On "The Optimistic, Practical, Forward-Looking" View

In discussing the "power elite" the great sociologist C. Wright Mills wrote about what it takes to get to the top--which was not, in his analysis, competence in any of the senses in which believers in the world as some perfect meritocracy insist. Rather what matters is that one is perceived as loyal to the interests and prejudices of those in charge, making them an acceptable subordinate and successor on that level, essentially agreeable toward those whom they are obliged to be agreeable, and ready to do whatever it takes to get ahead--as with the moral compromises involved in meeting the first two criteria. All of this entails a great many behaviors, among them presenting themselves in a certain way, always speaking "to the well-blunted point" by "mak[ing] the truism seem like the deeply pondered notion," and "soften[ing] the facts into the optimistic, practical, forward-looking, cordial, brisk view," which brushes off hard realities and rather than finding a genuine bright spot in a dark picture and usefully working with that to set things right in the manner one would hope of a responsible and worthy administrator and leader, usually just "bright-sides" the listener or reader.

I have long found that last trait--that speaking to the blunted point, that softening of the facts into the "optimistic, practical, forward-looking" view--especially repugnant and frustrating. And it seems to be part of the general enshittification of the Internet that when we go looking for explanations and insight that "optimistic, practical, forward-looking" view is constantly inflicted on us instead, precisely because what search engines offer ever more these days is not answers to our questions but crappy products no one wants or needs. After all, a considerable portion of that consists of the would-be purveyors of advice of the self-help and related varieties, whose principal stock in trade is "bright-siding" you as they insist that whatever problem you are having is fixable with their glib one-size-fits-all prescriptions--or at least, pretend to be sure, as they really do not care whether that advice fixes anything, for what they really want is YOUR MONEY. Not getting enough readers for your blog (for example)? Well, here's what you must be doing wrong (they just assume), and here is what you can be doing differently (they just assume), but if you really want the whole package, buy this (as clearly they assume some of the people reading such swill will).

More and more of us are despairing of online search as a result--to such a degree that even so Establishment a news outlet as The Atlantic admits that search tools, like that old gray mare, "ain't what they used to be." And it seems to me that if it is indeed the case that Internet search engines as we know them are under serious threat from the latest generation of chatbots ("Did Google order the code red?" "You're Goddamn right it did!") the search engine industry helped make itself vulnerable through the ever-worse quality of its service--rendering itself dispensable through "creative destruction" not of more established products and services, but of themselves.