--if we're going to call it living--are nonexistent. People can't talk. Talking heads on the radio, on podcasts, in the media, can't talk. They repeat. A parrot can repeat, but a parrot isn't really talking. That is, if you say, "Hey, Parrot, what do you think about Kant's categorial imperative?" the parrot can't go, "I think he was correct in principle, but the worldly application of his ideas are impractical at best."
The parrot is just going to say, "What do you think about Kant's categorial imperative?"
No one thinks. If people think at all, it's about what they're going to say next to try and get attention because they are starved for it on account of how dead they are inside. Think of modern business this way: It's all about getting attention. I don't mean getting the word out, though that's important for anyone in any kind of business. I mean that the attention seeking is the business. The product made or the service offered isn't the business. The goods, whatever form they may be. The goods are valueless and do nothing for anyone. People aren't buying or consuming the goods--they're buying or consuming someone's attempts to get attention. Consider Amanda Gorman. You think anyone actually reads Amanda Gorman's clangorous sub-middle school tripe? Of course they don't. Her business and business model is the on-view seeking of attention.
So when people have a financially successful podcast where they make millions of dollars and yet are no more interesting or insightful or entertaining than your Uber driver was last night, it's due to the affiliation--the name of the company.
For example: a Barstool podcast. The quality is no higher than the talk you'd get in a high school sports locker room. It's the affiliation, the name, and the stupidity, because people are stupid, and they're also insecure. They think they could do that podcast themselves, and get that money, and that adulation, and they could--in theory.
They're not wrong about that. Any idiot knowing the right people could do it. Just like any idiot without any manners and having checked the right boxes and being an over-loud, brainless, arrogant blowhard could be Stephen A. Smith. It just happened that that over-loud, brainless, box-checking, arrogant blowhard's number came up. He got bingo, and when you get bingo, you get the gig. As a narcissistic moron, he thought it was because of him being special in some way (or every which way). And given that people are base, unthinking, and lacking in self-awareness, they become worse and worse and worse with power and stature and money, and more arrogant, and more delusional, more narcissistic, louder, more demanding, etc. The act becomes even more shrill, even more this flailing, writhing dance-for-attention, and it pays out more in turn. Others see this, and emulate. Become this way. Become more this way. This is how the market gets set. There's no talent pool of available people who act differently and offer more.
But that's all it is. It's not ability. It's not about being interesting, entertaining, funny, insightful, correct. Talent is virtually obsolete. If there's a talent right now in this world, it's for who can be seen to be seeking the most attention for nothing special, that no one needs, that no one really likes. We're even losing the ability to like things. That's being replaced--has almost entirely been replaced--by consuming to consume instead.
Better still if the person doing the consuming can say, "I could do that." If a person can't do it, or come close to doing it, they're apt to feel more insecure. People aren't looking to spend money or time on feeling even more insecure and inadequate than they already do. So people prefer to surround themselves with shit that they don't even like and that no one actually likes. Business right now--especially with anything involving words--is about being that shit.
A result is that everyone does it this way, and no one can do it any other way if they wanted to, because the necessary skills--and not just talent, but other things like commitment, effort, forbearance, faith, strength--cease to exist. We lose them, such that they're not even vestigially detected. Sayonara, skills. Then you just have people who are the same, saying the same things, down in the same oozing muck. Among those people, some are picked to fill slots, because the slots need to be filled. How do they get picked? Money, connection, nepotism, box checking. That's the selection process, insofar as there is one, which there isn't if we're talking merit-based vetting. Because there's no separation from one person to any other. And if somehow there is, that's a huge problem. It upsets the proverbial apple cart, and causes fear, that greater insecurity we were talking about, envy, animus. For good qualities. For the production of things of actual value, which stand apart and which people would truly love and want to have in their lives, allowing that they could be okay with the knowledge that they could not do those things. How could that happen? If they saw a lot of other people being okay with it. But then you're trying to get the cart moving by putting it in front of the horse, which is a tricky thing to figure out.
