Harish Alagappa

Tag: writing

Happy Thursday The 20th
A meme from The Simpsons took me on a mental journey through the second law of thermodynamics, The Simpsons, Futurama, and how to deal with existentialism.

Sometimes you just want to drive out to a desert, sit alone and watch the stars

Part I: Nature Is Chaos

The second law of thermodynamics states that everything in the universe tends towards the state of maximum disorder. It is the most fundamental law in the universe. More than gravity, more than quantum mechanics, more than the laws of cricket.

The British experimental physicist Arthur Eddington famously said:

“The [second law of thermodynamics] holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of Nature. If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell’s equations — then so much the worse for Maxwell’s equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation — well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics, I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.”

Also, Arthur Eddington’s 1919 solar eclipse experiment was the first widespread proof that Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity was correct and turned Einstein into a global celebrity overnight. Eddington can thus quote Ye and say, “I made that B— famous” when talking about Einstein.

Anyway, the second law of thermodynamics is on my mind right now because of a random meme from The Simpsons. Here it is:

Part II: Thursday the 20th

The rapper in this meme is parodying Flavor Flav, from the legendary rap group ‘Public Enemy’, who’s been famous for wearing a giant clock around his neck since 1987. Flav says it’s supposed to remind us that time is the most important element in our lives and it’s always ticking away. Remember the second law of thermodynamics? It’s back! In chain form.

In The Simpsons, the rapper is wearing a gold chain that reads “Thursday the 20th”. So, obviously, Simpsons nerds like to share the image on Thursdays that happen to be the 20th of a month. Simple, right? Wrong. Because those occasions are rarer than you think.

The 20th of June, 2024 is a Thursday.

The last Thursdays the 20th before that were last year, in July and April (woo-hoo! 4/20!). Before that, it was October 2022. The next Thursday the 20th is in February 2025.

This meme requires the kind of dedication and obsession to a joke that’s emblematic of Simpsons fans. It’s also a reminder that time is always ticking away, like Flavor Flav said. This is all your fault, second law of thermodynamics! Ooh, how can I stay mad at you…

The second law of thermodynamics also applies to The Simpsons. The episode this meme comes from is from season 16 and therefore not one of the million memes that sprung forth from the genius of The Simpsons‘ Golden Age — seasons 2 to 10 (and a few episodes from 11). Those seasons are the greatest television the world has ever known. I would rate them all 10/10. It’s perfect. Down to the smallest detail.

Part III: Zombie Simpsons

The Simpsons from season 12 to now (season 32? 33? I don’t know nor do I care) are known as ‘Zombie Simpsons‘ by purist fans like yours truly. Why? Because the show is dead and what you’re seeing is its reanimated corpse shuffling around without a brain.

While most of Zombie Simpsons is a cavalcade of ‘Worst. Episodes. Ever.’, there are a few rays of sunshine that break through the gloom. These include ‘Eternal Moonshine of the Simpson Mind’, ‘HOMR’, ‘Holidays of Future Passed’ (which would’ve been the perfect time to euthanize the show, but there have been nearly ten more seasons since), and ‘The Book Job’. What was strange about that last one is it’s the second time that Neil Gaiman got involved in a show that I once loved but was in its period of decline only to give it one of its last good episodes. The other is ‘The Doctor’s Wife’ from Doctor Who, in case you were wondering.

Part 4: Energy vs Entropy

The second law of thermodynamics says that everything in a closed system tends towards disorder, decay, and chaos. To keep things in their original ordered state requires the input of energy. And when you combine the first law of thermodynamics to that, you realize that the amount of energy required to keep things in their original ordered state will increase with time. Eventually, you will need the energy of the sun to keep a cup of tea warm and drinkable. That’s not hyperbole, BTW. I can explain that statement, but it will make this ridiculously long essay even longer.

The next Thursday the 20th is 11 months away. I will most likely completely forget the joke on that day. And if not on that one, perhaps on the one in February 2025. Or November 2025. Who tf knows where I’ll be then. Or if I’ll even be alive. But don’t let thoughts of death get you down. People die all the time. Just like that. Why, you could wake up dead tomorrow.

… Well, Goodnight!

Perhaps The Simpsons were right to stop putting energy into a system tending towards decay and chaos anyway. One day I too will be like Zombie Simpsons. An undead brainless shell on life support that’s eventually cancelled when it’s no longer financially viable.

Of course, one of the reasons behind the decline of The Simpsons was Matt Groening’s other show, Futurama, took away some of its best talent. And it is from Futurama that I shall imbibe wisdom of how to cope with my mortality.

In conclusion, the secret three-fold way to dealing with existential anxiety and panic attacks is:
1. Violent outbursts (not too violent, let’s be reasonable here)
2. General sluttiness (probably the most fun option)
3. “Thanks to denial, I’m immortal!” (my default answer)
Happy Thursday the 20th everyone. I’ll see you all on February 20th, 2025.
June 20, 2024
From Third Place to Good Place
The Third Place is a concept popularized by American sociologist Ray Oldenburg in the late 1980s¹. In simple terms, it’s the idea that as humans we spend most of our time and energy in two places – our homes (first place) and our work or school or university (second place). I know that some people might list work as their first place, but they’re a minority of either very lucky and contented people or very sad and hyper-motivated slaves.

For us normies, meanwhile, the third place is somewhere we can gather and socialize in an informal context. An example that should hopefully resonate with most of you would be our neighbourhoods when we were kids. We would return home (first place) from our school (second place) and head out to our third place where we would either play sports or just hang around and get up to no good with our friends.

The typical characteristics of a third place include that it’s a neutral ground that’s easily accessible, low profile, playful, and comfortable. This has a levelling effect on the interactions that happen at a third place. No one person has a claim over it, many people can access it on their own schedule, there’s no need for pretension, and it creates a relaxed and friendly environment where we feel free enough to be our true selves.

The Rise and Fall of The Universal Third Place

I was an internet optimist in my youth, way back in the halcyon days of Web 2.0 and early social media. The original purpose of social media was that it was a universal third place. Or at least that’s what it felt like. Then a motley crew of corporations, politicians, and previously fringe hate groups discovered that social media could be weaponized to create the late-capitalist fascist hellscape it is today.

Since by then social media (and the internet) had already become our universal third place, we were now bound to it. It was like someone had poisoned the village well and we had no choice but to keep drinking from it. And thus, we too were poisoned. People who tend to be easily manipulated, such as sheltered young people and the elderly, found themselves fully ingesting the poison until it ran through every vein in their body. Others, and I count myself in this group, found themselves feeling constantly sickened by what they had no choice but to consume. Others were inspired to create their own poison and add that to the well too.

So why don’t we just stop? Why can’t we just quit social media or the internet in general? Because Pandora’s Box cannot be closed again. It is still our third place. It is still the most easily accessible, relatively egalitarian, neutral ground where people from around the world can meet, interact, and socialize. And every human being needs a third place. Even the most introverted loner needs somewhere they can go, virtually or IRL, to have some level of social stimulation.

A New Hope: Go Touch Grass

But the last year or so has shown me that while social media cannot be returned back into the fiery chasm from whence it came, it can be relegated to a lower rung of social spaces. I would like to propose that we turn social media from a universal third place into a universal fourth place. But I don’t need to propose it, because that’s what’s already happening.

The simple retort, “Go touch grass” is evidence that our new Gen Z overlords – who I honestly relate to more than my own millennial coevals – are aware that social media is not a substitute for real social interaction.

So, if social media or the internet or television has been your third place throughout the last decade or even your whole life, here is what I do actually propose. Find a new third place. Relegate the world of the internet to fourth and find a real-life place that you can go to and be yourself while interacting with real human beings and not the caricatures we pretend to be on these godforsaken platforms.

The world is out there, not here on whatever screen you’re reading this on.
1. To be honest, I don’t know anything about Ray Oldenburg’s life and work beyond my understanding of Third Places. If it turns out that he’s been completely discredited or was a racist abuser or something like that, I’m really sorry, I had no idea. ↩︎
June 18, 2024
Social Media for Writers: The Only Winning Move Is Not To Play
Can we finally, as a society, collectively admit that social media is no longer a force for good in the world?

I’d also say it’s debatable if it was ever a force for good in the first place, but that’s a different topic.

Social media in 2020 is the world’s largest soapbox for once-fringe morons to very effectively spread fascist and hateful agendas using disinformation and a time-tested technique of hacking the human brain’s propensity to over-engage with and widely share any content that sparks outrage.

This has turned vast swathes of generally decent (if somewhat ignorant) people into vectors of ideological disease.

And if the pandemic has taught us anything, you can counter the spread of disease with social (media) isolation.

This is part of the reason why I deleted my Facebook account, stopped using Reddit, severely limited my activity on the last 2 stragglers in my social media portfolio — Instagram and LinkedIn — and most notably, deleted all of my tweets save for my prescient-yet-obvious first contribution to Twitter back in the innocent and halcyon days of 2008:

Twitter = Orwell’s ‘1984’ by choice rather than force

— Chaosverse (@chaosverse). May 19, 2008

This has had a substantially positive impact on my mental health and sanity, while my reasons for renunciation are reinforced whenever I do end up briefly visiting social platforms for work.

As someone in content and marketing, I have to visit Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn as part of my job. Whenever I do, I try and ensure that I make a quick ingress, finish the mission asap and leave immediately.

But, like a fly in a spiderweb, I sometimes find myself ensnared by the platform. On these occasions, I end up reading a few posts (and occasionally comments, ugh!) or catching a glimpse of the day’s top trending content and hashtags.

And that never fails to absolutely ruin my mood.

I would really like it if I went the rest of my (hopefully long) life without ever laying my eyes on the problematic, programmatic, pabulum prose of Twitter or any social media site (but especially Twitter) ever again. I would love it if 2020 was the last year I was ever on social media at all. But that’s not an option anymore.

A social media presence has gone from the alternative to the mainstream to being sort of, compulsory. There’s a widespread idea that you cannot achieve any kind of engagement with a wider audience without farming attention on social media. That is not just repugnant, it’s frightening.

I would rather not turn myself into some Kim Kardashian or Donald Trump clone to further my ideas, but it feels like most of us are being incentivized to do exactly that.

Personally, I hope we can normalize (and dare I say, encourage?) not having a social media presence. Even for writers and content marketing professionals. Call it a social media absence.

But we’re not there yet. And that means, for now at least, I need to slowly re-emerge from the sanity of my sans social safe space and re-enter the fray.

So, like-share-subscribe?
Originally shared on LinkedIn
June 2, 2024