{"id":163910,"date":"2025-09-27T16:18:36","date_gmt":"2025-09-28T00:18:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=163910"},"modified":"2025-09-27T16:18:36","modified_gmt":"2025-09-28T00:18:36","slug":"i-dont-care-if-you-read-this","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=163910","title":{"rendered":"‘I Don’t Care If You Read This’"},"content":{"rendered":"

David Pinsof writes<\/a>: We all care what people think\u2014deeply, desperately. Some of us just act like we don\u2019t care what people think, in order to make people think that we don\u2019t care what they think. We signal we\u2019re not signaling.<\/p>\n

I once saw a tweet about how good it feels to not tweet: \u201cHad the urge to tweet something a few hours ago. Resisted the urge. Feels good.\u201d The tweeter was patting himself on the back for not tweeting, oblivious to the fact that he was, in fact, tweeting. <\/p>\n

Or consider this article in New York Magazine, in which the author proudly declared she had \u201cabandoned the notion of ambition.\u201d The author was tired of writing pat thinkpieces for likes and retweets, which she wrote in a pat thinkpiece that got lots of likes and retweets.<\/p>\n

Politics is full of this chicanery, like the complaint that everything is politicized. \u201cYou just had to go and make things political, didn\u2019t you, David?\u201d Unfortunately, complaining that everything is politicized is just a way of politicizing complaints that everything is politicized. Sighing about political \u201ctribalism\u201d is, likewise, a signal of loyalty to the centrist\/libertarian tribe that sighs about political tribalism.<\/p>\n

We are too na\u00efve about signaling games. We think we can escape them. We think there is an \u201copt out\u201d button we can press at any time. But that button does not exist. We have no choice but to signal. In a judgy species like ours, every little thing we do gets noticed, including the things we don\u2019t do\u2014or the things we say we don\u2019t do while we do them.<\/p>\n

…we bravely defy social norms so that people will praise us, we poke fun of ourselves for being uncool to prove we\u2019re cool, we rebel against conformity in the same way as everyone else, and most of all: we desperately want people to know that we don\u2019t care what they think. It\u2019s the mother of all social paradoxes.<\/p>\n

The only escape is to admit there\u2019s no escape. Give in. Play the game. Send the signals you want to send to the people you want to receive them, and\u2014who knows?\u2014you might just feel a glimmer of happiness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

David Pinsof writes: We all care what people think\u2014deeply, desperately. Some of us just act like we don\u2019t care what people think, in order to make people think that we don\u2019t care what they think. We signal we\u2019re not signaling. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10943],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-163910","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-status"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t