As someone whose career involves having to stay up to date with the news and political discourse (two of the worst things to pay attention to if you want to maintain any semblance of ok mental health) and make biting jokes about them to varying degrees of quality (something where I can say the mental health pain is actually just part of my *CREATIVE PROCESS*) , there is one problem in the world that I am sick of and also very much take part in professionally…
There is too much noise online and collectively it’s all our faults.
I mean like kind of, since we are all just slaves to algorithms controlled by big tech who learned years ago that if they make us angry and depressed all the time we scroll more meaning we see more ads and if they incentivise hot takes by pushing them to people who will both love/hate them, we get that anger boost but also get a dopamine rush making us crave the computer given praise and feeling of acceptance.
But for the sake of this post, let’s just pretend it’s all our faults because we aren’t the billionaire megalomaniac supervillains who found ways to monetize and gamify human interactions, so the only change we can make is within our selves.
We are all constantly pushed to either be super ‘engaged’ in discourse (yuck) or be fully disconnected from any of it (aka be happy), but if you are reading this, my bet is that you are closer to the former than the latter.
And yes, I know being vocal and active in discourse is important for change to happen and blah blah blah, again I do this for a living, clearly if I thought this was all a full waste of time I wouldn’t be putting myself through discourse. I am in this hell because I understand the importance.
Being ‘vocal’ doesn’t mean you always need a hot take, often it actually needs the opposite.
Hot takes are usually completely void of any of the much needed nuance for actual change to occur. Nor do they usually change minds or ‘start quality discussions’ that people always claim to be after but never seem to actually want to take part in.
Sometimes (well actually like 95% of the time) it’s better to not force yourself to come up with a unique take at all.
Fun Fact: Most fields actually have these things called ‘experts’ who dedicate their lives to coming up with reasonable takes, you can just listen to and elevate them instead of constantly needing to have your own unique perspective.
With each hot take in this commodified game of fighting for justice, moral superiority or human connection in a desperate bid to try make the horrible world a slightly better place, comes a need to one up previous hot takes with hotter takes.
Then hotter takes need to come after that and soon the takes are all so hot that we are all burned by the noise of everyone screaming at each other online in a way that means the most normal ‘room temperature’ take that wouldn’t raise an eyebrow in real life conversation is treated like you just committed a hate crime against every single person who read it.
Although, of course that isn’t a one-to-one comparison since if you did actually commit a hate crime, there would be some people defending you with hot takes.
Then you get locked into arguments with people who will never agree with you but are pretending they are open to change so that they look better if they screen shot it to send to a group chat to show off how they either dunked on someone or are being annoyed by someone.
But instead of just going “I’m no expert on this, you aren’t either, here is what experts are saying so I don’t know, I am going with that”, you both ‘debate’ until your followers either back you up, scroll on or are annoyed cause you are engaged in one of thousands of arguments they need to scroll past to find a meme that makes them smirk and breath out heavily to, which they will send to their friends claiming they laughed out loud. Similar to when a cat drags in a dead bird for their owner.
But, this cycle of hell isn’t something we are doomed to, nor is it something you are doomed to having to actively pour oil on while claiming to be trying to put it out.
You see, in news that may shock anyone who has a substack account, you can and should sometimes step back and touch grass.
I don’t mean that in the ‘you’re crazy’ way, as again that would just make me a massive hypocrite, but in a we all need to step back sometimes because oh my god it is all too much and no matter how much we all say that we all don’t do enough to help ourselves.
And despite what other terminally ‘engaged’ people will claim, it isn’t a supreme act of ultimate privilege to need a break, it is just human. I can almost guarantee that the people those who say you should always be actively engaged and making noise look up to take breaks.
They just usually don’t make a big show and dance about taking the break cause doing that causes it’s own discourse of explaining why they are taking a break and what it means to take a break and oh my god it just never ends does it?
I mean it does end when you choose to end it by disconnecting from it or focusing on things that aren’t designed by billionaires to break us but we can’t do that can we, we know we should but we don’t.
All of this is to say “Shh”.
Stop talking. Just stop. We all are in pain, it’s why we are yelling into the void of the internet. This discourse hangover is doing all our heads in and its hard enough to get things done already.
So please, just shut the fuck up and post less ‘hot takes’.