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Notes -
I have a question that could turn into a culture war topic but I need some kind of sanity check before I flesh it out further:
Does anyone else feel as though, even as the general populace becomes less and less optimistic, the mainstream narrative has nonetheless converged on a message of unrelenting positivity?
It is hard to describe, but the best examples of what I'm talking about that spring to mind are The Rise of the "Corporate Memphis" art style and the seeming ubiquity of beauty filters as a default feature in smartphones.
Or in the way Youtube video comments have turned from a cesspit of trolls trolling trolls trolling trolls to basically a competition for who can heap the most bombastically hyperbolic praise on the subject video.
The common thread is that these techniques/styles end up minimizing the appearance of 'flaws' and 'ugliness' whilst also idealizing the subjects it examines so as to avoid... I don't know. Offense? Critique? Any possible negative emotional valence? Where before there might be depiction of ugliness as ugliness or actual examination of social and personal flaws in a way that risks causing offense, where before there were art styles that embraced ugliness (while still being aesthetic) and Cartoons like Ren and Stimpy could use unpleasant visuals for comedic effect now it seems like most products are produced with the intent of avoiding any unpleasant sensations on the viewer's part.
And this now seems to apply to every single product of modern culture, aside from some decrepit/degenerate corners of the internet. "Good vibes only" seems to be the accepted norm... with the exception of certain acceptable targets who may be used as punching bags.
I'm not even getting into possible causes, I'm literally just trying to see if this is an actual, noticeable phenomenon.
Have you felt as though mainstream/corporate-produced culture has reached increasing heights of 'toxic positivity' even as your own outlook on the state of the world has degraded?
What is scarce today is proportionate authenticity in positivity and negativity.
A question I like to ask with my bi-coastal over-educated early 30s cohort is "Yes, of course Orange Man was very very bad, but how did you life get appreciably worse between 2016 and 2020, barring anything related to COVID?" As almost all of my cohort got into manager+ levels of mostly tech corporate work, completed a masters, and/or got married ... they can't really come up with anything concrete beyond "well ... my anxiety...blah blah blah." But that's just the point - negativity (in media sources or elsewhere) doesn't seem, to me, to be about real proportionate evaluation, but a kind of circular mood-affiliation. Even the less emotionally charged WSJ frequently has articles along the lines of "workers are worried the economy is real bad and whatnot." The body of the article amounts to "a bunch of online surveys indicate people are worried ... in general ... here's a few interviews with people who are worried ... in general."
Now, flip the coin the other way. Anybody here who routinely uses Slack or and other chat app in a corporate job will be familiar with the "EVERYDAY AMAZING" hyper-praise that a lot of front line managers HEAP on their employees for ... doing the basics. "Timmy and Janey ABSOLUTELY CRUSHED THEIR STANDUP THIS MORNING!!!!!" Followed with dozens of emoji responses. First, I think this is maybe the number one issue with career development today - front line managers are turning into weird cheerleaders until annual performance reviews where they absolutely gut these same folks. Consistent and honest feedback is really hard to come by and it's nearly impossible to calibrate the relative strength of feedback when you're getting the above (OMG YOU SHOWED UP TO WORK) on the one hand, and a muted "Hey, I think you could've delivered that report better..." on the other. Wait a minute, did I fuck up or not? If I did, how do I improve? What's the most important part of my job?
I know I mixed some topics up above here, but I don't think they're that unrelated. I think about this a lot as somehow who's moved into the Senior Manager / Director phase of the career and, looking down, see a lot of individual contributors who truly don't trust the feedback from the system. As a citizen who reads the news, I see something similar happening with your average man-on-the-street who's looking around and seeing "THE END IS NEAR" on a daily basis, but who goes home, orders from Uber Eats and isn't worried a stranger is poisoning his food.
Oof, yeah the "authenticity" question has been banging around in my head too, and I'd write an essay on it if I can confirm someone smarter hasn't written it already and I get the time to do it.
This rings true: people want to hear positive affirmations if they come from a place of honesty, and maybe don't like it when it's a condescending sort of affirmation or obviously isn't sincere.
And when it comes to positive affirmations from large corporations, you can largely conclude that they're not sincere because it's all designed around getting you to spend money and they have no particular connection with you as an individual to 'authenticate' the affirmation.
Agreed, although I do not have a large corporate job.
Also agreed, and funny enough oftentimes it seems like the performance reviews will gut someone for NOT buying into the positivity culture and being an overall 'downer' at work even if that's simply the result of trying to be honest.
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The comedian Dara O'Briain expressed this as "Crime is down, but the FEAR of crime is up!"
Good Christ do I hate logging into LinkedIn for any reason.
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