Culture Is a Supply-Side Issue

You have to go looking for Atticus Finch

Photo courtesy of Gareth Ellis

I read an interesting post from a fellow Substack writer named Lazaros Giannas. The note reads:

Why are people like Peterson, Zizek, Mr. Beast, and others, despite their mediocrity, so popular? Those who believe they are popular because this is what people simply like, that their popularity is simply “demand-driven”, are very mistaken. There is no doubt, of course, that people do make choices. However, the choices they make are influenced by all sorts of things, many of which people have no control over.

In further comments, I discovered that part of what Giannas was talking about were algorithms and other tech- and platform-driven forces that influence what we see. And in the case of loud, controversial personalities (which include all of Giannas’s examples), those are what the platforms, the tech, show us.

Because those personalities make people click things and watch things and put text on the screen. They engage people emotionally — not the way great cinema engages us, but the way panic and war engage us. And all of this activity means these platforms sell more ad space and earn more money for shareholders. The incentive for these platforms (and for all media) is not what is best for the viewer, but what drives the highest numbers.

And that often means that what media platforms are incentivized to do is exactly what is worst for the viewer.

In other words, a lot of the most “popular” personalities in our culture, no matter how mediocre they are, are brought to us by the sponsor of engagement. That includes all kinds of emotions and judgments, not just love or adoration. Not just “demand.” You can get just as many clicks from people hating you or making fun of how irrelevant you are as you can from people loving you. In fact tech platforms these days seem quite purposefully designed so that those we hate are shown to us most often. Because hatred is an excellent way to keep someone glued to a screen.

And besides, the sick joke of “engagement” is that by leaving a comment about how irrelevant someone is, you make them more relevant. You add to their numbers. The only tool we have is to ignore things we don’t like — to not spend our attention. But that’s very difficult to do when our entire environment is designed to piss us off. The internet has conditioned us to have an opinion about everything, and to feel a compulsive, limbic-system-hijacking need to share it.

But this whole question about specific personalities and algorithms also got me interested in culture itself as a supply issue versus a demand issue, the same way that various economics problems present a supply issue versus a demand issue.

I think culture itself is largely, if not mostly, a supply issue. To use Giannas’s examples:

Nobody, or very few people, would ever ask specifically for a cartoon-faced content creator who hosts weird challenges for money (MrBeast). We didn’t conjure him by wanting or needing him; he simply appeared.

Very few people would ever ask for Sylvester the cat in the form of a rambling Marxist philosopher (Slavoj Žižek).

And very few people would ever ask specifically for an avuncular meaning-obsessed psychologist to give them rules for life (Jordan Peterson).

Similarly, very few people would ever ask for a self-righteous, completely incompetent, abusive alpha male wannabe to teach them how to feel masculine. But we got Andrew Tate anyway. And people simply pay attention because he’s there. People pay attention because they despise him.

People pay attention because others are paying attention.

This is how the internet works, and it’s also how all of culture works. (Or if you prefer, “pop” culture — although the lines between the two are very blurry.) People appear and start doing things, then other people start talking about them and the things they’re doing, and then they become cultural fixtures. Not because they deserve to be, but because they’re being discussed. Because they’re on people’s lips and minds.

Jordan Peterson hasn’t been a useful public figure in seven years. But everybody keeps talking about him because everybody keeps talking about him. It’s a momentum issue, not a demand issue. It’s hard for a wound to heal when it’s still throbbing. Similarly, it’s hard for a cultural fixture to disappear when it keeps appearing in conversation.

Sometimes in economics, people simply buy what’s on the shelf… because they want to spend. People are addicted to spending money. Similarly, people have twenty four hours of attention per day, and they’re going to give it to something. So, culturally, sometimes we get what we want; other times we simply busy ourselves with what is available. We learn to want what we get. We don’t like Andrew Tate or Elon Musk because they’re good people; we like them because they’re what’s on the shelf.

And the shelf is stocked by forces we have little to no control over. The shelf is stocked by algorithms and incentives and anger and the fickle appetites of the public.

My biggest problem with American politics, as it is with many people I’ve spoken to, is very simple: there aren’t any candidates I want to vote for. Every candidate we get for president these days is a total circus, and I can’t do anything to make better candidates appear. It seems every single election is a “lesser of two evils” play, and that speaks volumes about where we are as a culture and as a democratic system. We’re empty. We have nothing to offer ourselves other than circuses. Or is it circi?

Imagine you live in a small town where you want your son to get involved in some activity. Just so he has something productive to do with his time, and so he maybe learns some skills. He joins the local martial arts gym.

You also hope that your kid can find some slightly older kid who can take him under his wing. It’d be cool if your kid found a mentor. Unfortunately, the only person at the gym near your child’s age is an older teenager who happens to drink whiskey and smoke cigarettes. So it’s not great. This is pretty much not what you wanted.

But then again, your choices are pretty limited in this situation: you live in a small town. You can either let your child be around the bad influence, or you can tell him that he can’t go to the gym at all. (Or you can try telling him “go to the gym, but don’t spend any time with that Bad Young Man”, which your kid will immediately and spitefully disregard, placing you right back at options A and B.)

So even though you wanted an excellent and well-behaved mentor for your child, you sort of have to take what you can get or take nothing at all. The fact that you want an excellent mentor for your teenage son does not make one appear. Which is why parents often have such a hard time trying to control teenagers’ behavior: you, as a parent, can’t make better friends appear for your child. You have to bear the agonizing compromises of letting your child hang out with whoever is available and likes them. Which is usually not that many people.

This is how culture works too. We are not shaped by the influences we need, or by the influences that we want, or by the influences that we crave for our children. We are shaped by the influences that are available. That’s one reason that I believe religion was a net good for our society: it created a lot of insanity, but as an institution, as an influence, it usually did more good than harm. And it certainly did more good than a child growing up with no stable influences. I’m sorry, but God was better than Instagram.

I have heard many wise people say that you need to choose where you live very carefully. The three biggest decisions you’ll ever make are who you marry, what you work on, and, curiously, where you live.

At first when I heard people talk about geography as a cornerstone of good living, I thought it sounded ridiculous. There are great people everywhere.

But that’s sort of not true, and it’s also not really the point.

The point is, culture is not universal. At all. Culture is an acute phenomenon that exists in times and places. And it’s very, very difficult to make a place you’re in “better.” If you’re a truly exceptional person, you can have a dramatic impact on the people and institutions around you. But most people, by definition, are not exceptional. So it’s easier to just move.

For example, if you want to be Mormon, it’s very difficult to get the people around you to overhaul their beliefs, avoid coffee, and let you have multiple wives. It’s easier to just move to Utah, where they’re already doing all of that.

If you’re the kind of person who wants to start a software business, discuss modern philosophers, and find investors willing to take a chance on you, it’s going to be very hard to accomplish any of that in Iowa. It’s easier, although dramatically more expensive, to just move to San Francisco. Because that’s what goes on in San Francisco. That’s where the supply is of what you need. It does no good to sit in Iowa demanding it.

You’re never going to convince the public not to like stupid things. Because the public is a machine that amplifies what is loudest. The public is a machine that likes stupid things. Things that, if you’re the kind of person who wants great culture and real heroes, often aren’t worth paying attention to.

This is one of many reasons I insist that adults read books. If you’re the kind of person who can read, you must. Because if you allow the public to decide who your heroes are, they’ll give you Batman and Deadpool. Those aren’t real heroes. Real heroes are subtle. A real hero is Atticus Finch. He is culture, he is virtue. He is what real adults aspire to be. The bad news is, you have to go looking for him. He’s not something the fickle appetites of the public are going to give you. And he is most assuredly not something the tech platforms are going to put on your feed. Unless someone puts sunglasses and a cigarette on him and turns him into a meme.

You’re going to do a better job of influencing the world around you if you’re a reader than if you’ve seen all of the latest movies and memes.

Part of surviving in the digital age is a willingness to be a nomad. To go in the online world where culture is better. Better for now. Better for the time being. Better for a certain set of values. Which is why I am enjoying Substack as a social platform so much at the moment. The culture is vibrant, friendly, and healthy. Substack makes good culture available.

But what I can say with certainty is that Substack will eventually succumb to the same ad-, -algorithm-, and shareholder-driven incentives that rot all other platforms. Because that’s inevitable when you have shareholders who want better returns. Better returns need higher numbers, and higher numbers require compulsive controversy, and compulsive controversy means bad culture.

And once Substack rots, we can find the next fire to sit around. And then again and again. There is no platform that will last forever. They can last for a while, but we have to line up our demand with the available supply. We have to get better at finding where good culture is, and then demanding more of it. Instead of just buying whatever is on the shelf.

Drink some water and don’t scroll through shit you don’t even care about.

JR

“Before I can live with other folks, I’ve got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.” - Atticus Finch, To Kill a Mockingbird