1. Before launching into these first two links, I think I need to begin this column with something of a confession that’s been brewing for two-plus years now. Or maybe it’s more of a rant? Either way, here we go … Week after week, articles have been written about any number of different topics, all of which end with the same conclusion: the pandemic is surely to blame. Why are you so anxious all the time? It’s the pandemic. Why are we so lonely? It’s the pandemic. Why are movies terrible? It’s the pandemic.
It all made sense at first — two years ago, that is. But at some point all the doom and gloom attributed to a single event began to feel to me more like lazy analysis, a correlation study without proper controls. Sort of how the sitting president gets blamed for everything, regardless of who is in office. Things weren’t that great before, remember? Then again … maybe “it’s the pandemic, stupid” and the impossible to overstate reality of seismic cultural disruption. One subject it seems everyone agrees on is that the pandemic has heightened our desire for community, which is where the next two articles from Vox come in.
Attending a conference for NFTs (a non-fungible something that relates to art, I think?), Emily Stewart observed a modern-day gold rush, complete with high stakes, a few winners, and many losers. The hype she witnesses is palpable, but at the root of it all seems to be post-pandemic loneliness?
The culture surrounding many higher-profile NFT projects, whether it be Bored Apes or Doodles or whatever else, is hyper-monetized fandom. Web3 in many circumstances may be a cynical cash grab from those at the top, but at the bottom of a pyramid are a lot of people who are at least, in part, true believers. […]
“There’s a lot of people benefiting from the desire people have for community coming out of the pandemic,” [Web3 developer Lauren Mitchell] says. Stockfield [Mitchell’s coworker] comes in with a different, and likely also correct, angle. “There’s a tight-knit club of people that are pulling the strings.”
Fandom, the pandemic, and NFT hype feels like a stretch to me, but I’ll take the point: people will do unusual things with their money if they can feel part of something greater than themselves (see: political campaign fundraising, Coachella, and Cleveland Browns fans).
2. Along these lines, I found Terry Nguyen’s article “Why Brands are Obsessed With Building Community” is deeply incisive.
Historically, the relationship between consumers and companies was more transactional and direct. You would seek out an item you needed in a store. You might be put on a mailing list and sent promotional catalogs or coupons every few months, but communication remained relatively sparse. Today, the age of passive consumerism seems to be over. The expectation is to keep patrons active, enthusiastic, and engaged beyond the parameters of the product that they’re offering. Brands want consumers to be fans and follow them on social media, tag them in posts, contribute to private chat channels, and attend in-person events.
Right. We don’t just want shoes, we want shoes that are socially conscious. We don’t want an exercise bike, but a biking community. Nguyen does see the pandemic as a turning point toward more communal branding, but goes further to position that pivot within other, rhymes-with-velocity, trends (seculosity!):
Hugo Amsellem, vice president of community at Jellysmack, a company that works with video creators, believes that this is due to a pervasive lack of community in modern society. “We’re confused about what community should look like,” Amsellem told me. “The only places we find community are at work or at home.”
Over the past few decades, traditional institutions, like organized religion, neighborhood associations, unions, or service organizations, have diminished in social relevance. Americans are working too much to devote time to community causes and activities beyond the realm of family and work. As a result, people are seeking out products and influencers to fill in this dwindling social gap. Brands, of course, welcome this interest, and many have positioned themselves as a sort of privatized third space to facilitate a sense of community.
Amsellem argues that virtual interactions are only a Band-Aid solution to our community-deficient lives. “Consumers are stuck on this fast loop of content consumption and creation, but they ultimately never find that sense of belonging,” he said. “I do believe that some people find comfort in online communities, but usually, those who are really online are those who feel the loneliest offline. It’s a self-selecting demographic. Being online does not necessarily solve their loneliness or make them feel like part of a group.”
If one must ascribe to a fandom, and the article seems to think we will one way or another, my vote is for Jesus (as any youth minister would tell you). But seriously … it’s better to be surrounded by the international league of the guilty and forgiven than it is to buy merch or go bankrupt betting on a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
3. Probably not everyone’s cup of tea, but Nick Cave‘s new album of spoken word psalms is unreal. Top shelf poetry. The Guardian gave it 4/5 stars, writing:
It’s an extremely powerful album — Cave and Ellis are superb writers, at the top of their game — even if you wonder how often you’ll listen to it, or indeed, what one quite vocal section of his fanbase will make of it: “For fuck’s sake, enough of the God and Jesus bullshit!” as one Red Hand Files correspondent protested last month. Cave answered that complaint thoughtfully and at length, with the calmness of an artist who must have known for some time that he’s out on his own, occupying an entirely unique space, doing things no one else does.
4. Have you found your “why” yet? I’m not sure I have, but then again I don’t know “why” I need to find a “why” in the first place. If that lead-in doesn’t make any sense to you, then you’re probably not familiar with Noom, Calm, or any of the other Cognitive Behavior Therapy-informed apps clamoring for your dollars. Writing for the Hedgehog Review, William Gonch takes a look at Cognitive Wellness Culture (CWC) and ponders its long-term effects:
When I replace the story I have been given with one that I write for myself, I place the entire burden of sustaining meaning on my own shoulders. I must evaluate my passions to determine the life I want to live and the goals I want to achieve. Then—and this is the hard part—I must continue to see those goals as meaningful, and interpret daily actions as steps toward them. […]
In its attempt to give us control over our own stories, CWC impoverishes the stories we share and the meanings we make together. Generally, CWC books and apps encourage users to enlist their friends and family as accountability partners. Users share their goals and check in about progress and failings. Accountability partners want you to succeed and they support you in your goals, but they do not depend on your success. As a result, they can root for whatever you choose to do, but also support you when you change your mind. An accountability partner will cheer you on and keep you working in medical school, but if you decide that you don’t want to be a doctor after all, she will celebrate the fact that made the decision that is best for you. Meanwhile, she pursues her own, self-determined goals, and you support her in turn. All of this is quite valuable. But accountability partners are not sufficient for a meaningful life because their goals are independent of yours.
Think how different this is from caring for your aging mother. Such a situation is frustrating for you and for her. Neither of you would ever have chosen it. But your sacrifices — to visit her, to take your kids to see her, to take care of her household and medical challenges — has a real, objective effect on a person. She depends on you. Your actions have meaning that is out there, in the world, because you share it with her. You don’t ask, “Do my actions matter?” when you see the person to whom they matter. The appeal of CWC culture, then, is identical to its main deficiency: It never asks you to take on unchosen obligations. If you want your life to be enjoyable, exciting, and satisfying, CWC has its uses. I’m not sorry that I have used it, and in some ways I would recommend it, but it can’t give us meaning. If you want your life to matter, go beyond it. Be part of the story that predates you.
5. In news that shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone, the Harvard Business Review reports that “Monitoring Employees Makes Them More Likely to Break Rules.” If you have a mouse mover app, you’ll know exactly where this is going:
Given their prevalence, one might expect that these sorts of systems [monitoring employee activities] would be effective in reducing harmful workplace behavior. And indeed, studies have shown that in some contexts, monitoring can deter certain specific behaviors, such as theft by restaurant workers. However, our recent research suggests that in many cases, monitoring employees can seriously backfire.
… We found that monitored employees were substantially more likely to take unapproved breaks, disregard instructions, damage workplace property, steal office equipment, and purposefully work at a slow pace, among other rule-breaking behaviors. … We then gave them an opportunity to cheat, and found that those who were told they were being monitored were actually more likely to cheat than those who didn’t think they were being monitored.
They conclude that, “employers cannot rely on carrots and sticks alone.” However obvious this conclusion might be for anyone familiar with the distinction between law and gospel, the void it creates for actual managers who have to oversee employees brings to bear just how little control one has over employee performance. But perhaps that’s the point, which is to say that controlling people via the law of metrics and performance reviews is always a losing battle.
So what is to be done? Here, the HBR points to “boosting agency,” or the trendy, business lingo way of describing St. Augustine’s great insight — that the heart and its desires direct our actions far more than nosy bosses.
6. Now for some humor … Summer officially began this week and, at least in my part of the world, the lemon-citronella-death cologne of insect repellant is now the trendy musk of the season. Perhaps that’s why I found Points in Case’s “Mosquitoes Review Me” so hilarious. Then there’s “Competitive Dad Intensively Training Son in Egg and Spoon Technique Ahead of School Sports Day,” by NewsThump. And New York Magazine’s Vulture list of 31 Comedians’ Favorite Jokes features a hilarious Bible joke from George Wallace:
A little boy turned 16 years old, and he went to his dad, who was a minister, and said, “Dad, I turned 16 today. I’d like to use the family car.”
His dad said, “Son, I’d know you’d like to use the family car, but I think we have other priorities. Number one, you need to improve your grades. Number two, me being a minister, it’d be nice if you were to start reading the Bible. Number three, you need to get a haircut.”
So six months go by, and the son comes to his dad and says, “Dad, I love you. I tried to do everything you asked me to do. You asked me to improve my grades, and it took a long time and a lot of work and staying up late at night, but, Dad, here’s my report card, and I want to thank you for that. Dad, you being a minister, thank you for making me read that Bible, because do you know that I read that Samson had long hair? Daddy, I continued to read that Bible even more, and even Moses had long hair. Daddy, you know what? Because of you, I read the whole Bible, and even Jesus had long hair.”
And his dad looked at him and said, “If you notice, now, everywhere they went, they walked.”
7. As much as it might officially be July 4th weekend, I’d wager that more people are looking forward to the release of part two of Stranger Things than blackened hotdogs and controlled explosions in the night sky. Happy binging! But before you do, it’d be well worth your time to check out Colin Craig’s “Running Up That Hill,” published here on Mbird, and K.B. Hoyle’s spot-on analysis over at Christ and Pop Culture:
You don’t have to love the ‘80s to resonate with Stranger Things; you just have to love the idea that the invisible and intangible things that haunt us can be fought and defeated.
And like many people reading this, I too have struggled with mental health crises. Depression, loneliness, anxiety, trauma … such things are deadly in real life, far too often. In this season, Stranger Things demonstrates once again how stories and fantasy can help us battle our inner demons — can remind us that the darkness that lives inside is like a monster that wants to consume us, and that even though the choice to go on living can sometimes feel like a sprint against all odds, we don’t do it alone. Episode 4 of season 4 is a call to defy death and despair; it’s a call to remain, to fall into the arms of those who love us and say, “I’m still here.”
8. On the more devotional side of reading this week, For the Church, republished Charles Spurgeon’s reflection on Isaiah 54:5:
[Jesus] makes the unsullied garment of his life our covering beauty; the glittering virtues of his character our ornaments and jewels; and the superhuman meekness of his death our boast and glory. He bequeaths us his manger, from which to learn how God came down to man; and his Cross to teach us how man may go up to God. All his thoughts, emotions, actions, utterances, miracles, and intercessions, were for us. He trod the road of sorrow on our behalf, and hath made over to us as his heavenly legacy the full results of all the labours of his life. He is now as much ours as heretofore.
Strays:
- This conversation between Mike Cosper and Tim Keller is fascinating to me.
- The story of George Westren, who attributed art to his sobriety, and the discovery of his paintings a year after his death. (The image above is a collection of Westren paintings.)
- “On the Pandemic Blues” — Tara Isabella Burton on why the second year of the pandemic was so devastating.
- It’s been a prolific podcasting season for Mbird! All six episodes of season one of Terrible Parables (featuring myself, Bryan Jarrell, and Cali Yee) just dropped last week. And the second season of the Brothers Zahl should be out soon!
And finally:
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