A few days ago, I was posting about the latest political outrage. The next day, I woke up and noticed the topic had vanished. I remembered how important it felt to voice my opinion the day before. Then I realized it was all for nothing.
“What the hell were you even doing?”
If someone lives like a slob, they expect someone is going to clean it up for them. If their home is clean, they accept responsibility for their lives. I believe the state of one’s home reflects their political views. If I don’t use something for a year, I throw it out. When I wake up, everything is in its right place.
Your personality traits are tied up in your political beliefs. I notice chaos easily because I crave order. When I notice my country is in disarray, my impulse is to step in and fix it.
This leaves me with two options: complain online or do something about it.
When problems look simple, I catch myself fantasizing about being a dictator. If a judge releases a criminal back onto the street, and that criminal kills somebody, that judge would be executed in the same way as the victim. I’d end the violence problem with swift capital punishment. I imagine a world where consequences are immediate and problems collapse under the weight of force. None of this feels complicated. I’d have New York running like a clock in 48 hours.
But I’m too practical to let my fantasies linger for very long. I’m not going to run for office. Rather than larp as a war general online, I’ll just admit how selfish I am: I love my life too much to sacrifice it.
I have a small amount of influence online given my somewhat large following on both Substack and X, but I’m mostly speaking to people who already agree with me. If I change their minds, what’s the best case scenario? They’re going to vote for JD Vance even harder?
“Chimping out” online feels like you’re changing the political process. Sometimes it works, most of the time it doesn’t. Mocking might change a few perspectives — but propaganda is top down. The state is designed to indoctrinate the public, not the other way around.
People like to feel like they have more power than they do. When I post about politics, I feel a small hope that maybe, just maybe, someone adjacent to power might see it. They might even show my solutions to a decision-maker. That possibility exists, but so does getting struck by lightning.
After you vote, what happens next is out of your hands. Bitching about politics online is unbecoming. Looking back, I’m embarrassed by how much energy I’ve put into it. I have a hard time accepting what I can’t control. But after this realization, it’s completely clear.
If I need to look over my shoulder while taking a walk in my city, then I have no interest in what Tucker Carlson said about Ben Shapiro. If women are being burned alive on the subway, then I can’t clap if Trump invades Venezuela. If innocent bystanders are being murdered in broad daylight, then I don’t care if Erika Kirk is being controlled by Jewish Aliens. The set of issues we’re expected to discuss are too embarrassing to validate. Bread-and-circus issues have nothing to do with Americans.
The last few days, I’ve curated my timeline so it doesn’t show political posts. Did you know that female bottlenose dolphins exile the adolescent males because they’re so rambunctious? When they leave, they go find puffer fish. They pass them around like basketballs. They squeeze the puffers just hard enough to release a toxin that makes them euphoric without killing them. It’s called “passing the puffer.” I think about people I haven’t checked on. I wonder how my aunt is doing. When I can’t fall asleep, I read about black holes. The world is extremely interesting. Politics isn’t.
Welcome to the normie club. (It’s oddly peaceful here). I came to the same realization a few years ago, when it dawned on me that I was getting desensitized to the constant drama of politics. It was always, “you need to care about what we tell you in the moment.” You need to care about this right now, and then suddenly a week later, no, actually you need to care about something else, forget about last week’s disasters. (Even though I definitely still cared about last week!) And the loudest thing in the room is often what makes you easiest to distract, it is often the bait. The volume is part of the manipulation.
And like you said, preaching to the choir is not necessarily going to make the biggest difference. Trying to reason with people online is usually futile too. So many are not there to think, to understand or have a real conversation. They are there to perform. A lot of it is ignorance, a lot of it is mental laziness, and a lot of it is ego fragility. They cannot change their mind because their identity is built on never being wrong. I also do not trust states of collective fever. They make people feel righteous and they make them stupid.
Meanwhile, in my own life, in my own neighbourhood, things are happening that affect me directly and there is something I can actually do about them. So I stopped doing politics online. I still vote and I keep a basic eye on reality, but I refuse to live inside the outrage cycle. If something truly urgent matters, it reaches me through real life. For the past few years I have been what you call a “normie,” focusing on my family, my friendships, my neighbourhood, and volunteering in my community. I haven’t changed the world, but I have made some difference where I actually live. It’s a satisfying way to live, at least for now.
Great post. Chimping on X has become less fun since I started building new institutions in the real world that I hope will actually make people’s lives better and richer. If all goes to plan, these places will have positive political effects down the road.