We are horrible, farting monsters (and we're also pretty okay sometimes)
[For the TL;DR version, scroll on down to the bold block quote from Nick Offerman, which is the main thing I wanted to share with you today.]
I’m quickly shifting away from big-box social media (think Facebook, Twitter, Insta, Snap, Tik, Linked, etc.) and enjoying Substack more and more. The Substack Reader app is fantastic. I have it on my iPad.
It brings me back to the fabulous blogging days of old where you had fascinating people sharing their flawed, whimsical, and unpolished musings to the world. Substack Reader reminds me of Google Reader (which Google decided to axe a few years ago). Do you remember Google Reader? It was fantastic. On the left column of the screen was a list of the blogs you subscribed to (yep, via good ole’ Feedburner). You could click any one of them, and on the main screen on the right, you’d have a complete chronological timeline of posts. You could sit there all day, as I did, whilst seated at my cubicle, waiting for the next customer phone call to come in (I worked for the wonderful outdoor company, Patagonia, when I first discovered the blogosphere), and get lost in someone’s world.
I’m no sociologist, but my guess is that you can mark the downfall of humanity at the point when the internet shifted from a fantastic bazaar of individual sites and blogs to the fate of the algorithm where we’re now products of Mark Zuckerburg and Jeff Bezos. Much like hamsters who run tirelessly in a wheel, we click and scroll tirelessly across screens; with each click and a resulting zap of our amygdala, those two assholes make money. Anyhow…
Another thing that pissed me off (since we’re on the subject) is when I started to see major celebrities take up podcasting. I think the first one I saw was Conan O’Brien. What the what?! Homeboy is a major media darling! Why is he moving in on this medium of the internet - the only place where we little people can have a voice? Following him was Russell Brand, Dax Shepard, Amy Schumer, etc. (all of whose work I thoroughly enjoy, btw). This trend doesn’t seem to be slowing down with more and more A-listers setting up podcasts.
[One day, I submitted and listened to Conan’s podcast fairly recently. And much to my chagrin, against my initial cynicism, I realized… Hot damn, his podcast is hella funny.]
Well, now I’m seeing celebrities filter into Substack. And they’re even charging for subscriptions. Like, really? You’re a gajillionaire, and yet you’re asking for $6/month from us to access your ‘premium content’? Again, my cynicism was squashed when I tuned in to one of my favorite celebrity thinkers, Nick Offerman’s Substack (called Donkey Thoughts). Oh, what a glorious digital realm it is. I’ll write more about my love for Offerman in a later post, but today I just wanted to share with you one of the most brilliant phrases ever uttered about human nature. It’s right in line with another brilliant anthropologist, the late Martin Luther’s concept of simul iustus et peccator (translated: we are both sinner and saint - 100% of each, all the time).
I’ve been blabbing enough, so here’s the quote from the great modern prophet, Nick Offerman…
“There are things about us that will always be mysterious. The human psyche will always think that we are better than we are. That’s how we don’t kill ourselves or slam our heads through a wall. Because we have a defense mechanism that’s like, ‘Uh, I think I’m okay. I think I’m a pretty okay person.’ And most of us are okay, but also, most of us are horrible, farting monsters. It’s the combination of those things that make us so damn cute.”
- Nick Offerman
Note: My dear friend, Pr. Ben Adams, opined that Offerman fell short here. He should have said “all of us” are okay/farting monsters instead of “most of us.” Leave it to a good Lutheran pastor like Ben to follow through with the Gospel:)
You can check out the full video and get the whole context here:
