It's the Stupidity, Stupid
You don't need disinformation if no one knows how to think.
Have you noticed that everything is incredibly stupid? Social media is stupid—children eating chicken bakes and saying monosyllabic words into the camera with blank stares in their eyes. Mass culture is stupid—Jake Paul lazily beating up a 58-year old man was one of the most popular sporting events of the last many years. The discourse on “X” is stupid. Even this platform, which is ostensibly where people go when they’ve had enough of the stupid stuff everywhere else, has become significantly more stupid—the deluge of “I’m an anxious white girl” essays were bad enough, but they now seem like Foucault in comparison to the recent gift-guide-ification of Substack.
The most popular podcast in the United States is The Joe Rogan Experience. The most popular YouTuber is MrBeast, followed in second place by Cocomelon, though aren’t they really kinda the same thing? I mean, really aren’t all of these things kinda the same thing: content, like television shows you sit your kid in front of when you’re too busy, meant to mollify? Why do you find yourself watching The Rizzler? Because you want to feel challenged? Because you want to learn something?
Let’s call it the iPad Baby-ification of Adult Culture. We consume information and content now not primarily to learn or even to entertain, but to dopaminergicly pacify ourselves.