The Problem with Everything

Last summer, I read Meghan Daum’s The Problem with Everything: My Journey Through the Culture Wars. Meghan Daum is a very good writer, and this is a very good book. 

I first read Meghan Daum about ten years ago. She wrote a very quirky little essay called “Carpet is Mungers,” a hate letter to wall-to-wall carpet. I don’t hate wall-to-wall carpet at all. But I do recognize and sympathize with fiery unreasonable hatred toward some innocuous thing that most people either like or don’t think about one way or another. I could write my own “Carpet is Mungers” about any number of non-carpet things. Anyway, I always meant to seek out more of Meghan Daum’s work but I never got around to it until this book popped up in a Kindle recommendation, which described it as a counterargument to the rigid policing of thought and speech on the left. I’ve been thinking and writing about this topic for a long time, and I wanted to see what the author of “Carpet is Mungers” had to say about it. 

*****

As Daum sees it, a great big part of the problem with everything; that is to say, the problem of intolerance and illiberalism, boils down to social media. Social media enables all sorts of things that weren’t possible 20 years ago. An ordinary person can become a social media influencer, and then use their following to amplify whatever idea or point of view they want to share--even if that point of view is nothing more than “look at me.” But social media, especially 140-character social media, does not allow for much nuance (Meghan Daum is all about nuance). Not many people can clearly and succinctly and kindly express exactly what they really mean in one short tweet or FB post or IG caption. The hot take is easily misinterpreted in any circumstance, but especially if the author lacks writing skills or social media savvy. 

Combine social media’s inherent limitations with the prevailing and worsening trend toward lack of tolerance, lack of kindness, and lack of willingness to give other people the benefit of the doubt, and you have a social media landscape in which even the most influential of influencers is cast into outer darkness after just one tiny mistake. One bad take, one thoughtless like or share or retweet, and a person can be canceled and forever after branded as a hateful hating hater who hates. It’s a problem. 

*****

There’s so much else that’s good and relevant and needs-to-be-said in this book. In addition to breaking down the very real problems of intolerance and social media groupthink, Daum also offers a sharply funny takedown of badass, no-fucks-given feminism. She writes that she wanted to call the book You Are Not a Badass, and I so wish that she had. But of course, no one would have bought the book, because everyone is a badass now. Everyone is a badass, and no one has any fucks left to give. 

Badass feminism is so conventional now that it’s only a matter of time before Rae Dunn starts producing insulated sippy cup wine tumblers emblazoned with the slogan “No Fucks Given.” I can just see the words printed in that tall, skinny self-consciously childlike block printing. (As an aside, I am completely mystified by the popularity of Rae Dunn’s products, but that is a topic all to itself.) I was about to write that you’ll soon be able to stop by the local Home Goods and purchase a nice wooden “Badass” sign to hang in your kitchen, but I bet you already can. “Badass” and “No Fucks Given” are the new “Live, Laugh, Love.” In fact, the latter is edgier. People buy LLL signs for ironic purposes, but I suspect that the person who buys a “Badass” sign or wears a “No Fucks Given” t-shirt does so completely in earnest. 

A big part of what’s so ridiculous about no-fucks-given badassery is the sheer incongruity between the hardness of the words and the softness of the actions that are supposed to demonstrate badass-ness and lack of fucks given. A woman with long hair cuts off two inches, posts a selfie hashtagged #shorthairdontcare #zerofucksgiven, and at least one fawning commenter will call her a badass. A woman sits on the couch with her phone and posts a fuck the patriarchy joke or meme and thus immediately boosts her badassery bona fides. It’s not hard to earn no-fuck-giving badass credits. The bar is pretty fucking low.  

But what is the connection between intolerance and NFG badassitude? What does one thing have to do with the other? I think that maybe the tendency toward intolerance in online discourse is a direct result of unseriousness, and swaggering girlboss badassery is nothing if not unserious. When people honestly believe that badass status derives from just one fire tweet, are they not more likely to take their own and thus other people’s trifling little online comments far too seriously? 

*****

Thought crime and its attendant punishment is an urgently important thing to talk about, and not in the way that the Fox News nincompoops scream all day long about “wokeness” and “cancel culture.” Although this book focuses on the intolerance of the left, freedom of speech and even freedom of thought are threatened at every point on the political spectrum. As a matter of fact, the problem is even worse now on the right than on the left. Conservatives aren’t canceling people on Twitter, they’re just banning books. Only a matter of time before they start burning them. But that’s not what this is about.

I’m not 100 percent optimistic that we’re capable of this, but I think that we are going to have to relearn how to tolerate diversity of thought and belief as much as we pretend to embrace every other kind of diversity. And more people are going to have to be brave enough to express unpopular opinions, out loud or in print, as Daum does here. If all of the reasonable people keep quiet just to avoid trouble, then the unreasonable people will be the only ones left to speak in public.