This is what I liked about the first season at head lasso. It was sincerity in a world of you know people who were trying to tear down one person's character and he refused to let go of his sincerity. But think about what that show was like it got released in the pandemic where everybody is desperate to like connect with something, so they're still doing the thing even if it's sincere. We're back to the 60s then where like we're craving the same thing from television and it just manifests in different forms.
We dive into David Foster Wallace’s sprawling 1993 essay “E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction.” How do TV and new forms of media keep their hold on us when we know at some level that they’re reinforcing our loneliness and passivity? That’s easy, Wallace says, post-modern cool. Flatter me, let me think we’re all in the joke together, give me “an ironic permission-slip to do what I do best whenever I feel confused and guilty: assume, inside, a sort of fetal position, a pose of passive reception to comfort, escape, reassurance.” But in the years since this essay, the TV landscape has completely transformed. Has it transcended its function as a surrogate companion for lonely people, or has it just found new ways to keep us isolated and passive?
Plus, we talk about the recent new SPSP guidelines and Jon Haidt’s recent essay on why he’s resigning from the organization. (Sorry, Jon!)
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