Back at the ranch otherwise known as Fox, we once covered a study reporting that people felt fame was a more important factor in happiness than family or work. In other words, your wife and kids could hate your guts, but if the waiter recognized you from that thing you did on TikTok with the electric toothbrush and a hamster, that made your night (especially if you got a free drink out of it).
To the people like me who pay attention to the need for attention, this finding is utterly predictable, but no less horrifying.
Without much effort, we’ve turned life into a global competition for attention. We’ll do anything to win. But it wasn’t always like this.
When I was growing up, I lived three houses down from Jamie Jones (a fake name, so don’t bother googling). We were the same age, in the same class—and I had no idea if he had more friends or more toys than me. A curtain of unknowing separated us. I never saw his family life, so I had no interest in his family life (maybe he had a mom, dad, a lizard, and perhaps a brother—I remember seeing bunk beds—but that could have been during that time I had to wear an eye patch for double vision), and he seemed a better athlete (a low bar compared to me), but that was never a bone of contention. We were friends, which meant we weren’t nosy. Now the world is vastly different. And awful. We must know all.
If I were growing up now, I’d be able to know not only everything about Jamie’s toy chest and friend supply, but just about any other Jamie on the planet. Famous Jamies, not-so-famous Jamies, Jamies of all different genders and orientations. Even Jamie Farr! (He’s still alive, right?) Today, with a gentle tap of my finger, I could find out how much less my dad makes than other dads, just by looking at the posted pics of swimming pools and birthday parties that dwarfed my overgrown backyard, littered with balloons and paper plates. My family wasn’t rich. It wasn’t poor. It was just whatever, until my mom’s best friend died and left my parents enough of a nest egg to get me and my siblings through college (I was cleared at the inquest).
Now is different, and now it isn’t good. The lonely and the alienated and even the not-so-lonely and not-so-alienated now have ample evidence—gigabytes of it, showing how much better off everyone else is. We now can see daily how the world truly treats people differently. And it’s not about race, or gender. It’s about physical attraction and status. Instagram might have unraveled a few millennia of religion—the serious spiritual attempt to attenuate the realities of the world’s natural and brutal unfairness has been destroyed by butt selfies. If religion can’t get this ass back in the barn, what can?
We now see everything others have, and we are untethered from the tools that soothe the effects of such differences. Family, community, and religion: what was the three-pronged pleasure principle is now an object of disdain and mockery.
Is it wrong to say that it’s loneliness that drives modern politics? Once you see family or community as some sort of lie told to you by “the man,” all that’s left is political tribalism. You find that social activism replaces the love you might have gotten from those closest to you. Antifa replaces family.
Family, community, and religion: like them or not, for centuries these were the saving concentric circles that protected you—which now social media has leapfrogged over and beyond; it’s the HOV lane to a new kind of hell. The barrier to entry is nil, but the arena you enter is ruthless. There’s a reason it’s free: it’s worthless and you pay later. With your data, and your peace of mind.
But before social media ever sprouted its tentacles into every part of your life, postmodernism had already told us to ditch the traditions—without ever having anything better to replace them with. (This is probably why the conversion of Kanye West from hedonistic loudmouth to selfless prophet feels so real and so meaningful: he got to the abyss faster than anyone else on the planet, and is now running back to tell the rest of us how horrible that reality is. He’s as close to a real prophet we have these days: he saw it all, and it sucks.)
This is a problem, and it’s one that has consequences. But those who know what’s coming—otherwise known as experts—don’t mind what’s coming, and never have. The ideas of alienation and separation are what they had in mind all along. Misery indeed loves company, as certain companies require your misery to exist. CNN, for example.
But if fame is deemed most valuable, and seems to be everywhere yet is elusive or accidental for only a few, then what does that leave you or your children with? Not much—except a persistent emptiness. It leaves you all aching for something that your community used to provide.
Instagram, meanwhile, judges us only by our Darwinian attributes: physical attraction and power. This means that since the Bronze Age, we’ve progressed only to an even more ruthless class system: literally a social class—one containing beautiful, rich, and young elites who corner the market of every platform.
In the dating world a funny guy could outdo a handsome dullard. A hilarious 6 could outmatch a shallow 10 (here I speak from experience as an amusing 7.2). Not anymore.
Women face different challenges. Women are outgunned by youth, more than anything. Women forget—that for men, it’s not about looks. It’s about age and newness. That’s the driving force behind our selfish genes: forcing men to see in every untapped female a future, be it short-term or not.
Youthful markers are the evolutionary measure and social media reminds us of this daily—forcing females over age thirty into the mimetic hell of cosmetic surgery, where every woman tries to look like every other woman they believe is “youthful.” And you end up with faces as tight as the skin on bongos.
Sadly, the world is for the young, and the young have no idea what to do with it. Yeah, I know Oscar Wilde had a far better way of saying that, but he’s dead and I’m writing this book, not him, so his version’s wasted. (I think it was Wilde who said it. Maybe it was George Bernard Shaw? Either way I always confuse my Belgian writers.)
A sense of obscurity—minus the buffers of family, community, and religion—creates a pathway for the worst kind of psychological disease: a sense of worthlessness that screams for attention. Godlessness means God on earth wins. And how do you keep score? I think we’ve figured this out. Is it any wonder, on Twitter, people are called “followers”? That sounds meaningful but I got lucky. Fact is, the impossibility of fame ends up pointing you to the possibility of infamy.
That encourages the very worst of human traits—if you can’t be famous, you can always be infamous. Nothing narrows the timeline from lonely Saturday to school shooter like this does. Especially as the media creates an ever-expanding spotlight for them—proving that infamy is there for the taking. As the coverage goes wall to wall, like demonic clockwork another attempted mass shooting takes place. One alienated creep sees the reward for such actions, so he copies it.
Modern terrorists take a similar career path. Having no real impact in life, they see apocalyptic war, or a crusade for vengeance against Western decadence, as the alternative. It provides infamy, and within that, eternal life. Truly those guys are the original incels. Their hygiene doesn’t help, either.
Infamy is easy, forever, and contagious. Anybody can do it, and so can a nobody. Fifty years ago, if I decided to walk out into the street and do something awful, it would stay there, likely ended quickly by a cop with fists the size of small cars. Now if I do something awful, I may still be dead, but my death will have more power, more “spectacle spread”—since every eyeball will see it expand like a deadly mold all over Twitter.
We should make this kind of path harder to take.
But we live in a two-dimensional world where vicarious mayhem is ubiquitous but real-world consequences may follow. Video games make you wonder what it’s like to kill, not just for points, but for real. I’m not going to lie: back in the 1990s, Doom invaded my dreams at night. But not just Doom. Video games, pornography, and drugs cluttered my unconscious. It’s an odd thing, how dreams lift experiences that aren’t actually real ones at all, and then drive out real things. Porn is merely a menu of novel simulations, like an empty life seen in time-lapse clips: her, then her, then her. Meanwhile, drugs feel like a journey when in fact you rarely leave the couch; and video games concoct fantasies in a world where what’s false feels real. The world’s great time-wasters seep into all nooks.
Get high, play games, watch porn: it’s the modern male triathlon in a universe where options seemed narrowed. The West is becoming the new Sparta. For jerk-offs.
What’s missing now, that before had kept this at bay? We sacrificed community, while replacing it with a facsimile that oddly isolates us in our rooms.
But do not fret—I have answers. Or, I pretend to!
Think of fame as a fire: run, duck, roll.
You’re so hot.
No wonder you’re sweating and uncomfortable and worried you may be looking fat.
You’ll look much slimmer in a new gray cloak of invisibility. Even a little bit of fame is like dating a supermodel. You think, “Oh, this is nice.” Then you start getting the bills for maintenance and on your way to debtor’s prison (aka “spacious studio apartment”), you suddenly long for the nice, smart woman you used to “date,” if that’s what you call those squalid, mortifying nights in dives in Queens or New Jersey.
The high cost of fame can be measured in many ways—in money, time, and self-respect. Usually all three. And for what? A tiny spark of recognition when you buy your movie ticket so you can sit in a dark room surrounded by people who aren’t at all interested in you? Measure your worth by the people around you who know you, not by the people “out there” who don’t.
Treat social media like an acquaintance, not an ex. We go on Twitter and Instagram to show off, generally to some amorphous mass that represents everyone we want to impress. Basically the Web is the last person who dumped you. You must prove them wrong—you are somebody.
Instead, why not treat that world like it really is: some unknown quantity who couldn’t care less about your achievements. The people you want to impress aren’t there. My guess—those people are in a nearby room wondering what the hell you’re up to, locked away for hours stuck in an attention-suck vortex. Which leads me to the easiest, simplest plus of all:
Replace the instinct to reply with physical action. When you’re online, and you’re about to say a really nice thing to your favorite talk show host named Greg, try this: Get up, and walk to the person closest to you, and transfer that energy to them. Say something that won’t get you into trouble. Even a banality like “Have you lost weight?” changes a person’s life far more wonderfully than writing nice things to a stranger, even if that stranger is me. It might sound corny, but it’s a twofer—it prevents you from saying something foolish in a public space, and forces you to reacquaint yourself with actual conversation. I do this even when alone, by paying myself lavish compliments. Experts call it self-talk but it’s basically me mumbling on the subway so no one will sit next to me.
Go out of your way to know less about your neighbors. Don’t snoop online. I know it’s tempting to google everyone you know—but knowledge ruins everything (I think Einstein said that).
Do the grandmother test. The best way to expose the pointlessness of novelty (and how it ruins stable, fruitful relationships) is to see who you’d never replace in your life. Can you imagine a different mother? A different grandmother? Different sisters? Novelty—that desire for something you’ve never had before—clouds our relationships with the unrelated. But imagine applying that novelty logic to people who exist beyond our evolutionary desires. To family. It won’t work. Or it shouldn’t work. And that will remind you how illusory and superficial novelty really is. If you don’t understand what I’m saying, then just imagine every woman as someone’s daughter, and take up bowling.
VIRTUE ETHICS
The whole minus part of life could be made into a plus by embracing what Aristotle called “virtue ethics.” It’s about avoiding the stuff you just know you shouldn’t do. Don’t hit your sister. Don’t kick the dog. All that until you get to “don’t insult interns.” It’s also the stuff that everyone else on the planet knows you shouldn’t do. Killing people, for example, is a global minus, and we don’t really need God to tell us so.
The fact that many of us are always on the lookout for ways around the unwritten laws of life gives lawyers all they need to retire rich.
Steal more. The best way to add good things to a rough world is to steal the good things from other people. Meaning, be a wisdom leech. Which is what I am.
When you watch me on The Five, you might think to yourself, “How is this young, dashing person so full of amazing wisdom! It’s like he’s lived nine lives in one—and all without wearing a cat suit!”
Well, yes, it’s true, I’ve lived several lives, at once—simply by surrounding myself with people who are smarter than me in many different areas. So at any moment, when I’m searching for an answer, I can scan my collection of friends and see what I can shoplift from them to turn my current quandary into a plus.
It’s funny—as I write this piece of advice about how to steal advice from people around you, I realize that I might have stolen this actual strategy from someone else! (I am not admitting who it is, because I’m not even sure who I stole it from, but I admit, that, unlike daily brushing, this may not be an original Gutfeld idea.)
Being a wisdom leech is not a weakness, though, as long as you give credit to your sources (see above). So, I’ve got a pretty top-notch menagerie of people who, out of my concern for their modesty, will go nameless here. Some you might know, but many you won’t. What’s pretty incredible: some of the people giving the best advice are rarely asked for it. So when you do ask, they’re super-happy to give it. The best advice I got was from people who didn’t even know they were giving it! (I may set that to music—did I mention I own a guitar?)
People love to give advice because it gives them a sense that they’ve done something worthwhile, without really lifting a finger. In fact, all they did was listen to your question and draw from their past and cultivate a waxy ball of wisdom to toss back at you. When you seem grateful for it, they’re almost more grateful. So they throw more. Talk about a double plus: you’re getting help by giving help at the same time.
Important note: asking for advice is a good thing, but only if the problem is within what I call “your realm of friendship.” That’s where you are a princess and where friendship is like pixie dust. Example: don’t go to a friend and ask for tips on dumping a body into the East River. That’s outside your realm of friendship, unless all your friends are fish. They won’t thank you, even though you are only trying to feed them. And you mustn’t ever use the opportunity to ask for advice as just an opportunity to solve your own problems, especially if they involve taxes. A friend listens, but even a friend has limits. Only ask them for their ears if you intend to listen to what comes out of their mouths. Friends aren’t therapists: they’re better than that. They’re more like podiatrists.
Remember when you were nothing. Another lesson: good people remember what it was like when they were you. Bad people don’t. The best people see what you have or what you’re lacking and aren’t afraid to challenge you to find it.
One good judge of character is to watch how somebody treats an opening band or comedian. Or a waiter or bartender. Meaning anyone who stands between that person and what they want. Are they impatient, or are they giving? Do they know what to do in those moments when it looks like they might not get what they want?
Be around people who are nicer than you. This is really easy for me.