Normalize Not Caring
It's very freeing to not give a shit
The annual Met Gala was this past weekend. I know this for two reasons: first, my Twitter feed included a long parade of jokes based on images of apparently-famous people I didn’t recognize wearing ludicrous outfits, and second, my Twitter feed caught a smaller but still significant number of people just dying to express their disapproval of the entire business for one reason or another.
What do I, personally, think of the Met Gala? I don’t. I mean, I chuckled at several of the ludicrous-outfit memes and reshared some of them, but beyond that, I can’t be bothered. I’m sort of vaguely in favor of the Metropolitan Museum of Art as a general matter, so, you know, good for them for raking in that sweet celebrity cash. But I have about as much interest in celebrity culture and high fashion as I have in the current weather on Ganymede, so my interest in an event that intersects those two is so tiny it begins to run up against quantum limits.
And here’s the thing: there’s absolutely no compelling reason for me to have an opinion about the Met Gala. It’s not intrinsically interesting to me, whether it happens or not will not affect my life in any way, and my approval or disapproval of it won’t perturb the event or any of its attendees in the slightest. It’s a complete non-issue for me, not remotely worth taking the time to develop even a shoddy and incoherent opinion about it, let alone one with any nuance or depth.
This is not to say that other people shouldn’t have opinions about it, if it happens to catch their fancy. If you’re passionately interested in the financial stability of the costume collection at the Met, or a huge fan of a Big Name designer or one of the stars who are so eager to be photographed in ridiculously impractical and uncomfortable-looking outfits, well, I’m happy for you. Pop some corn, mix some drinks, geek out to the red carpet coverage, do whatever it is you do to celebrate. Just don’t expect me to engage beyond the occasional chuckle at a reshared meme on social media.
The Met Gala is not alone in this status— there’s a whole vast universe of things that other people expend energy on that I can’t be bothered to have an actual opinion on: Professional tennis. Opera and/or ballet. The romantic entanglements of movie stars. High-performance automobiles. The intricacies of rap beefs.
If you want to talk about these in my direction (as The Pip frequently does about this whole Kendrick Lamar vs. Drake thing), I’ll use all my well-learned politesse to feign interest for the duration of the conversation, but will retain essentially nothing. In return, I hope you’ll extend the same courtesy and vague nods should I start waxing rhapsodic about the direct excitation of the isomer transition in thorium-229, or a new Hold Steady song, or some wonky thing about taking photos on a hike.
That’s how the social contract is supposed to work, anyway: I care about my things and you care about your things. If those overlap, we have a real conversation, if they don’t, one of us makes noncommittal but vaguely agreeable noises until the opportunity to change topics comes around. Everybody wins.
Except… social media. There’s really no good Twitter equivalent of smiling blandly and saying “Oh, that’s interesting…” to something you’re not interested in. Which acts as an incentive to develop and express Opinions about things, just to stay part of the conversation. This is further exacerbated by the lab escape of “the personal is political” making too many people assign moral weight to inconsequential matters of taste. So not only do you have to have an Opinion to keep talking, you have to have the right Opinion, so everyone knows you’re not a Bad Person.
And thus, my Twitter feed is weirdly full of people who have no earthly reason to feel strongly about the Met Gala expressing implausibly strong opinions about it. And in a week or so it will be something about the age difference between a couple of people nobody involved will ever meet, and a week after that, maybe professional tennis, I don’t know. It just goes on and on.
One of the hosts of a podcast I like has a recurring bit about his personal campaign to “Normalize No,” making people realize it’s okay to just say “No” when asked for something, without excuse or obligation. I sort of feel like we need a “Normalize Not Giving a Shit” campaign: a societal reminder that you don’t have to have an Opinion about everything, let alone shout that Opinion at the world. It’s fine to sit the occasional topic out— in fact, it’s very freeing. You can open the app and say “Oh, we’re doing a rap beef this week?” and rather than scrambling to pick a side, close the app and go touch grass or whatever. The app will still be there when you come back, and maybe everyone will have moved on to something you find worth the effort to have an Opinion about.
Really heavy week at work, so you get this inconsequential but mildly cathartic rant. If that catches your fancy, here’s a button:
And if you want to try to convince me to care about… whatever, the comments will be open and nodding politely:
Or, you can just not have a twitter account. AMHIK.
"The lab escape of 'the personal is political'" -- I love this. Not "the personal is political," but "lab escape" applied to ideas. It's a beautiful way to sum up "This idea made sense or was at least defensible in its original context, but then people who didn't know or care about that context heard it and started quoting it as some sort of universal truth, and the result is insanity."