Apophasis, tweets and details for tomorrow’s Salon, which will be MICF Opening Night Morning

Not to make this an “I did a tweet and…” kind of rant. (But I am in fact making that kind of rant, and the previous sentence was me deploying the rhetorical technique of apophasis or paralypsis, which is where you say you’re not going to do a thing and by saying you’re not, you do. A fave.)

All of which to/not to say:

I did a tweet. I did it because I thought it was a bit clever and slightly funny, but not necessarily clever or funny enough to use anywhere else (the only reason to do a tweet).

Oh no, we’ve lost another good man to “having always been a bad man”

Said the tweet. Which was you know, a moderately pleasing jokelet, followed by some slight private concern that people would think I was being sexist about men or suggesting that non-men aren’t also capable of being horrible. And then I went and did life and baby things until some time later when I checked my phone. The tweet had not gone viral or been much responded to, which is what most tweets don’t, but suddenly I had a bunch of DMs asking whether I am throwing my hat in the ring about this man or that man, assuming they knew which particular man I must be talking about - each suggesting a different particular man.

I apologised to those who thought I was being topical. I said I was being general. Unfortunately, I implied, what had happened was that I was being so precisely general that it came across as specific.*

I try desperately to resist the urge to be topical. Being publicly topical, which these days more or less means entering The Discourse (however sassily or successfully) feels a bit like losing to me. It’s like … succumbing to the mechanic of the algorithm. The algorithm has a singular goal - it is programmed to colonise your attention and seize your will - optimised to tell your gut instinct how vitally important it is to your in-group survival to form an opinion and publicly position yourself with that opinion in relation to the daily textbook’s moral exercise.

Don’t get me wrong, many of the issues that rise to the top of the day’s attention soup are incredibly important issues, or touch on incredibly important questions of ethics or power or historical fact or science or law or free will. It’s why they are so profoundly powerful in entrapping our thoughtscape. I just resent being assigned which one to care most about on any given day. I didn’t like school assignments and this feels similar in its sudden emphasis on delivering results. Quick! Four Tweets on Historical Antisemitism By Close of Business Today!

It feels a bit like being trained to produce a thing by a teacher who will resent having to mark it. Except without the underpinning premise that I’m getting better at something.

Whatever good The Daily Discourse does, (and that is a totally interesting and important and arguable question, with possible answers ranging from ‘actively prevents the energy used in online arguments from going towards concrete action’ to ‘is a vital vector for social change and education’), it ALSO, without a human navigator, steers our attention from one thing to another, cultivates rage, resentment, a feeling of being beleaguered and besieged by your enemies whose opinions are sushi-trained past your face in a parade of infuriating wrongness, while the feeling grows that if you don’t catch the wave with your opinion-mates, they won’t be your friends any more.

You might think, “Why, isn’t your job as a satirist to be topical?” To which I wouod think, “Oh god what a nightmare, I hope not.” But really, I mean maybe? But viscerally I feel like my job as a satirist (when I’m being one, which is actually mainly only when I’m being paid for it and not as a fun thing I choose to fiddle with in my spare time. If I’m not working, I actively try not to read the news most of the time) ought to be to be structural. Possibly witty, and ideally also you know, funny. (Very pleased I decided to use “to be to be” there. I love a delicious double-up. It feels poetical.)

Anyway, no conclusions, as ever. EXCEPT

* actually, I WAS prompted to write the tweet by hearing about a particular man and a particular tweet. I just didn’t want to give their naughtiness more airtime.

Xx

A

I’ll see you tomorrow for the salon! I’m sorry it wasn’t today, but I was so shattered that I called dishwashing liquid “cleaning sauce” so I wouldn’t have been good value.

The salon link for tomorrow morning 30 March 8.30am Sydney time is: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88442622934