I don’t have to make a list of even a fraction of the truly, deeply serious things going on in the world. Everyone’s aware of Russia terrorizing Ukraine, the American West drying up, sequoias on fire, Trumpist grifters and idiots running for office, the daily mass shootings and on and on. All of it, really bad stuff.
But lately I’ve been amazed, or I should say re-amazed at stories we are all just as aware of … that I could not care less about … but still clog our common bandwidth. So as a therapeutic exercise, here’s a handful that bewilder/annoy me most.
1: Elon Musk v. Twitter: I accept that 2022’s professional media and pundit class has an umbilical attachment to Twitter. The platform’s offal doesn’t so much drip into their veins as it gushes in a way that makes everything require immediate attention and a “take” to sustain their relevancy. So when you add the world’s richest man, (who is an attention addict) and Twitter itself, god help the rest of us who couldn’t give a flying [bleep.]. Will he or won’t he … buy Twitter? Be sued by Twitter? Tweet again this morning? Not only don’t I care, I don’t need to know … which is why I don’t care. Nothing about it matters to me or 99% of the people I know. But Musk is rich, and because he’s rich he’s famous … and it includes Twitter right there in the headline. So everyone who thinks they’re someone has to talk about it.
2: Any and all, including the latest, super-hero movie: Ok, great, they put butts back in theater seats. So, being, you know, a business, Hollywood can’t snort enough of comic book heroes and villains. And it’s true, the paychecks for them for otherwise serious actors covers a lot of arty work they might want to do later. But Martin Scorsese (another old guy, like me) is dead-on right. These Marvel etc. movies are basically numbingly formulaic theme park rides designed as much to avoid pissing off Chinese censors as entertaining movie fans. That said, I red-lined the whole AvengerThorWakandaDr.StrangeSpidey universe years ago. Mainly because, in case you haven’t noticed, they’re all the same damn movie. So yeah ok, I’m a crank. But I did finally see the new “Top Gun” sequel … and sat looking around the theater wondering if everyone else noticed it was basically another re-fitting of the latest generation “Star Wars” movies? Only with 50 wide-screen Tom Cruise Superstar close-ups. Don’t care! Won’t be back! The Seven Story Archetypes have been reduced to two … or maybe one.
3: Foodie “journalism.” I like to eat. Believe me. You don’t get a body like this nibbling raw roots. But I don’t believe I’ve ever read an entire food “review”, if that’s what they’re called. I don’t doubt the talent of the myriad “celebrity chefs” regularly populating food-specific websites, so-called “lifestyle” publications and piling up atop each other on cable TV like pastrami on Katz Deli rye. But once you’ve worked inside the sausage factory of modern media and understand how absolutely essential restaurant advertising is to the aforementioned “journalism” you quickly learn to dismiss the hyperventilated excitement over so-and-so’s latest “award-winning” concept or the succulence of their Matsusaka beef. “Food journalism” is – to me, a crank, I think I mentioned that – a pervasive form of fan boy/girl PR flackery no different than the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, that sad collection of cat ladies and ponces who once staged the Golden Globes … solely for the checks they got from agents and TV networks.
4: The personal pro-noun thing. Because I want to be careful about this, I’m saying up front that anybody and everybody has the right to be called or “identify” as anything they want. I certainly don’t care. “He”, “she”, “it”, “non-binary humanoid #7”, whatever works for you. Go for it. Personally, I’m trying to get friends and family accustomed to “Hey, Serpent King” when asking me to pass the salt and pepper. My interest here is that this, which is attached to the “trans” rights movement, has become, “a thing”, as the kids say. In my liberal news bubble, sites like The Daily Beast, Salon, Jezebel crank out a story or three a day with some kind of trans or identifying angle. And it strikes me, a relic of the civil rights era, where blacks composed fully 13% of the population, as remarkable given that the trans community represents something between 1% and 5%. (Although, perhaps as proff of it’s “thing-ness” the number of adolescents identifying as “non-binary” has doubled in recent years.) In our hyper-personalized social media world, where everyone can curate an arresting, distinctive image for themselves, being anything other than merely “he” or “she” can seem irresistibly appealing. Again, I see no harm. But I just can’t help but wonder if come 2040 there won’t be a lot of looking back and seeing this pronoun revolution as “a ‘20s thing.”
5: The crypto frenzy. Not being particularly astute with money and investing, (I was the guy snorting when Google debuted at something like $100 a share), it’s not surprising I don’t get Bitcoin, Dogecoin and all the other Scamcoins currently out on the market. Not only does the whole enterprise walk and talk like a Ponzi scheme where “profits” depend on the chumps dragged in after the big boys, but I don’t understand what problem the whole concept is trying to solve. Regulated and insured banking?
Dividend-possible investing? But never mind me, when the likes of (Nobel Prize winning economist) Paul Krugman regularly rail against the underlying concept and the abundant frauds, and bona fide smart guys like Ezra Klein flat out admit, “I don’t get it”, I’m more convinced than ever that it’s all just another variation on tulips and collateralized debt obligations. The only real fascination I have is the psychology of crypto’s true believers. FWIW here is a link to a very educational conversation between Klein and crypto expert Dan Olson. And here’s a recent column by Charlie Warzel at The Atlantic. And a sample from Krugman.
Dear SK:
Writing as one curmudgeonly old white guy to another, you press a couple of my hot buttons (which feels kinda fizzy and makes my tummy feel weird) that require response. Well, “require” is probably not the right word unless it can be stretched to fit “a way to distract myself from actual work.”
In order:
Musk. Gotta admire the mind of a guy who has – in his lifetime – helped create PayPal, Tesla, SpaceX, The Boring Company and the one where he wants to put chips in our heads. Clearly brilliant. Yet, the more I know about him personally, the more worried I am that the richest man in the word has a genius-level IQ and the emotional maturity of a three-year old. Gonna hesitate – for at least a minute or two – before I sign up to have one of this guy’s chip’s implanted.
Unless there’s a really good introductory offer.
Twitter. If there was an alien species surreptitiously trying to destroy humanity – cue every dystopian alien invasion flick ever – they’d be hard pressed to come up with a more cost-effective way to do it than force us to communicate with one another in 280-character chunks with a feedback loop that rewards the fastest and snarkiest communicators and reduces even the most complex issues to binary good/bad choices. At the rate we’re going, Twitter and its copycats (InstaTikSnapReal whatever) reduced to herd animals by 2050 or so, making the alien’s goal of harvesting our pineal glands or whatever they’re after so much easier. I support whichever trillionaire wants to buy it and shut it down.
Marvel movies: Yes, they are like the invasive species that take over an environment and force out the native plants, but done well – which some aren’t – they’re two hours of mindless entertainment where the good ‘uns beat the bad ‘uns and that works for me. I don’t go to the movies for transcendent art or deep thoughts – I buy those on Amazon and they’re usually on my porch the next day – I go because they’re fun. And, there is still some room for the interesting stuff. I’m looking forward to seeing “Nope” for example. I realize you film snobs do things like “experience Bergman in the original 35-millimeter black-and-white format he intended” and are moved by “the subtle references to Kurosawa that discerning students of the art will appreciate” but mostly that stuff puts me to sleep. Not saying that’s a bad thing, I love a good nap.
C’mon, let’s go see the latest Thor flick together. You’d do it for Randolph Scott.
Foodie journalism. Kind of like my low-brow consumption of movies, I love an article that tells me the ten best burgers in the Twin Cities, where the new BBQ joint is and a round up of food trucks. I even like recipe articles. Like you, I didn’t get this body by reading about food.
What I have zero interest in is reading about the latest trends in foaming, microflora, using liquid nitrogen or how plating is now an entire semester at Johnson & Wales. Ditto for nearly every kind of food porn – there are entire channels devoted to it – and celebrity chef hagiographies (many of which become embarrassing to the author later when it turns out that chefs are human and do the same stupid human tricks as the rest of us).
Pronouns. I’m with you, this seems like a bit of a fad but I’m 100 percent in favor of “you do you” here so if your you is choosing your pronouns – or inventing new ones – go for it. I will do my best to remember them and use them, but my 60+ year-old brain has six decades of training and reinforcement to overcome here so I won’t be perfect.
But, parenthetically, as someone who writes for a living, I cannot tell you how much better it is to be able to use “they” as a singular pronoun rather that the always-awkward “he or she” kind of construction.
Crypto. On the one hand, I wish some client five years ago had offered me Bitcoin for some small job and I’d been curious enough to take it; I’d be writing this from my personal aircraft carrier instead of my kitchen. On the other, as the amazing run up in value and subsequent partial collapse in prices suggests, a lot of people are exactly like you (and me) who don’t really understand how blockchains and the other underlying tech works and can’t rationally value the currency. The result, as you say, feels a lot like a Ponzi scheme where the only guys getting rich are the ones who got in early and then got out when the sucker crowd showed up.
OK, I’ve procrastinated long enough, shit needs doing. Carry on Serpent King.
Well, clearly there’s a lot of therapy needed here. My first recommendation is that you be taken to the old Bell Museum, strapped into a cramped, unpadded seat in the middle of a crowded row, denied popcorn and forced to watch at least three consecutive early Bergman films … in scratchy 16mm, not 35, and with garbled soundtracks and mis-translated subtitles. Only then will you appreciate snob-level artistry as opposed to the China censor kowtowing of the next “Thor: Aryan Savage of Valhalla” saga. As for food, I rely on the recommedations of my chow-obsessed cronies. The kind who rush out to every new Filipino-Aztec-Slovak fusion joint on Central Ave. I do not trust the lamestream media to recommend decent burgers. But tell me, that Revival smoked meat place off 46th and Nicollet? Yea or nay?
Hoo-boy. You’ve opened my Pandora’s Box of Pet Peeves.
Ditto on everything you mentioned. Thank you. A big load off my chest.
1. The way millennials and others use the word Perfect. As an example, you’re on the phone with your insurance company, internet provider, at a coffee bar or just about anywhere, and after you give your name they answer “Perfect!”
Talking to myself “Of course it’s perfect you nit-wit it’s my name!” and then they do it again for your birthday, your phone number, the number on your policy, etc.
I am answering that with Moron, Imbecile, Mouth-Breather, DummerThanABagOfHammers, etc.
Curate. I like the way you used curate.
I got a newsletter the other day that declared that “these articles were curated by our staff.”
I once saw an ad for a roommate service in New York that claimed to have “curated a group of roommate candidates.”
Ridiculous. Curate should only be used to descibe curators who went to college to study to be a curator. Of art.
Bill Slettom
Truth or Consequences, New Mexico
Yes, that is a real place.
Bill: Been through T&C. I’ve curated a number of favorite spots in New Mexico. Gila National Forest. That weird Bisti/De-Na-Zin Wilderness up by Farmington. White Sands, (of course.) Silver City. All of them … “perfect!”
Oh, come on….weren’t you the least bit titillated to read that ol’ Elon had schtupped Sergey Brin’s wife?
There are gals who give it away like gummint cheese and then there are gals who like their, um, suitors “bona fide.”
Not easy to keep a level head these days, Brian, but thanks for the whiff of rationality you’ve offered. I’ve been told there was a Greek proverb that asserted, “whom the gods would destroy, they first drive mad.” I recommend the concluding volume of Will and Ariel Durant’s “History of Civilization” series–The Lessons of History, is the title. Although the authors concede “History is so indifferently rich that a case for almost any conclusion from it can be made by a selection of instances.”
I am now officially out of “rational.” Back to raging grievances!