Here's an idea.
We're living in a culture of hyperbole
because everything is amazing.
[THEME MUSIC]
[DING]
A couple weeks ago, I was at a wedding.
And I was talking to someone I just met.
We were playing that normal, early-21st-century, size-you-up
game where we talk about the movies, TV shows,
and whatever else that we like.
Eventually, I said, oh, and I just
started watching "The Good Wife," which is true.
I have.
And he asked, oh, really?
Is it any good?
And then a strange thing happened,
because I like "The Good Wife."
I really do.
I think it's interesting and really well written,
and I think Julianna Margulies crushes it.
But I suddenly felt like whatever
gushing I was about to reflexively launch into--
(SPED UP IN HIGH PITCH) Dude, "The Good Wife" is so good.
It is maybe one of the best TV shows on television.
(SPEED INCREASES) It is so well written and the--
[INAUDIBLE]
--would be wholly non-convincing because over the course
of our conversation, we'd both each described
at least two other things as "the best" or "amazing."
Tasked now with explaining how good a show, which is actually
very good, really is, I found myself at a loss.
So grimly, slowly, with meaningful-- probably slightly
creepy-- eye contact, I just say to this person, oh, man.
Really, you've got to just watch it.
Having been so effusive about so many things, when confronted
with the requirement that I be genuinely effusive
about something, I found myself grasping.
Not wanting to literally shout about how much I
like "The Good Wife," I found the only way
to effectively state my infatuation was to, in fact,
understate it.
And so I started thinking about my impulse
to describe "Gravity Falls" as "the best," and "Kentucky Route
Zero" as "the best," and the new Flying Lotus record
and "Ancillary Justice" as "the best."
The best swordfish in the city.
The best.
A thing which is impossible because by definition,
there cannot be two or more "the bests."
Best friends forever.
Anyway, it's not just me.
There's lots of excited overstating, especially
on the internet, where the use of hyperbole is constant,
pervasive, suffocating.
There is so much hyperbole on the internet,
I literally cannot even.
We "literally" lots of things, actually,
that we do not literally "literally."
We live for this and die or are dead because of reasons.
Lots of stuff is actually the worst.
That idea is literally the greatest idea
I have ever heard in my life.
There are so many images, and videos, and animated gifs that
are the greatest thing ever.
You would think that with all of the ideas
and media floating around the inter-sphere in such close
proximity to one another that our willingness
to over-laud things would atrophy,
but it appears as though the opposite has happened.
It seems now that (SINGING) everything is awesome.
In a commentary piece about Richard Linklater film
"Boyhood" for the LA Times, film critic Kenneth Turan writes
that "'Boyhood' emphasized how much we live in a culture
of hyperbole, how much we yearn to anoint films and call them
masterpieces, perhaps because it makes our critical lives feel
more significant because it allows us to lay claim
to having experienced something grand and meaningful."
In a piece for Hyperallergic focused
on Andy Warhol and Jeff Koons, John Yau
echoes Turan's sentiment.
He says, "It's impossible to ignore
the reams of exaggeration I am bombarded
with on a daily basis, from blurbs attesting
to the gorgeous mastery to be found in a young poet's
first book, to the unrivaled brilliance of an artist's most
recent exhibition."
The culture of hyperbole that Turan and Yau are talking about
seems built upon our collective tendency
towards conspicuous consumption, especially when
it comes to culture.
It's not enough that something is good
and that you have experienced its goodness.
The goodness and your experience must fuse and trigger
a supernova that you then share with whatever audience
you have-- bright, white-hot awesomeness proclaiming,
have you seen the Koons exhibit at the Whitney?
He is literally a god.
And for the record, I am not, myself,
a huge fan of Jeff Koons.
[RINGING]
I find the statements about his godliness
to be greatly exaggerated.
This, I think, is also related to why standing ovations exist
and why the applause breaks in the State of the Union
have [APPLAUSE] gotten longer [APPLAUSE]
and a lon-- [APPLAUSE] -ger, and [APPLAUSE] also how BuzzFeed,
and Upworthy, and their billions of copycats
construct their click-baity headlines.
They not only advertise a piece of media,
but also your potentially very meaningful experience of it.
You click a thing and what happens
next is so unbelievable, you will never guess what it is.
It will totally blow your mind, and maybe even save your life.
When it hits, you will realize it is the perfect way
to deal with this totally unknown secret.
All of it, actual, literal, actually literal,
literally actual, 100%, no-holds-barred,
honest-to-goodness hyperbole.
I have a lot to say about click bait headlines,
and I will in another eventual episode.
But for now, I hope it suffices to say
they seem to me like the next natural progression
of advertising.
All kinds of sensationalist nonsense
has been plastered on all kinds of products
and new sources, of which BuzzFeed, et al.,
are weirdly some kind of hybrid, all in an attempt
to grab some reader or viewer and promise them
shocking results, or untapped knowledge,
or whatever for time immemorial.
But in a cultural and historical moment
where more of the people, and not just media sources,
find something to gain in advertising, that totally
unbelievable affect, it's a method
that feels appropriate for us to use as well.
The internet is awash with tools and techniques
for reinserting emotion into otherwise vague text.
And so now, alongside caps lock, emoticons, emojis,
animated gifs, in the internet language tool box,
we now also have overstatement, hyperbole.
Double but, let's not forget one very important aspect
of the popular use of exaggeration.
It is hilarious.
I have maybe not laughed harder in the last week,
and that is not an exaggeration, when @matthis, on Twitter,
suggested "I have lost my ability
toucan" as a favorite hyperbolic phrase.
It's fun to react to the mundane in exceptional and extreme
ways.
Did the barista get your order wrong?
He is literally the worst.
This day is literally the worst.
I can't.
It's over.
I'm done.
RIP me.
And we can't really claim it's unexpected either.
We've been on a slow road to this point for a while.
"Awesome," at one point, meant something that filled one
with awe. "Wonderful," with wonder. "Brilliance,"
something nearly blinding in its greatness.
As those words have become ones that we
use to describe not the amazing, but the quotidian--
awesome t-shirts, wonderful burgers, brilliant tattoos,
unbelievable action films.
Actually, no.
There are a lot of action films that
are literally unbelievable.
[GRUNTS]
[RATTLES]
Come on, villain.
It makes sense that we'd find other ways
to express our exuberance.
And extra points if it's hilarious.
Or I guess, the funniest thing you've ever heard.
Still, though, I can't help but wonder
about my interaction at the wedding
and where we go from here.
With the preponderance of things that
are "literally unbelievable" and more "bests"
than you can shake a stick at-- that's a lot of "bests."
If there are so many "bests," you can't even shake a stick,
that's just too many bests.
Are we doomed, ultimately, to struggle
with expressing real, actual, literal, unbelieving?
Or do we start to turn the dial back down, so that the new "oh,
my god-- I cannot even" becomes "yeah, I mean, I could,
but meh"?
What do you guys think?
Do we live in a culture of hyperbole?
And if so, do you see it affecting how you communicate?
Let us know in the comments.
And it would literally be the best thing in the world
if you were to subscribe.
[MUSIC - JOE ESPOSITO, "YOU'RE THE BEST AROUND"]
What charming and intelligent things
were said in the Idea Channel comment section last week?
Tune in literally right now to find out.
Let's see what you guys had to say about the 24-horror news
cycle.
First things first, a bit of news.
If you are watching this on Wednesday when it is published,
then I'm going to be on the Bee and PuppyCat
24-hour live stream tonight on the Cartoon Hangover YouTube
channel.
So you should watch that.
It's at 8:30 Eastern time.
I'm going to be there talking about Bee
and PuppyCat, and all kinds of other awesome stuff.
So yeah, we'll put a link to the Cartoon Hangover
channel in the description.
And second, some people have been checking in
to find out whether or not office hours is
a thing that's going to happen.
The answer is yes.
I'm just having a really difficult time
finding an appropriate place that is available
when I am not traveling.
It's turning out to be much more difficult than I
thought it was going to be.
But yes, office hours is a thing I really, really want to do.
So I'm going to try to figure it out before it gets,
like, really just terribly cold and snowy in New York.
OK, so now, on to comments.
JaycLeod and a couple other people
made the really great point that this tone that the 24-hour news
networks have adopted seems to be
a particularly American thing.
And Jayc uses the CBC'S reporting
on the terrible shooting that happened
in Ottawa as an example of the tenor
that Canadian news networks tend to adopt-- something
that is calmer, sticking more to the facts.
And I think that this is something we definitely
could have spent a little bit more
time on in the episode-- talking about how
this is a particularly American feature of our news.
But additionally, spvvvt asks the really great question
of whether or not Americans might watch more horror
films, more things that are horrific for entertainment.
And I think this is a great question.
I tried to figure out the answer, and I couldn't find it.
But if anybody knows, I would love some insight into this
because I think it's definitely related.
Digibro makes the really good point
that the social aspect that occurs
with a lot of this hyperbolic news reporting
is not that you are watching it together with someone else,
but that it kind of creates this cohesion in a group where you
can all come together and agree that the thing that you have
been told to fear by the news is, in fact, something
that is worth fearing.
And yes.
I mean, and I think that that's the nugget
of, I think, a lot of the problems when the news is
reported this way, right?
I mean, there's a lot of talk about the echo chamber.
I feel like this is a really overused phrase,
but I think this is one aspect of it.
Digibro also talk about how "The Daily Show" can
be seen as something that undercuts
all of this serious conversation around these things
that you should be very afraid of by showing that the news is,
in fact, constructed.
And yes, this is exactly why I love "The Daily Show."
readcomplain asks the really important question of, so what?
Like, what do we do now?
If this is the case, what is the proper response?
And yeah, this is something that I
wish we had a whole lot more time to talk about.
From my perspective, I think that this indicates
that we tend to think of the news
as having to compete in some way with the rest of television--
with scripted drama or reality TV-- in that in order
for it to be successful, it needs to be packaged
like entertainment.
And I am not convinced that we should be doing that,
or that it is the most useful thing.
I think that we should be putting our resources
towards indicating how and why the news, as a thing that
tells you what is happening in the world,
is useful as opposed to trying to sell it to people in the way
that we tend to do in America, which is to make it
look like entertainment, to use these same tactics
that entertainment does.
So yeah.
I mean, this is probably-- it's a whole episode
in and of itself, but this is was great question
and, yeah, something that I think
is really, really important to think about.
Anonymous Poster writes a comment
that actually includes a mention of one of my favorite films,
"Funny Games," that ends up in a really interesting place,
talking about the relationship between depictions
of vulnerability and empowerment on behalf of the audience.
And this is something that I didn't think about at all
and I think is really, really interesting.
I think that you can look at certain news networks
as claiming to empower their audience in some way
by giving them knowledge, by showing them,
this is what's happening in the world,
but that they actually disempower them in another way,
because that becomes then the only source
that these people feel as though is telling them
the truth about the world.
And I actually just read a really interesting post
about this that I'll put a link to in the doobly doo, that's
called something like, "How I Lost My Father to Fox News,"
and is all about how the way that these messages are
put together is empowering to the audience in one sense,
but sort of manipulative and disempowering in another sense.
But yeah, this was a really insightful and awesome comment.
omechron, I am absolutely on board
for a million-participant Shadowrun game.
However-- I mean, you need a lot of D6s for Shadowrun generally.
I think we're going to need all of the D6s-- like, all of them.
This week's episode was brought to you
by the hard work of literally the best and most talented
editing team in all of New York City.
We have a Facebook, an IRC, and a subreddit link
to those in the doobly doo.
And if you missed it, I now have a podcast.
It's called "Reasonably Sound," which
is kind of like Idea Channel, but about sound and audio only.
Also a link to that in the doobly doo.
And the Tweet of the Week come from @zoetopaz, who points us
towards a Vulture piece about a grown person who watches
their first horror film ever, and it is "The Texas Chainsaw
Massacre."
I cannot imagine what that's like.
I mean, now I can because I've read it, but it's still-- what?
Wow.
[THEME MUSIC]
[DING]