Author: jimhodgson

I like Malcom Gladwell’s work because I want to feel smart without doing the work of research or analysis. Remember when he dropped that 10,000 hours knowledge bomb? People devoted their lives to that pup like it was god’s own pinned tweet. Well, old Gladdie’s gone and fired a shot at Satire. In doing so he has exited the universe of absurdity, through the Oort cloud of hubris, and is making his way into interstellar bullshit.

I’m late to this, but in his podcast, Revisionist History, (Episode 10, “The Satire Paradox” Warning: bizarre-o site design) Gladwell asserts that satire not only doesn’t solve any problems, it sometimes makes them worse.

He cites as one example Stephen Colbert’s show The Colbert Report, positing that liberals watching the show saw Colbert’s over-the-top blowhard character and thought “That’s so true! Those Fox News Pundits are so full of shit!” and conservatives thought “Hooray! That Colbert guy is owning the libs!”

Point being, if you’re a liberal comedy writer and you think you’re striking at the heart of hypocrisy, sometimes hypocrites get a laugh too. They know how full of shit they are and they’re getting away with it.

It hurts when that happens. I was invited once to participate in a “roast” of some local celebrities whom I judged to be kinda racist. I went to their show, stood up in front of their crowd, and pointed out that it was weird that in a city which is predominately non-white, not a single person of color had chosen to attend the show. I expected to bomb after that comment because I thought people would look around the room and think, “Wow, he’s right.” Instead, it got a big laugh, almost as though that group of people knew they were being kinda racist and maybe kinda liked it.

Chalk that one up to my naiveté, because, when applied to myself, I prefer “naiveté” over “dipshittery.”

People often criticize satire, and comedy of all stripes, for merely making fun of issues without proposing a solution. That’s valid criticism if you’re in couples therapy with your wife and she’ll only communicate by doing Dangerfield one-liners. But satire provides a great service to the public conversation that Gladwell is overlooking: it describes the pieces at play.

Right- and left-leaning zealots are always going to read the news. But the difference in a democracy is made not by the zealots but by the middle. By and large, The People do not like things like hypocrisy, bigotry, corruption, but in order to get them to the polling places to do something about those issues, people have to first be made aware.

My impression is that you’re more likely to get The People to read a The Onion article, to watch The Daily Show or Last Week Tonight, than you are to get them to read a Reuters news piece. It’s easier to digest entertainment than unvarnished fact, and Malcom Flippin’ Gladwell should know that, given that his books, and his career, are based on simplifying stories to make them fit a narrative. I mean, come on, dude. You’re shitting on your own bailiwick!

I do not, nor should anyone, fault Gladwell for making his books interesting. That’s his job. But for him to fault comedy writers for turning reality into comedy is as useful as him yelling pop lyrics into a shitty hat.

Come on, Gladwell. You’re a good writer and a smart person who has been a journalist for a long time. Do better.

Note: Forbes’ Jeff Bercovici also jumped Gladwell for this one.

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If you know me from my mountain climbing books, you know that I try to inject a little humor into mountain climbing, which is a sport whose practitioners often take themselves too seriously. Let me be clear: you should not ever take yourself seriously, especially not when in the great outdoors. But you should respect the land to the point of religious zealotry.

Someone who was attempting to publicize their new social media and attendant cryptocurrency sent three climbers to the summit of Everest with a thumb drive they say is valued at $50,000. The men were told to leave the thumb drive there as a publicity stunt for the new crypto. A man died in the attempt. That makes me unspeakably sad, even though I never met him.

Beyond that man’s senseless passing, it bothers me that the company claims their surviving climbers “conquered” Everest. Humans no more conquer Everest than an ant conquers my driveway. I suppose to the ants the driveway might be significant, but to me it’s just a flat surface where I park ageing used cars. The ant, the driveway, and myself are all so insignificant to the Earth as to disappear from calculability. It is impossible to “conquer” something that will never, ever notice you.

Secondly, just because you say something is good–say, worth $50,000–doesn’t mean that it is. I have explained to my wife many times that my dance moves are art, but she insists upon asking me if I am having a stroke. We’re expected to understand that if the currency’s designers say it’s worth $50,000 it must be so? Guys. Are you having a stroke?

Even if the thumb drive these guys left was worth what they say it is, it costs more than $50,000 to get to the summit of Everest. You might be able to get to the summit for less money if you already have all the gear, fitness, and knowledge, but even so you’ll be gone from your home for months, which means you’ll not be earning any money. Also, like all mountaineers, you’ll be at the mercy of the weather. You might never set a foot above 4000m.

This fundamental lack of parity between what crypto people say their stuff is worth and the real world is, like, the most cryptocurrency thing ever.

A friend emailed me this morning to ask about some sort of blockchain social media thingy which claims to pay authors in a cryptocurrency that has just been invented. This is the digital equivalent of reading your work out loud in a bus station in return for Skee-ball tickets.

I don’t mean to sound like a cryptocurrency snob, but if someone was offering Bitcoin I might be able to turn that into actual money. Then again, my first question would be, “But why can’t you just pay me in actual money?”

I think the ideas behind cryptocurrency, like security and de-centralization, are good ones, but it seems now that every day someone invents a new coin and a dumb way to promote it. It makes me sad that someone died alongside this frivolity.

You know what doesn’t need promoting, ever? Value.

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