I question things (because that’s what we should all do)
“Independent inquiry is needed in your search for truth, not dependence on anyone else’s view or a mere book.”
— Bruce Lee
For my sins, I decided to “take Twitter seriously” and tweet every day for over a year. That allowed me to build a “following”, an audience, or whatever term you would like to use to describe that. It also allowed me to see the darker side of all this. The addiction. My addiction. Your addiction. Other people’s addiction. The banality of content. The new and much more nuanced hustle culture, a culture of people telling people to tell people things as often as possible and across as many mediums as possible. The endless scrolling of meaningless nothings dressed up as meaningful somethings.
I can’t fully describe to you how deep I was into the online hustle culture game. I was trotting out tweet after tweet after video after podcast about consistency. I listened to Gary Vaynerchuk in the gym as inspiration for a workout. I devoured self-improvement book after self-improvement book to optimise myself (but primarily to get ideas for more tweets). The only thing I never did was read Atomic Habits, and that was because I kept getting told that the things I said were as if I’d already read it.
I was making podcasts every day, tweets every day, writing every day, blogging every day, building fake relationships on twitter every day, pure hustling with a capital H. As Sum-41 once said, I was in too deep.
I was in too deep, but I was still questioning things. I’ve always questioned things, as early as I can remember. As soon as I learned to walk, I was asking my dad what the traffic light colours meant. Upon learning stop meant red, I asked him why stop was red. Upon learning the answer to that, I would ask why again. I was insufferable as a child and I remain insufferable as an adult. I’ve always questioned things.
Smash cut to my realisation.
When I came out of my brief obsession with online hustle culture and I discovered Thomas J Bevan, I began questioning the order of things ever more seriously. I started reading The Image by Daniel Boorstin, Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman. Modern day social critics that manage to present their cynicism with optimism. I try—sometimes successfully I hope—to imitate them.
I occasionally attempt to share my optimistic cynical takes on Twitter, but alas the platform doesn’t do a good job of nuance. As a result, I get criticised for my critical tweets. Yes, the irony of receiving criticism about criticism isn’t lost on me either.
What I’d like to hone in on today is criticism itself, or at least as I understand it. It might not be immediately obvious as to why I’d want to write about this in a series about c*ntent, but I hope you’ll have worked it out by the end.
Yer see, content is inherently un-critical. It might have a hot take (excellent engagement tactic), it might have an offensive comment (superb engagement tactic), or it might be calling out somebody else’s content (the best engagement tactic). But it isn’t criticism. It’s a reaction. A pulling off of the hand from a hot pan, so to speak. Content isn’t reasoned because it requires an “engagement” to be generated. People don’t tend to get angry when you present them with a reasoned argument.
Yer see, the “critique” I’m more familiar with has the dictionary definition of this:
“A method of disciplined, systematic analysis of a written or oral discourse“.
A good critic backs up their points systematically in a disciplined way to arrive at a point that they would like to make. It isn’t just saying “this is all shit”. It’s saying “some of this is shit, and here’s why I think it is”. It’s saying “I think some of this might be shit and here’s my thinking so far”.
Real, proper critique is different. So I’d be lying if I didn’t say I get a little bit ticked off when people on Twitter tell me to “cheer up” or “stop criticising” or “where’s your work” or any of these cheap shots.
My work is my critique. My investigation and questioning of a society we seem to have become ill-equipped at handling, me included. Stories of my navigation around this strange new world full of surface-level insights and pieces, not wholes.
It’s a distinctly modern phenomena where we believe it’s our right to have a social feed only full of things we agree with. For me, this is my idea of a nightmare. A timeline full of things just slowly confirming the things I believe in that are probably incorrect. A timeline lacking questions and teeming with positive affirmations.
I question things. I say things with these questions. I try to back up the things I say. I try to make myself available to chat about these things I say. I try to prove myself wrong. And sometimes I’m wrong. That’s OK too. That’s what a good critic does. I question things because we should question things. We should all question things. When Bruce Lee taught martial arts to his students, he taught them to never blindly accept what he said. He taught them to question him. To find their own way and their own truth, because he believed the only truth that existed was a personal one. Without questioning the techniques Lee presented, his students couldn’t accept them as their reality.
Moreover—and to finally get to my point—questioning is what good content does. That’s what good content has to do. Good content makes you think, not react. Good content makes you ponder your viewpoint on an interesting topic, not infuriate you so much that you smash out an angry tweet.
“Artists in all fields must learn to observe choicelessly, to digest their observations, and to express them in their work.”
— Bruce Lee