Schadenfreude and the Rabbit Hole Temptation
A recent Tweet of mine, with a link to my previous published text on Medium, earned an unexpected badge by Twitter, warning the reader who might stumble into my page (rather by chance than explicit intention) that my contribution to the ongoing discourse about the infestation of political statements at events like Glastonbury was taken out of context since it included the photo of Greta Thunberg on stage, delivering her speech.
The whole problem turned out to be my presumed intention of labeling the audience and Ms Thunberg herself as environmental hypocrites (which I indeed think they are) since the photos in the media, of littered grass full of all sorts of trash including even tents, alluded to the idea that these people don’t tend to practice what they preach. I found it quite curious, since there’s no mention of any sorts of public hygiene related to the festival in my text.
It’s a sort of subtly enforced auto-censorship on social media that’s easy to mock until it hits you too. If a major social network will include a warning with someone else’s text, treating the readers like morons who can’t form an opinion of their own, then it’s fair to say that influencers like Thunberg have a firm grab on networks like Twitter that even Elon Musk can’t possibly match.
You might be compelled to say that the environmentalist it-girl is the movement’s Volodymyr Zelensky to Musk’s Vladimir Putin: a perfect underdog attracting every target audience like flies on a lightbulb. We pride ourselves of living in a piece of the world where free speech isn’t an unaffordable luxury but a human right, clean water, health care and education treated as basic prerogatives of a life worth living. Is it really?
My unremarkable anecdote is merely a small litmus for the fact that it’s a piece of the world that’s anything but free, since there are fewer and fewer things that are affordable. Freedom of speech-true freedom-is only available to those who have nothing to lose, who can’t be existentially blackmailed and can’t be affected by public opinion. Those are very few in our so-called society, since that kind of life requires great risks and sacrifices.
The system treats these people like bugs in the algorythm, since it doesn’t hold them under the same firm grip like the obedient majority. They are problems that need to be dealt with, since they are like bells that toll. Each time it happens, unknown and rather unsavoury details about the ruling class’ secrets slip out into the limelight, turning them into a target for sanctioned public frenzy that usually topples a few influential individuals.
Just ask people like Julian Assange, Alex Navalny or Edwars Snowden. Of course, young activists can’t be equalled to global warlords or political leaders. but when their brand grows too big and they become untouchable since the product that they’re selling can’t be tainted by accusations or labels, however accurate they might prove to be.
It would be interesting to see the public reaction if some embarrasing truth behind the success of activists like Thunberg were to be encountered, and since their omnipresence is bordering on irritation, it most certainly would be welcomed with lots of schadenfreude, because it’s in our nature to wallow in someone else’s misery if there is pleasure to be found in it. But it’s already in the realm of conspiracy theories for good reason: there’s simply too much public attention and money in the environmental cause
Even the most reluctant left-wing hipsters have succumbed to the NGO machine promoting the cause, shoveling money for projects along the way, earning praise and recognition that’s almost equal to intellectuals like Noam Chomsky that have spent their whole life building a biography, bibliography and wisdom that can’t be quickly squeezed from podcasts that are slowly overtaking the role of the traditional education system. Which is why there’s hardly anything as dangerous as the digital algorythm, that sees even things that aren’t really there just because a popular face is plastered on it.
The sad fact is that no one really cares: there are too many tempting digital rabbit holes one falls into on the way to something truly meaningful, and that’s where everything went wrong. So wrong. There might be a way to overturn the full-speed ride of the environmental crisis off the cliff, but we are already past the possibility to find our way out of the rabbit hole that destroyed our ability to focus on priority through a true labyrinth of distractions that make Spanish inquisition and McCarthyism look like the hippie movement’s Summer of love.
Because it’s a situation where the system doesn’t need to do anything to silence us: our fear and auto-censorship already took care of it. We invented cancel culture that’s basically identical to Medieval witch hunts, dressed up as championing moral standards professed by those who are no less eligible for cancellation themselves, but wear baggy pants so that it wouldn’t show that their balls are shaking in fear of being socially neutered as well.
I can still remember the prevalent social mantra “be careful”, related to engaging in any public discourse, and the cause behind the frustrating inability and unwillingness of people to fight for their own interests due to the fear of political backlash. And then you throw a young activist, a brand that sells well, into the middle of it: it works equally well on Capitol Hill, in the UN or on stage in Glastonbury.
Due to the neo-liberal cultural echo-chamber, we’re stuck in a dead-end where free speech is futile, since there are certain people that are contextually protected: beacons of a new world where environmental policy is a badge to sell a few more tokens that make you believe you contribute to saving the planet by constantly spending money on stuff that are suposedly ethically made, when it’s actually an overpriced linen shirt with a label that says that they prioritize the rights of the trees to those of the workers of Made in Bangladesh.
Can you say this is out of context? There’s too many contexts to choose from, and it fits into each one. We decided that fast fashion is bad for the planet and sustainable is the way to go. But in an industry the bread and butter of which is constantly selling new trends, clothes and collections, sustainability might be the antithesis of its basic principle. If people bought only things that are no longer presentable or functional, there fashion industry would sink quicker than the Titanic.
The whole green movement turned into a mockery when its biggest celebrities started gracing covers of famous fashion magazines that promote unrealistic lifestyle and beauty ideals provided you got enough cash to spend on it. But let’s stop right there before Twitter accuses me of hate speech too. Are we still allowed to point fingers? Our failure consists of the fact that we are lulled into the idea that we can.
But it will amount to nothing, since in the privileged bubble of free speech which we inhabit, our values are reduced to its essence: vapid, hot air. Unless it’s framed in the window dressing of politically correct, harmless aesthetics of rebellion that amounts to nothing simply because it sells too well to be true. Which it usually is. A bit with the book burnings of the past: a much more successful way of killing them is to turn them into a historical redundancy for afficionados that are still enticed by the smell of paper and the sound it makes.
Every now and then, a new oasis occurs that’s a rabbit hole for those still enchanted by things that can’t be found in the virtual cornucopia of ideas and curiosities. That need to be touched, smelled or tasted in order to be true. And those are moments of palpable magic that entice hope. Hope that if that there’s a god, it would help us to find the way out of the rabbit hole and succeed. And if there isn’t it doesn’t matter anyway. It’s up to us to act: a deus ex machina is a ride that rarely ever arrives on time, a resource that we shouldn’t waste since unlike that linen shirt, it doesn’t have the option of return policy.
