A Thing Was Said: The Indefatigable Self-assurance of Metamodern Jackassery

Photo used via Creative Commons license courtesy Paxson Woelber, The Alaska Landmine

A thing was said.

That’s it. That’s the tweet. The Facebook post. The lower third graphic on the newscast. The keyword for SEO on written pieces online. The buzzword that will now be inserted into future conversations so that the right kind of people know you are talking the right kind of way about the right kind of thing. Trends will flow forth, opinions will be opined, comments will be commentated.

It is amazing how much of our modern news media environment, when you really get down to it under the blaring, caterwauling, and remonstrations, revolves around “a thing was said.”

The actual thing being said is of second, maybe third, perhaps even a lower rank of importance. Much like the MacGuffin in an action movie, “A thing was said” was just the thing to advance the plot. To get to the clever one-liner. To advance the love story everyone sees coming. To set up the plot twist the same group of everyone also saw coming. We are going to get to the ending, dang nab it, and if we have to straighten out some logic curves to get there, fine. Thus, the MacGuffin becomes the writer’s friend: smoothing tight corners of not-quite-sensical stories, making straight the way for the protagonist, hastening the ending.

“A thing was said” is the notification for the cultural and political discourse to commence. Like the wailing siren calling the volunteer fire department to come in a hurry pre-pager and cell phone, or warning of a tornado, or an air raid of some enemy like an old timey movie. Katy bar the door, gather the children, arm yourselves for interwebs battle, Google big words to lob from your tweeting trebuchet at them wrong folks over there. Whereas a town might gather to make sandbags to hold off a flood from their community, the tribes gather online with followers and email lists ready to thrust and parry over the thing that was said. A thing was said, and it must be responded too. And the response will create more response.

Behold the new circle of internet commenting life, far more wisdomous than any Elton John song, bolder and garnering more attention than a mandrill going all Omoro with a lion cub on top of a rock outcropping, and more viscerally satisfying than Tim Rice’s pleasant and well-meaning yet ultimately vapid lyrics.

The process goes thusly:
A Thing was said.
Folks react to the thing that was said.
Folks react to the folks that reacted to the thing that was said.

So far so good. Normal human stuff. But wait…like a Ronco commercial, there is more.

The next steps are where modern technology and good, old fashioned human indulgence meets to create the current toxic mix some of those among us brew up on social media, news media, and elsewhere on the interwebs. The reactions become much more important than the original “a thing was said” and — in fact — become the causation for continuation. Like the MacGuffin in the action movie, “a thing was said” is quickly brushed past because it’s only needed as a jumping off point to the next thing. And the next thing in internet debates over “a thing was said” is to repurpose the reaction to justify your own reaction.

This is the beauty of the modern method. Which isn’t really all that modern; it’s just with technology this particular strand of human behavior is louder, faster, stronger, more immediate, and monetized. If the crusader — either for or against the thing that was said, it matters not and works ambidextrously — gets a strong reaction, that reaction in and of itself then proof that the initial take on “a thing was said” was not only valid, but needed, and didn’t go far enough. The pushback and outrage frees the practitioner of this method of discourse from ever needing to worry about perspective or context. “If you are getting flak, you must be over the target” they will proudly boast. The target, like the thing that was said, is now secondary to your flak acquiring.

It makes for a tight, fool-proof logic loop for those who careen from this “thing that was said” to the next “thing that was said,” because the “thing that was said” can just be slotted into the on-going worldview of making the right enemies, ticking off the right people, and keeping oneself at the center of it all. If something is outrageous, you must be right. If “the right kind of people” are mad, you must be right. If anyone not named you fails to see the brilliance of your take on “a thing was said” they clearly don’t get it. Just keep fighting, keep attacking, keep doubling down, keep getting flak so you can claim you are over the target. If less is more, just imagine how much more more would be, right? You never have to be wrong if you are always under attack, you see, because now everything you do is self defense.

The truth is, reaction in this pattern to a thing that was said is not free thinking, or strategery, or even an operational ideology. It’s fully reactionary, self-serving, and masturbatory. Far from “debate” which this sort of thing is passed off as from the “debate me, bro” school of deep thoughts with Jack Handy, a better nomenclature is that of base level, general purpose, boring-as-beige jackassery. Stoking outrage for the sake of getting more outrage, for the sake of making yourself feel important is jackassery. Constantly insulting anything and everything without ever building up or reaching out to anyone not named you is jackassery. Making all of these things your main persona online for fame, fortune, and glory doesn’t make you the influencer you think you are. It just makes you a highly followed, tagged, and trending jackass.

Jackassery is easy. If fully committed to, jackassery not only works against all foes, but pulls in everyone and everything around it, becoming the gravitational pull of all that enters its orbit. With everything seemingly revolving around them, the jackass’s self-assurance become impenetrable, for just look at all this activity surrounding them that is about them. But contrary to the jackass’s perspective, it doesn’t make them the center of the universe. It makes them a black hole, pulling in, crushing, and tearing everything around them until finally the whole ungodly mess collapses in on itself under its own weight and disappears, leaving nothing behind but a void to mark that one time something was there that is no more.

Therefore, the choice of the discerning is clear: There is nothing to be gained in making “a thing was said” into a death spiral that consumes you totally. It is amazing how much of our modern news media environment, when you really get down to it under the blaring, caterwauling, and remonstration, revolves around “A thing was said” reactionary jackassery. But the truly remarkable part is all that it takes to stop the cycle is instead of going all in on “a thing was said”, just go “huh”, and move on about your day. Like a tree falling in the forest, was an outrage that wasn’t raged about online ever real to start with? Was jackassery without a hallowed place in the “What’s Happening” tab of the Twitter dot com really real, or was it just a social construct like Delaware, or a conspiracy theory like birds.

We could at least try it. Just to shake things up.