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The Theory of Evolooption – Cultural Evolution as a Media Feedback Loop
I came up with this idea about ten years ago after watching a TV documentary about a very high-powered consulting firm that went around to high schools looking for the cutting-edge of the cutting-edge in teen fashion: those rare handful of kids who were creating/initiating the newest looks, dress, hair-styles etc. The company would then sell -- for very big bucks -- this information to other companies specializing in marketing products to high schoolers.
It occurred to me that there was a cultural loop being created. The marketers would take this consultant’s cutting edge info and mass-media it into the culture. Then high school students would pick up and adopt the trends and the trends would then become "normalized". Then -- out of the newly-normalized high schoolers would evolve new cutting-edgers the consulting firm would seek out. It seemed obvious that it was in the DNA of these media-driven cultural loops to trend more and more towards extremes -- and that these extremes trended AWAY from grace, elegance, and behavioral restraint.
Feedback Loops
Sonic feedback often occurs when a voice being amplified by a microphone is projected from the loudspeakers with sufficient volume to cause that amplified voice to be picked up and re-amplified by the mic -- whereby a feedback loop is set in motion. The now-louder re-amplified voice instantly loops back to the mic again and is further amplified, etc, etc., etc. An ear-shattering squeal ensues.
In our media-driven, hyper-wired culture, cultural values evolve rapidly via a similar feedback loop between the media and the public. The media's "natural selection" process tends to select for the abnormal -- the ‘man bites dog’ story. The abnormality -- anything from to street gang culture to an unusual hair style to women going "commando" etc., --
is then broadcast to the public. The abnormality is received and digested by the public -- i.e. -- soon rendered less abnormal . . . normalized. This absorption and acclimation by the public then loops back to the media -- in the sense that the media recognizes the public is losing interest in stories about the now "not-so-abnormal" former abnormality; it is no longer as "newsworthy". So the media necessarily seeks out the even more abnormal, which then gets broadcast etc., etc. With each loop, the shock bar is lowered slightly.
So . . . take, say, tattoos.
City Journal – jan 2014 - According to a recent article in Libération, 400 professional tattooists operated in France in 2003. Now, only ten years later, there are 4,000. According to one of the newspaper’s informants, if the trend continues, tattooists may soon be as numerous in France as hairdressers.
For centuries tattoos were stigmatized in Western so-called "polite society". A woman showing up with several visible tattoos at a posh soirée in 1776 or 1830 or 1950 would have been quickly cold-shouldered out of the in-crowd. But that was prior to the post-1960's overthrowing of a great many long-standing societal norms. Replacing those norms was the "You do your thing and I'll do mine" -- "I'm OK, You're OK" -- "Who am I to judge" --new-age secular religion: political correctness.
It is critical to understand that about 99% of post-60s journalists have been thoroughly indoctrinated by their leftist professors into believing that being "judgmental" of people's behavior is immoral. Thus the tendency of the media is to bring the public the "abnormal" entirely uncoupled from any hint of stigmatization. It is this media focus combined with non-judgmentalism that provides the fuel for evolooption.
So -- how did tattoos lose their stigma? Evolooption! Let's say in the 1960's-70s a few "straights" -- i.e. non-convicts, non-sailors -- get tattoos. The new non-stigmatizing media takes notice and begins a little broadcasting -- a brief story here, a short TV story there. Absent from the stories is any hint that getting a tattoo might be a negative -- that would be judgmental. So, the gradual process of normalizng -- or de-stigmatizing -- tattoos, begins.
Once the stigma is removed, more and more "early adopters" get the fad going -- and the then media takes notice of that shift: "Just ahead on the 6 o'clock news -- tattoos -- everyone's getting them!" Soon, however, the "ratings" for stories on the now-accepted tattoo fad begin to drop -- it's all ho-hum -- "who doesn't have a tattoo". This ratings-drop is the "feedback" from the public -- so the media begins doing stories on extreme tattooing -- "Woman has Da Vinci's 'Last Supper' inscribed on her back! Details at 6". Soon a TV documentary or two and a TV series appear about tattoo "extremists", thus broadcasting even more examples of extraordinary body-covering tattoos -- and then this starts to get normalized.
Now, in the supermarket checkout line in front of you is a normal-looking woman with her left arm completely covered with various tattoos; every rock star's got loads of 'em; college and pro athletes arms are covered. This is evolooption’s un-natural selection at work. NOTE: It is not my intention here to malign tattoos. I often find them quite fascinating. Rather, it is to point out how evolooption works.
Variety: Casting Call -- MTV Reality Show Looking For Assholes. Lack of manners, no dignity a must. Must be fluent in profanity, and possess willingness to be shameless and verbally abusive to others on camera. No college grads.
NY Times – Jan. 2012 -- Get on TV? Hey, Smack Me Again!
"Every town has a scene, a subculture, a place where young people go to escape. In Minden, La., a city of about 13,000 some 30 miles east of Shreveport, it’s mixed martial arts, a sport that attracts young men with hopes of punching and kicking and wrestling their way through their opponents, and hopefully their problems.
Their fights, and their struggles, are captured on “Caged,” which begins on Monday night on MTV and is the latest entry in that channel’s effort to document the lives of young people, often digging and seeking them out in places others don’t."
Documenting the lives of young people? Why, of course! Question is: Which young people?
Look at all these so-called Reality TV shows we're now swimming in. Most are gracelessness writ large! All the very worst kinds of petty human behavior are showcased -- and normalized, i.e. de-stigmatized. The media knows the public doesn't want to watch “decent” behavior -- that's boring. Thus the producers usually make sure that the cast includes a few shallow people willing to jettison whatever grace and dignity they have and behave like rats, whores, and SOB's. Thus, this boorish behavior begins to appear common -- normal.
Can you imagine some professional tennis player circa 1960 or earlier – and on national television –
screaming at a lines-person that she was going “to take this fucking ball and shove it down your fucking throat”? So how did we get from a culture that ardently stressed respect for one's opponent, and grace in defeat and in victory – to a culture where athletes "celebrate" their every minor triumph during the game; where they relish expressing contempt for their opponent; where many of them continually attempt to blur the line between fair play and cheating? Evolooption.
(See my piece elsewhere in this blog "Profanity As A Cultural Barometer")
And, as I've previously indicated, what makes evolooption so corrosive to the culture is that the media is loathe to stigmatize any abnormal behavior, regardless of how carcinogenic it may be for society. Instead, the media often delights in focusing on bad behavior.
NY Times – Jan 2012 – re “are you there, Chelsea” -- Encouraged by the success of “Bridesmaids,” television executives have welcomed comedies that showcase boozy single women who talk roguishly about masturbation, venereal disease and menstruation. Overnight, almost, that kind of raunchy Judd Apatow-for-girls humor has become a fixture even on network comedies.
Missbehave’s magazine specialty was messy girls: sociopath socialites, porn stars, retired riot grrrls, anyone we deemed interesting. Mary Choi – article on NY girls in the NY Times
Another example, playing off Serena's outburst: we are all getting used to casual-conversation profanity – which, if you haven’t noticed – is well on its way to becoming ho-hum. What? Did you think we all just started using profanity in everyday speech through some inexplicable loss of manners? Hell no. Evolooption did it via television and film. It's fucking unbelievable.
“So a married Letterman bonked most of his female assistants – so Michael Jackson kept grabbing his crotch – now Katy Perry is grabbing hers.
On National television, Cristina Aguilera has a flashing neon heart on her crotch; variations of “fuck” are used about 300 times on the MTV Movie Awards -- what else is new?” – etc, etc, etc.
Societies fall apart when (among other causes) their ruling elites, political and intellectual, lose faith in their own right or duty to prescribe standards. . . they become persuaded that generosity of spirit and broad-mindedness are the only true virtues, even if they result in paralysis in the face of disorder, with all the accompanying miseries of those who suffer it.” -- Anthony Daniels
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