I didn’t know this catchphrase was coined when I started to write this post, but Chris Best mentions “Infinite Distraction” at 25:35 in his conversation with Mills Baker. The interview is worth the time to listen. Check it out.
Who is John Doe, and why do I care?
By the time I catch something viral, it’s been in the news. By viral, I do mean viral. I also mean something more memetic. Memetic content drives the vibes of our time. We witness memes acting virally under certain circumstances. We all know this. I’m venting. To an old school graduate, one not connected to the direct feeds of TikTok, IG, FB, TWIX (twitter/X) SnapChat, or WhatNot, a new app I just invented because I like the way it fit in this sentence, being out of touch, immediate touch, comes with one's method of reading “news” sources.
This past week, a football player gave a commencement address to the graduating class of a conservative college, and he became a national hero/antihero. Some time ago, before half of the current US population was born, this would have been a non-event. There might have been a recording of the speech, one that a researcher might have unearthed in a search for the roots of a neo-reactionary religious-political movement. The recording might have been quoted or referenced as part of a scholarly work. The researcher's first audiences would have been about as widespread as the speech’s outside reach would be unless the book became a sensation. At that point, the book would become a newsworthy item. As a work of some effort, rightly so.
This series of events might have unfolded over years, possibly decades. Yet I’m writing about a football player a mere week after a non-event.
Meanwhile, there are several major court cases in progress that involve a former president. Similarly, at a time before half of the current US population was born, events would have unfolded differently, even if the current players on the US Supreme Court occupied their present seats back then. The indictments would have hit the news, and the courts would have moved quickly (in judicial terms) to resolve things. Two examples of “quickly” resolved legal questions are The Pentagon Papers and the Watergate court responses. Questions of immunity and public interest were sorted out in days or weeks. Even Bush v Gore played out quickly. Only one-third of us now alive were unborn for that case.
The difference is due to a change in social pressure. That and the somewhat consolidated media of the last century moved big events along and buried little events in the end sections. Our social attention is much more fractured and fickle now. Many times a second a new shiny bit of chaff is published.
We become aware of events in a blink. Because we are blinking constantly, we no longer have the chance to stare or gawk at the true spectacles of life. We can play them over and blink again, but we don’t have time to stare. We don’t have time to feel the gravity of the biggest events of the day/week/month/year. No one does. Even the denizens of the white building, those who wear black robes, spend too much time blinking.
It’s all a little meh.
If we wait, something shiny and new will happen, and all will be forgotten or ignored.
We don’t need to wait for more than an hour. Fancy that.
The title of the next big novel is Infinite Distraction.
I am one of its many authors.
It is big and sprawling, and no one can read all of it, ever.
No one can put it down. That’s a lie, but no one will notice.
The effort to create a part in the novel Infinite Distraction may vary. A paragraph might be a caption on a photo of an AI rendering. A chapter might be a song, a poem, or an inspo quote. A part of the novel is a book or a clip of surveillance video. Infinite Distraction is us.
Narcissus was transfixed by his reflection on the surface of still water. We improved on that with polished bronze, then silver on glass, and now aluminum mirrors on all kinds of things. Sometime in there, we invented a different kind of mirror, the press. Then came the telegraph, the telephone, radio, television, cable, the internet, email, mailing lists, instant messaging, blogs, image social media and video social media. Our latest reflector is LLM-type AI, accessed by the internet and shared ubiquitously.
Will we ever tire? Narcissus was still staring into his reflection in the water when he died. He was the mortal offspring of the gods. Was it a mercy for the gods to turn him into a flower? Is the tale a cautionary one or a prophesy?