How Deep Does the B.S. Go?

Lately I was speculating on the role of B.S. in our economy, politics, and technology. I’d spell it out (and swear more probably) but I do have some discretion!

We’ve normalized the idea that some people are honestly, lying to us. We expect that we’re being lied to be marketing forces, by the latest trends, and by politicians. It’s honestly so normalized, it seems we can’t imagine a less deception-free world.

(It also makes me realize how people can get blaise about COVID.)

In turn, we’ve also normalized that people we like are lying. Yeah, that famous tech guy is hyping stuff, but we like his product. Sure the politician we voted for is spouting demented nonsense, but they’re our politician. We go to see a movie we know we’ve been sold on in the negative sense or a restaurant whos food is just “OK” but you know, advertising and familiarity.

What’s struck me lately, is that we are probably too used to lying as well.

When I’ve seen people rallying to the defense of people, media, and so on that they like you an hear them repeat talking points. You can tell with just a bit of empathy that many people don’t really or exactly believe what they say. But to defend what they like for whatever reason,

I even found myself tempted to do it (which tells me I do do it, I just didn’t catch myself).

I’m wondering how deep the B.S. in our media-saturated, pundit-heavy, social media culture goes by now. I mean yes humans have always lied to others and themselves, but it feels pretty amplified and survival-adverse in my experience. How much of our lives, as individuals, is just lying about stuff?

I think some of it is definitely internet and media culture. Say the right things, do the right things, and you get money, attention, and might even become some kind of Influencer or Pundit. You can lie for a living if you play your cards right! Whatever B.S. problems we had in the past, you can do it faster, giving less time for experience and other people to provide restraining feedback.

In a time of chaos and climate change, this is even more disturbing. We’ve got a lot of problems to solve, or at least survive, and if we’ve all internalized outright deception to an extent, it’s going to be much harder. When everyone is busy not telling the truth, it gets harder to tell the truth, and even when a bunch of people do, too many might not out of various motivations.

I know at least I’ll be watching myself closer. But this is going to haunt me.

Steven Savage

Into The Nothing That’s Everywhere

I observed a discussion of AI art online, and someone made a chillingly accurate comment. They said people were using AI art to get clicks on message boards. Using a tool to make “art” that you didn’t make, to post to a board of people you don’t know, so they click on the post so you feel good. Nothing actually happens or means anything. It’s just automation wearing the clothes of human interaction.

I began asking just how much of modern interaction, infused by market-driven technology, is just meaningless clicks. How much is nothing.

Not much later, I was listening to a podcast on game and game development, and how some people courted controversy. You could make an utterly crappy game, but get the right people to scream about how great it is, cite culture war B.S. and you’d sell your game. You’d get “reviews” yes, but the reviews wouldn’t be about the game you made, just who you annoyed. The tools to make a game, the social media to discuss it, the ways to distribute it, but the game itself means nothing.

Doing something to get something else to happen over something else, while everyone pretends something meaningful is going on. Human interaction as a Mousetrap-style game to get clicks, sell adds, or just annoy someone you’ll never meet. Meaningless. Nothing.

These experiences helped me get a feel for the profound alienation that seems to have settled on many in our high-tech supposedly connected world. The system of clicks, views, reviews, etc. means something else than it says it is, if it’s about anything else anymore. Yes, some – a great deal – is about ad revenue, but that’s you doing something so someone else pays you to shill an unrelated product. Even then it’s still so abstract from what you say is going on.

The Enshittification of human interaction. People can’t even hate each other properly without worrying about follower count and ad revenue.

The thing is we expected the Internet to connect us – it can and it has. Yes, it lets you build a bubble, but humans always do that. As I look over this phenomena of human abstraction and clicks and numbers, I think a way to look at it is that we’ve added middlemen.

Ad revenue companies, many big tech companies, etc. Even crypto is really a kind of middleman, an unregulated stock market of the imagination that you eventually have to cash in for real money. All of it is inserting yourself into the human experience to charge a toll and getting people to click, maybe paying them in a cut or just giving them a number to watch go up.

And now, nothing means anything except clicks and who’s getting paid. Sometimes no one is getting anything but is hoping to or doing it out of habit. Worse, so much started pretty good.

Now I wonder how sustainable it all is – and I honestly don’t know. We’re in unexplored territory at scale while the climate changes and the world careens forward. But wherever we are now, I don’t think it’s going to solve our problems. You can’t solve anything with nothing, and there’s a whole lot of nothing right now – a complicated nothing.

We need less of this nothing.

Steven Savage

Pushing Isn’t Pushing

We’re all familiar with pushing ourselves. Upping caffeine, lowering sleep, focusing intently, and sometimes actually getting something done before we burn out and pretend it was worth it. Creatives also push themselves, but I think we’re facing double trouble when we do – because there’s pushing yourself and pushing yourself creatively.

Pushing ourselves alone is a gamble – as I sarcastically noted above. You can try to go above and beyond in effort and hours, but also risk burning yourself out for nothing. Many a creative has a sketch or rough draft that makes them wonder “what the hell was I thinking” during their last caffeine-and-dubstep binge.

(I just assume dubstep keeps you going. Look, I’m in a retro jazz/exotica phase right now.)

But pushing oneself creatively and just pushing oneself in general is not the same thing and I think many a creative confuses the two. To push oneself creatively is to try new things, imagine different, try a new style. It’s to go to the edge of what we can do and dare to step over into unknown territory. It’s not the same as just plain long-haul overtime.

In fact, I’d say treating pushing yourself creatively as some punishing march produces too little payoff for the damage and gets it wrong.

Pushing oneself creatively is a case of openness, of wandering, of experimentation. You have to do things more, different, and in other directions. Yes you may have to push yourself effort-wise, but it’s to push past boundaries and blockages and habits, not just sheer head-against-wall effort. Treating it as some kind of struggle like a marathon studying session puts you in the wrong mindset and focusing in the wrong thing.

Pushing yourself creatively always has an element of unsurety, of play, of going in circles for the sake of seeing what happens after a few rotations. Turning it into a grind, of “I have to ram through this,” or “I have to try these six different things no matter what” really just means you stop focusing on creativity and focus on metrics or just plain making sure you suffer appropriately. It’s not going to make you more creative, it’s going to make you more miserable.

There’s a time in place for a creative to push themselves in sheer effort. Sometimes it can help creativity, with some boundaries, like seeing how fast you can write, or trying a scene differently, or, hell, ALL of NaNoWriMo. But you need to have the space to push your creativity by being creative and that doesn’t always lend itself to the grindset mindset.

In closing, let me recall a friend who went through some tough times. They focused on their creative projects, which did take effort, but they kept that state of play. They not only improved on their own projects, it also got them through said tough times. It was a push, but a push that was fun and actually sustained them.

Next time you’re on the creative grind, ask just what you’re trying to do. You might do more with less pushing. In fact, you might find it’s time to get more done by playing.

Steven Savage