Uncertainty #8: Grifting USA
Everyone is always trying to sell you something, laments Adaam. We’d never do that. So...see you at our March 7 event?
Good evening. I am very tired. But it’s the good “working on many things I seriously care about with people I deeply like” kind of tired, as opposed to the“what-did-He-tweet-now” kind of tired.
But through this haze, I wanted to share a few thoughts about our latest episode. But first…A reminder!
Doominaries
As ardent listeners/readers already know, we’re hosting our first ever virtual event on March 7th at 2pm ET.
We’ve invited Niall Ferguson and former CIA analyst Martin Gurri for a lively, intellectually supercharged conversation about one of our favorite topics: the end of the world. The event will be capped to only 35 people — reserve your spot now.
Scam You Very Much
It’s long been my belief that any interaction in the U.S. is only three steps away from becoming a scam. Peel a few layers off any relationship, even ones you count as deep or intimate, and there’s a good chance you’ll find a desire to sell you something.
It starts with insincerity. You have a conversation with a friend, a colleague, a partner, and something’s out of place. An odd response. An incongruent tone. A hackneyed phrase. A flash of repressed intensity. You realize you’re not really talking to a person, but to a marketing script, a string of bloodless phrases used by many others before to tell similar stories1. The conversation is no longer an end in itself, but a pitch.
A pitch to get you to buy into an idea or a story, buy into a new MLM or into a new crypto token, buy into a political club or a revolutionary diet, into a new product or a promise or a self image. Whatever’s being sold, the goal is to get you to buy.
Since moving to New York I’ve been joking that in modern English, like in ancient Rome, words like “friendship” and “community” actually mean clout. Hanging out really means “networking.” This mercenary lifestyle is so common that I wonder if it’s really the result of personal ambition and the constant search for advantage (whether professional, social, or psychological), or if it’s just mimetic. Americans have been using their inner-mountebank voice for so long, maybe other forms of communication have been forgotten.
In our discussion with David French about America’s loneliness plague, I suggested that this beautiful country lacks friendship infrastructure23, a built environment that invites spontaneous social activity. Instead, the options are private or commercial spaces, where loitering (the stuff of friendships) is discouraged, if not outlawed. Maybe this duality in American architecture also applies to the American mind: one contains a private self and a public salesman.
That this miserable state of affairs isn’t just my imagination is evident in the widespread hunger for authenticity that defined the past decade. I think it’s this hunger that, ironically, draws so many to follow the influencer-gurus.
Like Helen Lewis (whom we interviewed last week), Vanessa and I have been fascinated with this guru renaissance. We all recognize that certain cavities are being filled, but which? Lack of community? Lack of spiritual purpose? Lack of financial security? Lack of order?
After talking with Helen I started thinking that it might also be our inability to connect with people. If I’m right, many people find themselves stuck between empty interactions on social media and increasingly mercantilist communications in the real world. In this lonely stasis, sharpened by the epistemic chaos and financial instability of The Fifth Wave, authenticity merchants offer solutions — for a price.
Unhappy with your life? Feel you can’t trust anyone? Worried about the future? Trust me, I know. I’ve been there, too. Follow me and together we’ll escape the Matrix.
But of course, whether it’s Tai Lopez promising you life-changing knowledge, Logan Paul offering you early access to the hottest new NFT on the blockchain, or Robin DiAngelo guiding you to racial absolution, the red pills they offer are placebos. The doubts and terrors and uncertainties that haunt you today, the voids that gape inside you, will be there tomorrow, too. And if you do wake up feeling a new sort of lightness, it’s probably not any burdens relieved, just your bank account.
Things Worth Your Time ⏰
📖While preparing for our upcoming interview with William Deresiewicz, we had the pleasure of reading two of his excellent books: The End of Solitude and The Death of the Artist. Both were not only exquisitely written, but put forth profound observations about our 21st century world that provoked many a late-night conversation.
📺Vanessa spent last weekend away and while browsing the television — yes, that old-fashioned chestnut — happened upon Marc Maron’s latest comedy special “From Bleak to Dark.” In it, Maron talks about the sudden passing of his partner in 2020, and how it made him mystical and stuff. It’s touching, funny, and very well done — plus, he makes a pretty compelling case for never having kids.
😭February. ‘Nuff said.
What We’re Working On ⏭
Apart from preparing for our March 7 event, we’ve been busy interviewing some great writers about technology and its negative impact on our personal and professional lives. Stay tuned! Or tune out? One of those…
One Last Certain Thing…
Beavers Gonna Beaver.
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Even groundbreaking marketing is imitative. It relies on prefabricated ideas. To truly provoke the imagination is risky. Liberation directly contradicts the purpose of good marketing, which seeks an absolute narrowing of choice.
It first occurred to me when I was in Tel Aviv, waiting for a friend to finish work. She works at a law firm on the 30th story of a glass tower. I didn’t have a visitor’s badge, so I had to wait on the ground floor. But unlike the average lobby in an American skyscraper — designed to keep foot traffic moving and prevent loitering of any kind — this one was practically a lounge. Sofas, armchairs, and pillows filled the spacious hall. The WiFi was unrestricted and the guards, while strict on who could enter the elevators, were welcoming to anyone who wanted to use the ground floor to wait, or work, or even just recline for a bit. And in many places that aren’t the U.S., this is the norm. In Tel Aviv, spaces that facilitate public gatherings — and interactions — are expected, even in private buildings. An environment that encourages public interactions develops sociable habits, while one that restricts the public and asserts territoriality fosters paranoia. And paranoia can get quite lonely.
Vanessa’s commentary: I’d posit a theory that the lack of free public spaces where we can socialize is a side effect of severe social stigma around homelessness — and our desire to keep the unhoused out of sight and and out of mind. No vagrants shall loiter — and, in the name of “purity” and “tourist safety” — neither shall anyone else.
I would argue that New York and Tel Aviv are quite similar with regards to public spaces, and that the difference is mostly aesthetic. After all, NY has its Privately Owned Public Spaces, and while they are certainly not warm and inviting, I don't know anyone who feels particularly inclined to hang out in Tel Aviv office building lobbies either, unless they have business in that building. Much like in NY, you spend time with people at home or in commercial spaces (and there's nothing wrong with that! Food and drink have been facilitating human interaction for millennia).
I think the loneliness has a lot more to do with the enormous distances between places, insanely long working days (which Israel suffers from too) and that terrible "let's get coffee sometimes!" mentality. The lack of social safety nets probably also plays a huge role in creating a utilitarian view of relationships. That it makes you vulnerable to predators I absolutely agree with.