About a year ago, I was listening to Conner Habib’s podcast, which is full of great interviews and thoughts.
He mentioned that he was disturbed by Twitter-speak, the sameness of it. “You hate to see it,” and “having a normal one” come to mind as phrases that are repeated over and over again.
Conner suggested that this sort of mimicry had its roots in an Anthroposophical struggle between good and evil that I don’t fully understand, but regardless, I think he was dead on in calling this one. The repetition of form that people tend to do on Twitter, whether it’s attempting to ride a meme wave or structuring critique as shitty sarcasm, is directly causing people to grow worms in their brains. It’s shutting off the ability to think critically by recognizing words or formations of words and immediately associating them with a pre-made Socratic dialogue you’ve had implanted in your brain. If someone says X, I respond with Y. It isn’t conducive to thinking new thoughts, and frankly, it can turn people into really nasty little monsters.
How do we combat this? According to Conner, try talking in a way that no one else does. Use strange words, impressionistic speech, and all around weirdness to break out of the mimetic trap that we’re in. But whatever you do, don’t ride the way. Even if you have a banger tweet in mind…let it die on the vine. Think about what you might be feeding otherwise.
The kid is currently in his carrier strapped to my chest. All morning he has been a fussy bear. He’s currently wailing as I type this, so I’m going to cut this one a little short and, I don’t know, play with toys or some shit.
Have a good one!
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