Two years ago, I had an interesting interaction with a Medium contributor. He had been posting stories of various instances of social injustice in the USA. Police, corporations, bureaucracies, etc. were all in his crosshairs.
I thought, “This fellow has a good pulse on what needs to be fixed and seems frustrated that not much is getting fixed. Maybe he would be interested in my alternative democracy.” I gave him my main Medium link, which leads to a 15-minute essay on this topic.
He came back to me with: “Too long, didn’t read.” He advised me to shorten my message to get him interested in this idea. According to him, the world is not going to read essays that are 15 minutes long. Which was kind of strange because his articles were five to 10 minutes. My essay was not that far outside the comfort zone he expected from his readers.
Regardless, I took this as a marketing challenge. I gave him several shortened versions of this new democracy, maybe 100 to 200 words. He came back with either “still too long” or “it doesn’t explain your TDG well enough.” I can’t explain the TDG fully in 100 words. How was I supposed to be short and fully explanatory? A definite paradox.
In essence, this fellow was caught in a whirlpool of circular logic:
Many things not right in society → they are not getting fixed → Dave offers a possible solution → Solution is too long for the keyboard warrior (and many others) to read → Solution is not implemented → Current ways stay in place → Many things not right in society.
Do you notice that this logic allows the keyboard warrior to continue to write about things that need to be fixed? If someone is aspiring for fame and fortune by reporting on things that need to be fixed, he will have no job when things are fixed. Me senses an ulterior motive here.
His articles continued showing up on my feed on a regular basis. I usually ignored them. But once in a while, I took a look — and found the same kind of ranting as before. I never clapped. I never commented.
Recently, he published an article with a different title. This time he was talking about the historical pattern in how societies and civilizations decay and collapse — and then are reborn again.
I could not resist
I commented on this post: “Why bother publishing your doomposting articles when the result is going to be the same whether your articles are read or not?”
In other words, by acknowledging a collapse was inevitable, he was wasting his time to write his own material.
I suggested that he sit on a beach enjoying his last margarita. Or maybe packing more lentils into his prepper kit. But to write about a collapse that cannot be stopped just does not make much sense to me.
He did not respond.
Published on Medium 2024
Political Canvassing in an Unpopular Opinion
