Peter Damian was a Benedictine monk in the 11th century, he is known for a lot of noble things like his knowledge of the bible and his early writings on reform in the church – but perhaps mostly, he is known as a big proponent of self-flagellation. That is to say: if you want to go to heaven, hit yourself. This gentleman said only those who shared in the sufferings of Christ could be saved. If our guy was right, I am in great shape to make it to heaven. Not because I physically attack myself, but because I have my time-tested method of daily penance suffering: Instagram.
“hard launch”
I can’t stand this thing, nor what it does to me. Sure, it’s the bad algorithm that thinks I’m a huge Cleveland Browns fan, or the advertisements for the same tennis ball-scented candle it’s insisted on showing me daily for the past 3 months. But it’s mostly what people I know post. Everyone trying to be unimpeachable, trying to be beautiful, and really, trying to be perfect.
I have this urge to do the opposite or show that I don’t care about putting a lot of effort into it to appear like more of an individual than everyone else. To show I’m really cool. But therein lies the issue, that’s not individual nor genuine (nor cool.) That’s entirely me posturing as ‘not caring’ for the same reason the people posturing that they are perfect do: the affirmation of others. Every action and reaction is in some way to keep the audience in mind, and actively trying to avoid this is an excellent way of being swallowed by it. I love the idea of truly not caring but the reality? Have you been in a library with someone who doesn’t care what others think? Perhaps you’ve seen one on your commute. Not exactly your favorite people I imagine. Even myself, someone who doesn’t like this status quo, am reduced to being a non-genuine reactionary. And thus it’s almost inescapable that the internet is a land with lots of posturing and a drought of genuine content. And even with all of that, I can’t get myself off the damn app.
There are exceptions, however.
On occasion, I’ll find these beautiful gems of real humanity that slip through. My favorite example is the TikTok channel ‘Eddielovese.” The owner – Eddie -has invented what he likely assumes is a hilarious bit. He hands his phone to random strangers around his town and has them say, on camera, “Eddie, what are you doing at [Location] with your shirt off??” and then it cuts to him (stranger filming) and he says “NO! I don’t want to!” and that’s it. About two sentences above I heavily debated using the term “bit” here and I hope you can see why: this is not even vaguely resembling any sort of humor that has ever existed. It is aggressively unfunny, but that’s not the point.
In the process of executing his “Bit”, Eddie reliably catches moments of humanity. Moments of people completely disoriented by the shirtless man trying to get them to film a weird and unfunny bit, but they want to help.
They’re trying to say the line right despite their total confusion. They’re trying to film him correctly even with a lack of any social guardrails. Who is this guy? Why is he asking me to do this? But despite all of that, they see a fellow human being who needs a hand, and they help. You can see all of this play out in every video. The strangers can’t help but plaster their navigation of this situation on their faces. They’re real human reactions with the subtlety of a billboard. Even afterward, they almost certainly have no idea what that was for. These are moments often lost on social media because they’re short, spontaneous, unrehearsed, and, other than our strange friend Eddie, usually not recorded.
My initial aim with these writings and with my website was to be ‘genuine’. As I’ve put it together, I’ve more and more decided that this is a bad goal. Partially for the reasons I began this post with: the more you try to be genuine the more you invite the risk that you’re not as a result. And partially because, as Eddie has shown, sincerity is not an attainable goal but a byproduct of investing time in developing ideas you love. As Rick Ruben notes – “If we get out of the way and let the art do its work, it may yield the sincerity we seek. And sincerity may look nothing like we expected.” So I’m just going to develop and share ideas I love here and see what happens. Maybe that’s a great genuine reflection of me as a person, maybe not. Either way, I hope you take something of value from it.
Colin