LRN No. 42: the anger games
Plus: intergalactic planetary, planetary intergalactic
In December, Guardian Saturday sent me to Arizona to meet Noland Arbaugh, the 30-year old quadriplegic man who is the first human being to allow Elon Musk’s company, Neuralink, to insert an electronic chip into his brain.
My piece made the cover of the magazine last Saturday, and the front page of the newspaper. The headline was big and splashy and intriguing. I didn’t write it - but I liked it.
You can never really anticipate how stories will be received when they go out into the world. I had assumed that an article on the dark, dystopian possibilities of allowing the world’s richest man to beam things into our brains - a billionaire who has already tipped the scales of social media to beam extreme right wing content into our phones - might get me some flak from Elon’s hardcore fans on X, but it would go down well with Musk’s critics.
I was wrong. People on Bluesky were angry with me. Elon Musk can’t perform brain surgery! He didn’t put the chip into Noland’s brain. Why was I giving Musk all this good publicity? Why was I giving him any publicity at all?
Sigh.
Journalists don’t write headlines. And we hope - we wish - that people would read things before they get angry about them, even though the angriest voices on social media never do. A cursory glance at the article would show that this was not positive coverage for Musk. And, whatever you think of him, we do need to pay attention to him: Musk is both unbelievably powerful and totally unaccountable. He is developing a potentially dangerous technology. People should be informed about this.
But I didn’t spend much time replying to anyone who was unhappy with the headline - or the decision to run the article in the first place - because that would spoil their fun. People like being angry. They are prepared to willfully misunderstand things in order to continue being angry about the thing that isn’t really there.
I was reminded of this again on the Sky News Press Preview. Talking about Israel and Palestine is never fun, but it was particularly unpleasant this week, because I was on with someone determined to turn my disdain for Trump’s plan to ‘own’ Gaza into contempt for the hostages and sympathy with Hamas, so that he could be angry.
Sigh.
I find the willful misrepresentation of everything for outrage and clicks and follows and likes exhausting. It may be a lucrative game for some, but it’s one I cannot play. I like nuance, ethical knots, difficult questions, shades of grey. The most interesting and important things are always complicated. Often, that’s what makes them interesting and important.
Two bits of more uplifting news:
I’m going to be chairing two events for Intelligence Squared this month: one with legendary booker and producer Sam McAlister, and another with legendary author Douglas Stuart. A treat.
I’ve been shortlisted for Broadsheet Feature Writer of the Year at the Press Awards. Which is very nice news.
Things that have caught my eyes and ears:
went to the cinema on my own to see Becoming Led Zeppelin, and found the auditorium full of men who had also come on their own. A great documentary for fans but stay clear if you can’t handle the odd violin bow on a guitar solo
marvelled at the wonders of the universe at the Peter Harris Planetarium at Greenwich’s Royal Observatory
felt very lucky to be invited to have a special preview of the glorious Kew Orchid Festival, the perfect antidote to a grim February
adored seeing and hearing the celebration of Nina Simone that was Mississippi Goddamn from the cheapest seats at the Southbank Centre. When there’s a big orchestra, sit back in the back row and take it all in
"I like nuance, ethical knots, difficult questions, shades of grey." Absolutely! I'm going to read your Guardian article now, as I missed it last week.