14 Comments

I'm so glad Carter recommended you. We're all finding each other in these jungles, somehow. Like Twain, the reports of our death were greatly exaggerated.

The poisoned pill at the heart of celebrity, and of clout-chasing in general, does indeed seem to be loneliness. Social media seems to oddly amplify it, like we're all astronauts stranded on distant moons in far-flung systems, trying to pretend like we're neighbors dropping by for a friendly chat.

I don't think we can keep it up for long. A sea change is coming. Hopefully we'll all throw a party -- a real one -- when it does.

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I love your description of astronauts stranded light-years away from one another, telling themselves they're neighbors. That's exactly how it feels. And I definitely hope you're right about a sea-change. I think a lot of us feel it. I just hope there are enough of us to force the shift on a large scale.

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I think it's not the quantity, but the quality. The good guys are always outnumbered, but also stronger.

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I think you're right about that.

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I'm not sure about that ... I feel like the good guys vastly outnumber the really bad ones ... It's just the hordes of sleeping normies in the middle, who are hypnotically entranced into miniondom. But they're not bad. Just lost.

No question the quality of the good guys is generally much higher than the minions, however.

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To be fair, i only said they were outnumbered, not by who or what. I tend to agree that the "hypnotically entranced" make up the bulk of those who outnumber the good. But that's also a description of Mao's Cultural Revolution, or of zombie hordes. Their victims are no less dead.

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Extremely true.

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Facts.

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Dunbar's number sets a limit on the number of people you can know well. That also implies that there's only a certain amount of fame to go around - it's a scarce resource, conserved over time. It can be redistributed but not created. Another implication is that one pays a price for hoarding fame. The imbalance of many knowing you well, when you know them not at all, creates a kind of alienation all its own.

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Exactly. The idea that everyone can be famous is impossible. When everyone is an influencer, nobody is. Yet, when everyone *feels* and acts like an influencer, they all experience the isolation of the lifestyle.

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With all of the induced narcissism and narcissistic wounding that implies.

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Yes. Which is very unfortunate. Induced narcissism is a sad but very real phenomenon.

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We've all been given an object lesson in that over the last decade.

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💯

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