Hot Take Culture Has Come for Us All
All the blather about Woke Culture & Authoritarianism ignores the real menace which knows no ideological boundary
Let’s kick this off right — with my absolute hottest take:
When aliens from a distant system discover the wreckage of Earth, they will find the noble cockroach feasting on our remains in the overgrowth of Japanese knotweed. The only evidence of human civilization will be trillions of baseless, progressively more extreme opinions on everything from the best feed for pet birds to the best governmental system.
Okay, there we have it… hyperbolic, sweepingly conclusive, and completely inoculated from any examination of its veracity. Topping it off, I manage to be meta at the same time — A Hot Take about Hot Takes? Oh man, I’m cooking’ with gas now!
Whenever I hold my nose and dive into the zeitgeist, there tends to be one thing that’s agreed upon. We are doomed — that’s either Americans or the entire human race.
Perspectives differ on the reasons. Is it creeping authoritarianism? Maybe it’s Woke Culture. Some say it’s the erosion of traditional values. I’d argue it’s the Subjectivity Apocalypse (patent pending) — we’ve reached the end and there’s either a thousand different reasons. Or perhaps there’s a singular reason and it’s the fact that people can argue convincingly for a thousand different reasons.
Like pornography, the hot take is something we all recognize when we see it. Definitions can be found and typically feature all or some combination of the following:
· They are pieces of journalism
· They’re deliberately provocative
· They are offered as commentary on recent events
· They are based largely on anecdotal evidence or sweeping moralizing
Thirty years ago, this defined a very narrow slice of human discourse. At present, it seems to be the bulk of communication. Don’t believe me? Consider this:
· Hot takes are Pieces of Journalism: Well, the line between journalism and all other communications have been nearly erased with social media. Even I, who believes there is a thing called legitimate journalism and that it has value, probably consume less of this than other media — namely editorialized missives delivered via blogs and podcasts.
· Hot takes are Deliberately Provocative: There’s a term for media that’s not deliberately provocative these days — unclicked. With the glut of voices out there competing for eyeballs, being deliberately provocative is almost not a choice for those of us who hope to be read.
· Hot takes are Commentary of recent events: When was the last time you read even a historical piece that didn’t attempt to be relevant to current times? It’s either the height of egotism or the undeniable audacity of these times but I’ll be so bold as to say it was a very long time ago. I may sound like I’m repeating myself, but given the competition for eyeballs, diagnosing or comparing to recent events is almost required if one hopes to break through.
· Hot takes are Based largely on anecdotal evidence or sweeping moralizing: That would be as opposed to research and analysis because, well — who has the time. Anecdotal evidence and sweeping moralizing are readily available and allow us to get content out as quickly as possible. In fact, numerous sources I respect or at least enjoy, like the National Institute of Health, the Economist, and Last Week Tonight with John Oliver have run pieces with some form of this title: The Problem with Research Studies. These pieces casts a skeptical eye on works produced through the scientific method. It’s almost as though we’ve all been primed to justify the quick observation of patterns (without real evidence that they exist) and sweeping diagnoses of them.
If you’re asking yourself if the very thing you’re reading isn’t just a Hot Take masquerading as a takedown of Hot Takes, you’ve hit the crux of the matter. The very nature of communication has changed to the point that it is hard to know for sure if we are living in unprecedented times or if we aren’t just doing an unprecedented amount of talking and writing about them.
I’m not sitting here in judgement of anyone, either. I started writing this as a screed against the unprecedented number of hyperbolic takes in the media ecosystem and quickly came to lean in to hyperbole myself. Hot take culture has come for us all — that very much includes me.
I don’t have any evidence that there is a proliferation of Hot Takes in the present culture. It feels right, though, doesn’t it? DOESN’T IT?
Furthermore, I’m not even going to pretend to have any solution for this potential “problem” other than an end to all social media (which is, by the way, my current solution to nearly every problem).
But until the end comes, it’s a pretty safe prediction that we will all continue to offer our own pet predictions on who will be to blame. I personally am rooting for a nice dispassionate comet — not that I’m fool enough to think people won’t find a reason to accuse the comet of aligning with our own predetermined boogeymen.
