I Don't Want To Read Your Think Piece
With love, please be sillier
I’ve developed a love/hate relationship with Substack. The “love” part lies in all the interesting people and ideas that abound here. The hate part lies in the same thing—just with the addition of the sheer volume of it all. To the fault of no one, mind you—I understand that this is just the nature of the platform.
That being said, sometimes I’ll be scrolling through my homepage and my brain will feel—pardon the hyperbole—like it’s under siege by Think Pieces and words dripping with deep intellectual implications I’m meant to ponder, but which, quite frankly, I neither have the interest in nor the energy for.
Some might suggest I just don’t go on Substack at all, but that’s beside the point. (Thank you.) Because sometimes I do enjoy it.
However—
What I’d like more of is: a balance. Some more anecdotal pieces to break up the Big Think. Yes? Some more fun, silly things.
Where’s the SILLY? Where has it gone? We’ve lost the Silly. We need more Silly for Silly’s sake.
The Culture—it’s increasingly unable to leave well enough alone. Nothing can happen anymore without it being analyzed and scrutinized to its death. Obviously this isn’t unique to Substack—it’s everywhere, spread across the online sphere like a malignancy.
People grovel, foaming at the mouth, at the chance to respond or insert their opinion whenever and wherever they can—even in the most unserious places and in response to the most unserious things.
It doesn’t matter.
You could post the most innocuous tweet and someone will use it as an opportunity to climb up on their soapbox and pontificate about an issue that, by and large, never existed, makes no sense, and was entirely made up in their head. It’s quite rabid—this widespread compulsion to pick apart words and then purge, deconstruct, and remold them until the original sentiment is barely recognizable, if it’s even recognizable at all. Not everything (dare I say) needs to be dissected under the tenets of Critical Theory. You’ll live. Take a breath.
The only part of it all (Discourse / Think Piece culture) that I appreciate is that most of its worst offenders genuinely believe they’re coming off as erudite, contrarian Critical Thinkers when nine times out of ten all they’ve accomplished is unintentional comedy. And this is always deeply funny and satisfying. There’s something so delicious and ironic when an ill-formed idea is presented with serious intent. The person always looks like a fool. And that’s coming from someone who loves fools. (I am one.) But I like fools who know they’re one, who are in on the joke. I don’t like fools who earn the title by trying hard not to be or appear like one. Because now you’re just a fool in the most basic sense of the word—and there’s no fun in that.
To paint a picture: a few weeks ago, while I was watching the fifth episode of the most recent season of The White Lotus, I tweeted about how it was funny that so far into the season I still didn’t know the names of the three girlfriends played by Leslie Bibb, Carrie Coon, and Michelle Monaghan. I tweeted this, if I had to guess, two to five seconds after I thought it. It meant nothing more than what it was: a comment.
As it goes, it went somewhat viral.
A day or two later, I came across this tweet that had quoted it. It had something like 3,000 likes.
It said:
“at what point did it be come widely agreed upon that remembering the names of characters is a substantial reflection quality? its something i have never understood”
This knocked me out. Someone had in what appeared to be genuine earnest taken my obviously unserious remark and used it to wage some kind of intellectual commentary on something that, by the way, isn’t even clear. A debate over the politics of remembering character names? Equating remembering character names to what? What is “substantial reflection quality,” exactly? This person ended their tweet by saying: “its something i have never understood”. Good. Me either. Also (for what it’s worth): your use of ‘its’ should be ‘it’s.’
On the twilight edge of sanity, the darkness takes shape in the form of Think Pieces and Discourse.
There’s a proverb: let sleeping dogs lie. As Chaucer once put it: “It is nought good a slepyng hound to wake.”
I want more Silly. More Fun. More people who are Silly and Fun for Silly and Fun’s sake. (Thank you.)
Namaste.
*This, in its own way, has been a Think Piece. Hypocritical, grotesque, (etc.), but also meta. I regret nothing.*
I stopped my silly cause silly doesn’t work here with people who wouldn’t recognize silly if it danced one legged across their kitchen floor licked their toes, bit their bum and slapsticked em in the face with a wet fish.
This is serious business going on here, dontcherknow, Toodle Pip!
I’ve been feeling this exact way, and reading your piece felt like a wave of validation crashing over me. Lately, I’ve been sitting on an idea for a silly little essay—something like a personal crisis about whether I’ve accidentally become a film bro, a stereotype I absolutely loathe. But I keep hesitating to write it because it doesn’t “contribute” to the heavy conversation Substack’s algorithm seems to reward.
Your piece reminded me that I can just write what I want. That the urge to perform thoughtfulness is exhausting, and it’s okay to just be. So thank you—seriously—for voicing what I like to believe so many of us feel but rarely say out loud.