Good morning Hank it’s Tuesday.
So in addition to our
long running collaboration here on vlogbrothers, we have a
podcast Dear Hank & John where we answer listener
questions, provide dubious advice, and give people all
the week’s news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon.
Making the podcast is one of the highlights of my week
because it’s two uninterrupted hours with my brother.
And it has always been so joyful until 46 days ago when
someone asked a question that burrowed into my brain and
has refused to let me go.
A listener named Sarah wrote in
to say that 8 years earlier when she was diagnosed with asthma,
her doctor, a licensed physician, asked her how often she sneezed.
Sarah responded that she didn’t sneeze that much, just the
normal amount.
And then the doctor said, “sneezing is not normal.
I never sneeze.”
And then Sarah went on to say that for the last 8 years
every time she sneezes she thinks about this doctor who told her that
sneezing is not normal.
And now, having heard this story, every time
I sneeze I also think about this doctor.
In this respect I am not alone,
because since the podcast first aired I have heard from hundreds of people
who say that every time they sneeze they think sneezing is
not normal, I never sneeze.
I suppose part of what makes
this thing so sticky in my mind is trying to fathom
what this doctor thinks when they do sneeze.
Right like if you believe the sentence, “I never sneeze”
how do you make sense of the times when you do
sneeze?
Do you pass it off as a fluke?
Do you think
to yourself, “that wasn’t a real sneeze that was more of a
sneeze adjacent phenomenon.”
Or do you see your sneezing
as some sort of moral weakness or character failing to be hidden
from the public?
And part of the reason I can’t stop thinking
about this Hank is that you named this person Dr. NeverSneezer
Scrooge which is just such a perfect joke.
How could I ever
let that leave my brain.
But I think there’s something
else going on too, which is that ridiculous and absurd
and outrageous statements just stay with me.
They penetrate in a
way that carefully considered nuance statements don’t.
Like if this doctor had said, “sneezing can be one symptom of seasonal allergies
do you also experience a stuffy nose” I wouldn’t know about this doctor
and I certainly wouldn’t think about them every time I sneeze.
And in our attention economy, where the mere act of capturing
attention is on some level valuable, saying “I never sneeze” is certainly
going to capture more attention than like being a good doctor.
Similarly, people who say outrageous stuff online can
capture a lot of attention.
Like if you say Stalin was
underrated or that it isn’t necessary to wash your lower
legs or that Grease 2 is the canonical Grease movie you
will get lodged inside many people’s minds.
Now you won’t
be thought of in primarily a positive way but still there is
value to be found in saying the stupidest possible things
in the loudest possible way.
Which just to state the obvious,
is not a good way to organize an attention economy.
But that, to use doctor terms, is a diagnosis and not a treatment.
Because I don’t know the treatment.
How am I to free myself from thinking
“sneezing is not normal, I never sneeze,”
every time I sneeze?
Did I
make the world worse in albeit a very minor way by
sharing Sarah’s story of her ridiculous sneeze denying physician?
Am I making the world worse now by sharing that story with more
people via a Youtube video?
Those aren’t rhetorical questions.
I don’t know what to do about the fact that what grabs my attention in a crowded
information landscape is always going to be what looks scary or different
or outrageous or ridiculous.
I do realize that this is a lot of
weight to put on “sneezing is not normal I never sneeze” but I
genuinely dislike the fact that some random doctor saying
something ridiculous has reshaped my sneezing
experience forever.
Until quite recently I thought about the internet and IRL as
being fundamentally separate spaces.
Like when I was young, what I liked
about the internet was precisely that it was not IRL.
But in truth
there is no bright line between real life and cyberspace and the
outrageous ridiculousnesses we encounter whether online or off,
end up shaping the people we are and the world we share.
And I don’t know what to do about that.
Hank,
I’ll see you on Friday.