My friend Alan likes to tell me that I don’t like anything. He says this most often when a pop song comes on the jukebox at the bar or when he sees me roll my eyes at the group of young people shouting at each other nearby. He’s not wrong. Pop songs seldom capture my attention and many (not all) of the young people at the bar are excessively loud, obnoxious, self-important, and oblivious to the people around them. They don’t seem to understand the concept of inside voices. I’m not alone in my assessments. I know quite a few bartenders who’ve grown tired of hearing “Pink Pony Club” multiple times a night and who have commented that young people (mostly those in their 20s) have no sense of bar etiquette. Nevertheless, Alan thinks I’m a crank who hates everything. I usually correct him: I’m a crank who likes lots of things, just not the things everyone else likes.
But this isn’t about young people or bar etiquette or pop music or Alan’s penchant for pointing out my grumpy old-man tendencies – those are all just examples of how I feel I’ve grown more cynical and cantankerous these past few years.
I admit, I’ve often thought of myself as the lovable grump type: the old man who shakes his fist at the clouds, the one yelling at the kids to get off his lawn, the Andy Rooney type trying to find humor in life’s minor annoyances. Dare I say, I’ve embraced it in a self-effacing, mildly humorous way. But lately, the shtick has grown old, tired, trite. At times, I worry it’s no longer a shtick and I’m just persistently annoyed – at everything… critical of everything.
To be fair, there are a lot of things over which to be persistently annoyed. There are a lot of things over which we should be critical. Where I struggle (one of several places where I struggle) is in figuring out my place on the continuum that is the attention and outrage scale. In addition to figuring out where I am (a moving target for sure), I’m trying to figure out where I’d like to be on that scale (hint, if not considerably less attentive certainly less outraged).
During a recent walk to a concert with a friend, we were discussing the fate of the world and AI and all of that bullshit. He said he doesn’t want to bury his head in the sand, but has, for the most part buried his head in the sand. He’s not alone. There are many many people blissfully unaware of: global politics, local politics, the forces working to undermine our democratic institutions, the environmental crisis, the crisis presented by credible looking/sounding disinformation… and the list goes on. There are far too many things to be aware of, far too many threats on the horizon… and ironically (or evilly), the attacks against science and the factual world have made it nearly impossible to be informed on anything.
Unfortunately, because I’m single, or because I have time on my hands, or because I’m just a malcontent at heart, I don’t think I could be one of those people who buries their head in the sand. I read (or scroll) a lot of news. Most of it makes me mildly anxious about our current predicament(s). Most of it makes me shake my head and say I want off… A recent (and very inconsequential) example is that the San Francisco Giants just signed a deal with Kalshi (the gambling platform that says it’s not a gambling platform) to provide “unmatched experiences” for fans attending the games. I mean, what could go wrong with broadcasting the odds of specific in-game events in real time? Slightly more consequential examples can be found in the recently published book The Nerd Reich in which the author details the rise of tech fascism and their very deliberate attempts to undermine democracy and replace it with their own billionaire run form of governance (network states). Much of the book sounds like conspiracy theory science fiction until you see that many of these tech-fascist proposals have worked their way into the highest levels of our government through project 2025. RAGE (retire all government workers) was proposed and embraced by a cadre of the world’s richest and most-influential tech barons years ago and became reality when DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) carried out those plans in eliminating nearly 300,000 government employees. Reading about these Lex Luthor/Chancellor Palpatine/Dr. No types of characters in real life (though the Silicon Valley baddies favor Lord of the Rings references) is enough to make one think they’re going crazy in the worst tin-foil hat sort of way.
On the inconsequential, I admit, I’m moderately opposed to change. I want boring baseball games without prediction markets. I want music and art and writing free of AI. I want people to shop in stores and talk to each other as opposed to drones whizzing through our neighborhoods to make Amazon and Door Dash deliveries. I want variety and novelty, not cookie-cutter sameness. But when you combine the inconsequential changes with the far more consequential ones (data centers, climate change, erosion of political norms), the entire landscape begins to look inhospitable. Suddenly, it looks as if ALL of today’s societal changes (and there are many) seem so stupidly harmful, unnecessary, and unfair. Sports betting run amok, toxic masculinity run amok, income inequality run amok, AI forced down our throats, blatant lying and corruption at every turn, the undermining of expertise in nearly every field, the rolling back of civil rights, the stupid culture wars on “woke,” a government directed by internet trolls… but here look at this meme, bet on this future tragedy (you can bet on whether or not a wildfire will break out here in the west which might just convince people to start wildfires and win their bets), invest in this Ponzi scheme.
Sometimes, I wish I didn’t know these things or read these articles… Especially since I don’t do anything with this knowledge. On the other end of the spectrum from the blissfully unaware are the constantly online and outraged activists and zealots. Every cause, from the right to lifers and climate deniers to the LGBTQ+ advocates and the anti-corporate crowd, has their activists and zealots – and ALL of them think they’re right. I am neither informed enough nor, dare I say, passionate enough to fall into that category (though I lean in that direction). Sometimes, I’ll think I should do more than grumble here and snarl there. What’s the saying, if you don’t like it, work to change it? Unfortunately, the list of outrages grows longer each day and it becomes difficult to even know where to begin. And so I do what I can, and change the song on the jukebox to something more palatable.
Being unable to change (or opt out of) the big things leaves me feeling alienated and powerless. This leaves me wondering where my place is in the world and how I can “follow my bliss” or enact the change I wish to see. There doesn’t seem to be room for a middle ground. If I’m not actively pointing out the abuses of Facebook, am I complicit in their harms? If I’m not willing to divest my portfolio from harmful tech, am I contributing to the problem? On top of these dilemmas, seeing the world this way (one rife with corporate greed and full of people who will go along with it because they need a job and what else are they supposed to do) has me believing, more and more, that humans are inherently untrustworthy and shitty… that given the choice, most people will choose profit and personal gain over helping others or bettering society. Of course this isn’t true of all humans (I happened to be writing part of this on the day Dolly Parton, an incredibly generous spirit, passed away) – just the humans capitalism seems to favor.
The condition of my displeasure – my old man shaking a fist at a rapidly- and ever-changing world – seems to have worsened ever since moving to San Francisco. While in search of greater peace and freedom and beauty, I have found myself in the proverbial belly of the tech beast. Few places boast such beauty set adjacent to such avarice. Few places can make you want to slow down while the world around you moves at breakneck speed. There’s a certain irony to being here where the stunning views can go unnoticed because everyone is staring at their handheld misery machines. As much as I love this place, I have moments when I loathe what it has come to represent: move fast, break things, don’t think about what you’re breaking, cash out before anyone can catch up to you, and everyone who isn’t in on it is a loser or a sucker or going to be left behind. I have days when I think the Bay Area should be scorned for the irreparable harms it has set loose in the world. Every day, I (along with everyone else in San Francisco) am bombarded with AI advertisements: every bus, every billboard, every sign at the bus stops is something about AI or agents or coding. It’s inescapable. And because we are at the epicenter, our news coverage is heavily weighted towards tech – sometimes fawning over it and frequently uncritical. What is one to do?
Admittedly, some of my new-found criticism can more properly be labeled as disillusionment. For much of my life, I believed SF to be the city of love and peace (from the summer of love). I believed it to be this wild artistic scene that was part beat culture, part hippie, part surf/skater culture, part gay culture, and part free-for-all. I believed it to be this bastion of progressive ideals in a state that has come to epitomize progressive ideals. The reality, as I’ve witnessed and learned through reading various histories of the city, is considerably more complicated. Its boom and bust cycles (gold rush, silver rush, destructive fires and earthquakes, dot com bubbles) have mirrored its reactionary swings between conservatism and free-wheeling progressiveness. And because it’s a city that has always attracted dreamers, it is, and has been, home to many cultists movements. It’s where Charles Manson got his start. It’s where Jim Jones set up his headquarters for the People’s Temple. It was home to a ruthless gang of killers at one time called the Death Angels who were responsible for 15 confirmed murders and potentially up to 73 murders in the city (the Zebra murders). It was also home to the Symbionese Liberation Army (Patty Hearst kidnappers). Reading Gil Duran’s recently published book ,The Nerd Reich, especially after reading the classic Season of the Witch, one begins to see the connection between the fortune seekers and the cultists. Today’s tech titans function very much like a cult where unfathomable wealth becomes individual salvation.
Alan’s “criticism” about my hating everything hits because he’s only picking up on the superficial discontent which masks my deeper concerns about modern society, the deeper divide I feel growing between where I am as compared to where everyone else is. On a recent Sunday night when the bar was mostly empty, a few of us took turns adding songs to the jukebox. I had played a song I knew most people wouldn’t know though a few might appreciate. Alan chimed in that it was another pre-1980 song that would kill the vibe were the bar more crowded. And this gets to the heart of my difference, not just with Alan, but with a lot of people. While most people go out to unwind and be in the presence of the familiar (I do too), I’m also looking to expand. It’s what I expect of my community and my friends. I love it when I hear an unfamiliar song that I want to hear again. I like talking with people who might talk about art or science or literature – people who will point me to something new, be it a restaurant, a book, band, or a bar. I think I expected to encounter more of that here. More soul-seekers and sharers – fewer gold chasers and charlatans. More people willing to question the algorithm and its influence on their tastes. More people willing to lift up (or at least give consideration to) others who may not look or live like them.
I’ve been thinking about this internal shift (away from openness and grace towards certainty and judgement) a lot this past year. I’ve been thinking about how I could reverse the trend without putting my head in the sand or how I might leverage my discomfort with a rapidly changing society to build something (community, space, relationships) that’s slower, more inclusive, and/or better. The only answer, the only antidote, I seem to come up with is love – love of others, love of differences, love of place and community. In the worst of my “I want to get off this ride” moments, I envision alternative realities. Those realities are often set away from the city, or at the very least insulated from capitalism’s demands. They often involve a vision of a compatriot or several – that person or those persons who just get you – to whom you don’t really have to explain or defend yourself. Of course, those aren’t realities. Even the people who get us the most will miss out on things or have differing opinions. Even the most tight-knit communities (if they’re healthy) will have honest disagreements and widely varying tastes. And so I’ll continue to play the songs I want and grumble over the songs I’d rather not hear – not because I dislike everything but because it’s the only way I can offer an alternative.