June 19th, 2020
du jour - adjective - (of food in a restaurant) available and being served on this day.
Twitter is full of outrage and we should all log out for a while.
I'm not talking specifically about BLM, or Trump, or 'Call Her Daddy'.
I'm talking about the outrage du jour - every hour we are served up a new controversy on a silver platter.
This celebrity said that, Donald Trump said this, this cop did that, and this VC said this.
All it is is he-said-she-said.
And we are the suckers.
Politicians, media & tech companies are laughing all the way to the bank.
While we sit here and argue worthless semantics, the media and tech companies are heads down, figuring out how they can find more outrage du jour to feed our already fat bellies.
We are sitting around the table at the restaurant with crumbs on our shirts and food all over our face, being rude to the waiter, and leaving no tip.
We are sitting around the table chatting about the latest Donald Trump tweet - and believing we are sophisticated because it's about politics.
"Exquisite! The outrage du jour tastes especially good today, doesn't it Karen? Have a like! Hell, this is so good, have a retweet!"
This hits in every single industry. In education, sports, music, and even startups, for example:
https://twitter.com/benedictevans/status/1273871395479568386?s=20
^^ a tweet designed to spark outrage, about a completely mundane topic (email software)
I have two things to say about this:
- Cancel culture will only continue to get way worse - this will cause political and economic meltdown over the next 10-20 years.
- We must actively discipline ourselves to ignore this outrage every single day.
I don't have an answer on how to fix this, but the only way for me to deal with it is to ignore it and focus on productive things.
Read books, research papers, hang out with friends, play sports, run, write, speak, create, draw, build companies, build wealth, and meditate.
My point is that we cannot not solve this problem by uninstalling Instagram or putting our phones in the other room.
For me, staying off social media is really hard. It feels like I go through cycles of addiction to social media and news, and I have to consciously pull myself out of it.
And it's still not enough.
Consuming this outrage du jour makes us feel good, in the moment. How can we stop ourselves from hearing the juicy gossip or the tea?
We all succumb to this level sometimes, and that's OK, we are not perfect - but there's one thing I know for sure - unhealthy portions of outrage du jour over many years will make us unhappy, unsuccessful, and uninteresting people.
Because it's nothing more than a distraction.