Reality is Just Another Thing we Consume
Social media dictates our news-as-personal-brand.
Marjorie Taylor Greene is a lumbering idiot who embodies the personality of everyone who has ever been kicked out of a Best Buy. I apologize for soiling the immaculate dignity of This Is A Newsletter! by mentioning her name, but her constant rants about how America will eventually, inevitably descend into a second Civil War is a recurring thought in my diseased and busted head. This titillating foreboding is the outcome of a longstanding and apparently incurable case of Internet Brain, and this is a prophecy I do not subscribe to; after all, civil wars are bloody and brutal and time-consuming, and the NFL is on Sundays. The real national divorce will be more baffling and strange, two perfectly parallel economies that will reduce self-expression to performative, politicized acts of consumption—and the things being consumed are, both in form and content, not just unsatisfying, but the product of an immense disdain for the very idea of satisfaction. All of it will plop out of a singular horrifying hog shoot, like how Goop and Alex Jones are peddling the same wellness bullshit.
All of this is crystallized in the different ways in which every social media website handles breaking news and curates our own realities. Imagine a worker in a food processing plant in Ohio was buried under a mountain of frozen chicken tenders after the conveyor belt malfunctioned, and it’s an hours-long saga to rescue him.
Twitter (X):
“Hi, supply chain expert here. I have 10 years of experience studying factory conveyor belts and best practices in handling food disasters. I can help you make some sense of what’s going on in Ohio. Here’s a thread.”
You click on the thread and see it’s 35 tweets long, and you’re like, “Absolutely not reading that.”
Instagram:
You see a post from someone you went to college with:
“Just hearing about what’s happening in Ohio. Feels like yesterday when I was there getting my bachelor’s of hospitality and hanging with my sisters at Delta Gamma. Solidarity with #TendyGuy.”
You then realize this is a nine-photo album of her partying at Ohio State football pregames. Maybe this helps?
TikTok:
TikTok will be saturated with the darkest comedy imaginable.
“Ohio Guys when they see a chicken sandwich.” Then, there’s audio clipped out of context that says, “I’d like to be trapped inside.”
All the comments are, “BROOOOOO NOOOOOOO.”
Facebook:
When they aren’t hoising some confounding eagle-strewn meme, a horde of seething and lonesome boomers will post something like:
“Yet another atrocity under Biden’s watch. Why aren’t we doing more to help Tendy Guy? #BidensChickenTendies”
Their audience of sighing nieces and cringing grandkids will mute them for their lastest crime against the timeline.
Reddit:
One of the highest upvoted posts under the “Hot” tab will include a sourced article explaining the “chicken tendy mountain” situation, and the top comment will be, “I bet Elon Musk could get to him with his Boring Company.”
Someone, somewhere, further down the comment section will be blazing Tendy Guy or chastising his parents.
New York Times:
You’ll read an op-ed healine that says:
“I was a Democrat. And then Tendy Guy Happened.”
YouTube:
If you’ve ever watched one politics-related video on YouTube, the algorthm will absolutely spam your queue with pundits who have takes that are somehow both repulsive and boring.
Right-wing video essay response to Tendy Guy: “How to make ANTI-WOKE chicken tendies with FREEDOM batter that will DESTROY libtard SJWs.”
Left-wing video essay response to Tendy Guy: “Why making chicken nuggies is emblematic of post-colonial capitalist commodification, explained. Here’s a plant-based farm-to-table option instead.”
Even if you escape the thralls of the YouTube algorithm, you’ll see irredeemably internet-brained communist cosplayers you knew from a Critical Theory 101 class share a link to the video with a post that says:
“Grubbing on chicken tendies—especially with a side of fries and orange dipping sauce—makes you part of an oppressive bourgeoisie that genderizes normative eating patterns. Under our neoliberal hellscape, according to materialist and Hegelian dialectics, this makes you a mansplaining and manspreading post-neo-proto-fascist.”
Once I scroll through this riffraff, I stroll to the nearest body of water and see how many skips I can get if I chuck my iPhone.
You write like an angry dissent preacher and I love it.
Grim.
But serious question from a middle-aged dad: how many people are actually terminally online, and have rotten brains? We're all a product of our surroundings, and while my current surroundings are suboptimal in terms of high culture (or any culture), I really don't come across many people who are half as clued in as me, and I'm maybe sixtieth percentile, at best.
Like, I get everything you're laying down above -- ephemerally -- but I actually participate in none of it. Am I an exception?