change the channel

The trends today that feel forced and presented and manipulative and really only there for some reason other than because people want them, the selected shouting and distilled intensity, it’s all exhausting. Can people just be normal for a minute? The algorithm that concentrates anything it comes near has leaked out and it is unsustainable that everything everywhere is infected. It’s gone meta, the optimization of itself has become so much that it is becoming visible and annoying too. Not only has the subject been optimized for attention, the Jackass antics of stupid stunts like pushing a shopping cart into the curb for a dumb crash video¹ have been completely amped up to crashing a train into a giant hole,² but every other aspect of the production around the idiotic stunt has been iterated, focus grouped, a/b’ed, and maximized to the nth degree. And this is old news.

In a way it is a kind of democratization. These tools and techniques used to be limited to professional commercial firms that had the money, the knowhow, the motivation, and the interest to bother. It was annoying then. Now everyone can use them, everyone is a brand. All the tutorials are on the internet there for anyone to try. Platforms added the ability to apply the methods and now this crap is everywhere. And that enabling of more people to try is great. What’s not great is that the rest of us have to suffer through an endless feast of slop. Even top tier content is polluted with this accelerationist intensity.

This culture, the culture of intensity, is overdone. And it is all a scam, a way to get something out of the people that they wouldn’t otherwise bother about. Attention scams, financial scams, movement scams. And it’s the easiest one in the world to escape from because all you have to do is engage less with the intensity, and with less intensity. Choose to do something else. Look away from the feed, look outside, look at a picture, anything. I choose something else.

This one pathway to attention, the make it as much of itself³ as possible way, as much anger or awful, it is not the only way. Much of the best art and craft things are dialed back a little. They can be subtle and inspire, or edited to relax and bring peace. Well crafted things can be developed to be something else, something original and genuine and intensely personal, and so universal. Just change the channel.

jg