John Gable

I had a conversation with a friend this week about how we all become captured by culture wars. We can call it The Culture War’s Shiny Object Cycle. Here is how it goes: 1. Some woke news story hits the press. -“Cats suffer from racial discrimination or screwing in lightbulbs needs to be recognised as a valid sexual kink or something.” 2. The Right Wing antibody response activates. -“Look at how insane these people are. *Matt Walsh quote tweets the article and calls it obnoxious* This is the problem with our convenient, decadent, TikTok society.” 3. This reaction causes the story to gain infinitely more traction than it ever would have done by signal boosting the original fringe-scenario into a much bigger event. ​ 4. The Left Wing counter-response activates. -“Right wingers lose their minds over one woman with a particularly dark cat. The Daily Wire has meltdown over insignificant troll article.” -In times where the original story is less insane, this includes a defence of the original article too. “Cats actually CAN experience trauma, minimising this is the REAL problem.” 5. The Right Wing re-reaction kicks into gear. -“Apparently I’m insane for pushing back against Cat Trauma. See this is the problem, if we don’t stand our ground, these blue haired idiots will take over the country.” 6. Finally, the Touch Grass Meta-Reactionaries steam in. -“The real issue is people talking about this issue. Look at how silly this whole thing is. It’s time to check out of the culture war. We should reconnect with what really matters. You should move onto the ranch next to Ryan Holiday and hammer fence posts into the ground for the rest of time.” This cycle is banal. It’s excruciatingly repetitive. So why does it sustain our attention if basically every discussion follows the same cycle? Because each story is sprinkled with just enough novelty to give it the illusion that this is a new, different event. Which legitimates the pushback… “We’ve not seen THIS Trans Flag with People Who Suffer From A Gluten Intolerance included in it before.” It’s like a 20th season of Lost where they’re back on an island for the 7th time and need to escape, but THIS TIME IT’S WINTER. The Culture War’s Shiny Object Cycle does my head in. It does my head in because I get captured by it. I see a bank rewriting classic fairy tales into a boss-bitch remake called Fairer Tales: Princesses Doing It For Themselves and think “this is fucking dumb, where’s Douglas Murray, I need him to decimate this idea with me.” It’s cathartic. Calling out insane ideas written by idiots is so compelling and fun and easy to do that it’s like being a cocaine addict with Pablo Escobar as a next door neighbour. The memes of production are whirring at maximum RPM and we’re all caught in the vortex. It was Douglas who reminded me why I’m getting so exasperated with this cycle. It is a distraction. A distraction from our attention being focussed on things which are actually meaningful. Not just meaningful in a “will you remember this when you’re dead”-way. But in a “there’s other issues that are more important to talk about”-way too. There’s entire American cities with fentanyl epidemics. 80% of suicides of people aged 18 to 24 are men. I want to hear Peterson talk about dealing with finding meaning in a world stripped of all its guard rails. I want Taleb to be writing about applying complex maths to simple life problems. Many of the smartest people on the planet have had their attention captured arguing about whether men are men and women are women or not over the last few years. And even more of the normal ones too. All of our collective minds are held hostage by an endless cycle of shiny objects that aggravate both sides and makes them feel righteous for standing their ground. I think this is a bottomless pit. I don’t think it’s going to stop. I will almost certainly bring up stories like these in future. But I’m gonna try hard to focus more on stuff that matters in 50 years, not just in 50 minutes. And probably so should you.