You are on page 1of 22

3/26/2018 Hotel Concierge — The null hypothesis

 Search hotelconcierge       Follow

Hotel Concierge
POSTS ARCHIVE

The null hypothesis

stop trying to make fetch happen

I.

What does the popularity of Fifty Shades of Grey say about American culture?

Emma Green of The Atlantic says that “Fifty Shades casually associates hot sex with violence,”
and that it raises “questions about what it means to ‘consent’ to sex. Clearly, consent is necessary;
but is it sufficient?” and “If anything has the power to shape sexual norms, this does.”

Amanda Hess of Slate, in an article that 100% triggered me, says that the movie "allows the
audience to feel superior to the source material while experiencing the guilty pleasure of
https://hotelconcierge.tumblr.com/post/112348171109/the-null-hypothesis 1/22
3/26/2018
discovering Hotel
that maybe they actually really like thisConcierge
stuff,“ — The"I
and null hypothesis
left the movie feeling like I’d just
 Search hotelconcierge      
been on a first date with someone I’d secretly crushed on for a long time. I’d definitely see it again.”
Follow

Mark Davis of The Dallas Morning News says that the movie “is evidence of a damaged society, a
nation that thinks it is just swell to celebrate the story of a predatory billionaire punk who victimizes
a tragically vulnerable woman for his own sick entertainment.”

Joseph Heschmeyer, slimebag of the ecumenical (?!) journal First Things, says “Spouses in
gender-fluid marriages have less sex, and less satisfying sex. Researchers have found that the
'more traditional the division of labor, meaning the greater the husband’s share of masculine chores
compared with feminine ones, the greater his wife’s reported sexual satisfaction.’ Here, it seems,
Fifty Shades of Grey comes into play, tantalizing readers with a world in which men aren’t afraid to
lead, and women feel safe submitting.”

Lizzie Crocker of The Daily Beast says that “For all its supposed titillation and challenging of sexual
mores, Fifty Shades couldn’t feel more conservative and stilted,” and “Why Fifty Shades appeals to
so many is simpler than a thousand think pieces would have us believe. It’s a safe walk on the dark
side; the faintest brush of a tassel-whip, then home in time for tea.”

Leslie Bennetts of Entertainment Weekly, in article titled SEX, LIES, AND FIFTY SHADES:
MILLIONS HAVE READ THE BOOKS. MILLIONS MORE WILL SEE THE MOVIE. AND
EVERYTHING YOU THINK YOU KNOW ABOUT IT—AND WOMEN—IS WRONG, says that “Fifty
Shades of Grey may represent the ultimate appropriation for capitalist consumption of themes that
have resonated throughout history, but one thing its popularity can’t tell us is the truth about female
sexuality,” because “From earliest childhood, women’s experience of sex is so inextricably
intertwined with all forms of male control that submission is forever eroticized in more ways than we
can possibly unravel.”

Which of these contradictory interpretations is correct? Personally, I think that Crocker best
understands the movie’s gimmick and Bennetts best explains the underlying cultural issues. But
none of these critics admit that Fifty Shades might be popular for a totally banal reason that has
nothing to do with content: none of them disprove the null hypothesis that the movie is popular
because a lot of people were told to go to the theater and watch it.

https://hotelconcierge.tumblr.com/post/112348171109/the-null-hypothesis 2/22
3/26/2018 Hotel Concierge — The null hypothesis

 Search hotelconcierge       Follow

The ads were fucking inescapable. I saw them plastered over the walls of LAX, I saw them on
billboards, I saw them suggested by Facebook. SNL, Durex, and the Spongebob Movie did
parodies of it, and if you don’t think parodies are advertising, then ask yourself why poor old
Obama is participating in a Buzzfeed article. (Remember, use protection! Adblock on before
clicking links, please.) Hot Topic made a t-shirt. Tie-in teddy bear. Ellie Goulding, The Weeknd, and
Beyoncé released music videos for their songs on the Fifty Shades soundtrack. (Don’t worry,
Queen Bey is still a Goddess and a feminist and a U.N. Ambassador or whatever.)

Movie studios don’t release advertising budgets, but the marketing campaign was three years in
the making and by every metric successful [1]. The marketing coup d'etat was the trailer, which
played during “Scandal,” “How to Get Away With Murder,” NBC’s “Today Show,” the Golden
Globes, and the Super Bowl XLIX. Of course, if you’re like me, you don’t watch live TV—Netflix
streaming or die trying. So where did you hear about the trailer?

https://hotelconcierge.tumblr.com/post/112348171109/the-null-hypothesis 3/22
3/26/2018 Hotel Concierge — The null hypothesis

 Search hotelconcierge       Follow

Not my line, but “If you’re seeing it, it’s for you.“

II.

Popularity is self-reinforcing. Once something is popular enough to be part of the "national


dialogue,” previously uninterested people have to investigate if they want to have an “informed
opinion”; this opinion (good or bad) is posted to social media, more people join the national
dialogue, more people investigate, and so on and so forth. How about that dress, huh? Blue-black
or white-gold?

Controversy is a way to jump-start something into the national dialogue, and I mean controversy in
the broadest possible sense, like “anything on which you can have an opinion.” The media plays
both sides of a controversy: it gets hits on the article with the movie trailer, and it gets hits on the
article criticizing the movie. The media cares not from whence the hits come.

What does the popularity of Fifty Shades of Grey say about American culture? I don’t know, what
does the popularity of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest say about our culture? Iron
Man? Shrek 2? All three movies had bigger opening weekends than Fifty Shades; all three were
heavily advertised. The kids on the playground are talking about Iron Man and if you want to
participate you have to go watch it; you do, and now there’s one more kid on the playground talking
about Iron Man. Remember that Kim Kardashian #BreakTheInternet photo a few months back?
What did that say about our culture?
https://hotelconcierge.tumblr.com/post/112348171109/the-null-hypothesis 4/22
3/26/2018 Hotel Concierge — The null hypothesis

 Search hotelconcierge       Follow

In this incredibly smug op-ed, an editor of Paper magazine (in which the Kim K photo was
published) says:

Which brings us to the first rule of how to create a pop phenomenon: be polarising. Kim
Kardashian is both loved and loathed. Detractors tend to play the talent card, as if America only
rewards the talented actors and artists and musicians creating culture today. Perhaps what
enrages people is that she doesn’t claim to be any of those things.

So a mostly-reviled mostly-talentless wealthy attractive woman boasts that she has the power to
“break the internet,” and >70,000 people take the time to retweet the photo and post about how this
is an outrage and how Kim K will definitely not break the internet. Goddamnit, the whole point was
to make you mad—you just fell for the advertising equivalent of negging. And once the media gets
the scent:

The reality star’s photos were taken by a white photographer with a history of playing up racial
tropes about black women’s bodies. Kardashian’s willingness to go along with the shoot — and
the relative ignorance of the majority who have commented on it — reflects a disturbing lack of
awareness when it comes to the exploitation of black bodies, specifically black women. (Mic)

For a woman’s rear to truly be fetishized, her face has to be turned away, rendering her slightly
less human. It’s a pose that Kardashian does her best to counter, wrenching her neck toward
the camera as best she can, but it doesn’t seem wholly comfortable. (The Atlantic)

https://hotelconcierge.tumblr.com/post/112348171109/the-null-hypothesis 5/22
3/26/2018
Insightful Hotel it
cultural commentary, no doubt, too bad Concierge — The null
has nothing to hypothesis
do with why anyone shared the
Search hotelconcierge      
photo, too bad it contributes to the problem and spreads the photo that much more. At long last, the
Follow

dinosaurs awaken. “Kim Kardashian bares her assets for Paper mag; Internet still intact,” the LA
Times gleefully reports. “Fear of Kim Kardashian’s Derrière,” chortles the NY Times headline. TIME
magazine posted three separate articles on the day of the incident, featuring Pulitzer-caliber prose
like “Paper magazine is just what it says it is: a magazine made of paper, and it costs money to buy
it.” When every major news publication makes it a point to say “You didn’t break the Internet,” you
have broken the Internet. I don’t know if the individual columnists realize they are part of the
problem, maybe they earnestly believe “The people need to know!” or maybe they figure “If I don’t
do it, someone else will,” but the end result is the same.

And so here’s a conversation I overheard the day before Fifty Shades was released in theaters.

Person 1: So are you going to see Fifty Shades of Grey this weekend?
Person 2: Yeah, I’m going to see it with some girlfriends. I wish they’d gotten someone hotter for
the main actor, though.

Does Person 2 sound like she is on a soul-searching quest to understand consent, power
dynamics, gender roles, and the long history of male control of female sexuality? Or does she
sound like she’s looking for a movie to see with some friends? I don’t mean to malign Person 2:
back in 2009 I saw Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen—a jingoistic explosion-fest with fewer
redeeming features than Fifty Shades—with four guy friends, even though it had been panned by
critics and I knew it was going to be terrible, because a) it was in theaters, b) it was movie night,
and c) I wasn’t going to suggest My Sister’s Keeper. As a former glass house owner, I know better
than to throw stones. But you need to understand, because Tumblr and Reddit don’t, that most
people don’t read the blogs you read and most people don’t care. Person 2 doesn’t keep up on pop
culture criticism because she’s a nurse working twelve hour days five times a week and a 43 year-
old mother who’s not exactly George Takei in terms of internet savvy; her exposure to Fifty Shades
is TV ads, billboards, word-of-mouth, and the headline of an article she scrolls past while on
Facebook: SEX, LIES, AND FIFTY SHADES. “I didn’t know there was such controversy,” she
thinks. “I guess I’ll have to see the movie and decide for myself.”

III.

You’re allowed to have a reaction to art.

I’m sure many of the people who watched Fifty Shades of Grey—a majority?—would not say that
they saw the movie because it was advertised to them. Maybe they’ve always had a casual interest
in BDSM and wanted to learn more, maybe they’re a couple looking to kink up the bedroom, or
maybe the movie triggered some personal psychosexual revelation, in which case, good for them.

Every individual who watches Fifty Shades has an individual reason for watching it, but that doesn’t
mean that population effects aren’t present.
https://hotelconcierge.tumblr.com/post/112348171109/the-null-hypothesis 6/22
3/26/2018 Hotel Concierge — The null hypothesis

Search hotelconcierge      
An analogy: there is a strong argument (including randomized controlled trials) that the decrease in
Follow

violent crime from 1985 to the present is related to increased consumption of Omega 6 fatty acids,
decreased lead exposure, and/or increased lithium intake. Same thing with, say, improved
childhood nutrition and adulthood IQ. A subtle effect multiplied by a country’s population becomes
significant.

But if you asked a pre-1985 criminal why he was shooting up the general store with a Tommy gun, I
guarantee he wouldn’t answer “Uh, lead exposure and insufficient Omega 6 intake.” He’d probably
say “Well, I always had a casual interest in being gangster, and I wanted to learn more.”

W/r/t the movie, the most convincing evidence of a cultural effect is when one group has a
disproportionate consumption to advertising ratio [2]. 20-40 year-old women saw Fifty Shades
more, but the ad campaign—Ellie Goulding, The Weeknd, Beyoncé, Pinterest, Scandal, How to Get
Away With Murder—was targeted at 20-40 year-old women. Does that say something about
women or about advertising? You have not disproved the null hypothesis. “But why was the ad
campaign targeted at chicks, unless chicks were gonna watch it?" Cultural memes spread laterally
through society, but they spread longitudinally through time as well: teen girls read Twilight, so
Twilight was "for chicks,” so Fifty Shades was written “for chicks,” so the Fifty Shades ad campaign
was designed “for chicks,” so women go to see the movie, so chucklefucks post about how women
are biologically programmed to want romance with BDSM billionaires. Really? You (male) realize
that Judd Apatow films are romances, right? How about Princess Bride? Annie Hall? Is Secretary a
chick flick? Is the Story of O mommy porn? Conversely, you (female) say that Fifty Shades affected
you strongly, but it wouldn’t have affected you if you hadn’t heard of it, heard of it with specific
branding and context, and if something else was the Big Thing maybe you would have liked that
just as much. And so here’s the million-dollar question: what do you want to be the next Big Thing?

IV.

If certain internet content is said to be “viral,” it follows that the source of that content is infectious.
When something is infectious, it is unwise to wave it around yelling “HEY, THIS IS BAD AND IT
WILL MAKE YOU SICK!”

They may target different audiences, but American Sniper has the same marketing strategy as Fifty
Shades: huge advertising push (more than $50 million spent on TV ads alone) + controversy = $$$.
The people going to see Sniper are predominantly conservative—do you think a salon.com article
is going to persuade a guy who voted for Mike Huckabee? Warner Brothers thanks you for the free
advertising.

Depending on the audience, even accurate cultural criticism is ineffective. Write as much as you
want about how Nicki’s twerking is feminist but Iggy’s is cultural appropriation, 100% of the

https://hotelconcierge.tumblr.com/post/112348171109/the-null-hypothesis 7/22
3/26/2018
overlapping Hotel Concierge
fanbase doesn’t care. You’re missing the point — anyway,
The null hypothesis
your outrage shouldn’t be at
 Search hotelconcierge      
Iggy for being awful, your outrage should be at the system for giving you so few options that you
Follow

think a corporate-constructed pop star is a feminist just because she’s the lesser of two evils [3].

I don’t mean to be a buzzkill—I like Nicki, she has a great verse on “Monster” and her verse on
“Only” ain’t bad—but don’t post-hoc yourself into thinking there’s anything progressive about her.
From the Huffington Post:

Today, in Fifty Shades, we find a new strength. The power to be submissive and still be in
control. There is a power in being dominated, and yet not losing the ability to say “stop” or “no.”

Which I’m sure prompted a thousand comments about how “No, Fifty Shades is terrible.” It is.
That’s not the point. The Dom here is capitalism. The Sub is you. Maybe if you grit your teeth and
bear it the two of you can go on a date.

V.

If you’re going to do pop culture criticism, do it as art, as personal expression. Don’t count on
convincing anyone, because your angle is one of 360, people seek out arguments that support their
preexisting beliefs, and there is a good chance readers will skim the first paragraph and hit Cmd +
W anyway.

https://hotelconcierge.tumblr.com/post/112348171109/the-null-hypothesis 8/22
3/26/2018 going to do pop culture criticism, waitHotel
If you’re untilConcierge
the hype— The null down,
dies hypothesis
because else you will
Search hotelconcierge
become part of the hype.       Follow

If you’re going to do pop culture criticism, turn on Adblock. Do not post clickbait headlines on
Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. Do not reblog, retweet, or repost the content of anyone who is
making money off of the controversy (sorry). Don’t announce a boycott—just don’t show up.

If you’re going to do pop culture criticism, recognize that the reasons you have for disliking
something are often totally unrelated to the reasons other people have for liking it.

Cultural memes are viruses. You can’t cure a virus with antibiotics. The best way to stop a virus is
to not get sick.

Don’t get sick.

[1]. I can imagine someone objecting that the novel version of Fifty Shades was “organically”
successful long before the movie; however, the novel only sold 250,000 copies before the rights
were acquired by Random House, the largest general-interest book publisher in the world. Random
House did its mojo, and the book has sold 100 million copies since. Also note that even the hype
for the paltry-in-comparison 250,000 copies was based off a mainstream media ad campaign,
namely the ad frenzy of the Twilight saga on which Fifty Shades was based.

[2]. A good example of this is Morrissey’s popularity in the Mexican-American community; The
Smiths never tried to sell to this demo, so their popularity is probably the result of a legitimate
cultural phenomenon.

[3]. I’ll leave the U.S. politics/two-party system analogy as an exercise for the reader.

#pop culture #memes #keeping up with the kardashians

11 notes Feb 28th, 2015

https://hotelconcierge.tumblr.com/post/112348171109/the-null-hypothesis 9/22
3/26/2018 Hotel Concierge — The null hypothesis

 Search hotelconcierge       Follow


MORE YOU MIGHT LIKE

THE FALSE NEGATIVES

In The Company Of Men (1997) opens in an airport where two middle management guys have just
arrived: a bespectacled seborrheic named Howard, and an ex-jock good ol’ boy named…Chad.

Howard walks out of the bathroom. He’s been hit, by a woman, just for asking her the time. Like,
Mountain or Central. “Wait, wait. You’re telling me about some sort of unprovoked assault here?”
Chad says. “Did she give you the time at least?”

Howard doesn’t laugh. He doesn’t even seem to recognize it as a joke. And therein lies the
problem, for him and everyone else.

Keep reading

37 notes

https://hotelconcierge.tumblr.com/post/112348171109/the-null-hypothesis 10/22
3/26/2018 Hotel Concierge — The null hypothesis

      
THE FALSE NEGATIVES: INTRO
Search hotelconcierge Follow

If they could have believed that these images only obfuscated or masked the Platonic Idea of
God, there would have been no reason to destroy them. One can live with the idea of distorted
truth. But their metaphysical despair came from the idea that the image didn’t conceal anything
at all, and that these images were in essence not images, such as an original model would have
made them, but perfect simulacra, forever radiant with their own fascination. Thus this death of
the divine referential must be exorcised at all costs. (Simulacra and Simulation)

Keep reading

10 notes

HYPOCRISY IS BAD, BUT YOU’RE WORSE

https://hotelconcierge.tumblr.com/post/112348171109/the-null-hypothesis 11/22
3/26/2018 Hotel Concierge — The null hypothesis

 Search hotelconcierge       Follow

“I like the Walrus best,“ said Alice, "because you see he was a little sorry for the poor oysters.”
“He ate more than the Carpenter, though,” said Tweedledee. “You see he held his handkerchief
in front, so that the Carpenter couldn’t count how many he took: contrariwise.”
“That was mean!” Alice said indignantly. “Then I like the Carpenter best—if he didn’t eat so
many as the Walrus.”
“But he ate as many as he could get,” said Tweedledum.
This was a puzzler. After a pause, Alice began, “Well! They were both very unpleasant
characters—” (Through the Looking-Glass)

Keep reading

26 notes

THE GENDER NULLARY

https://hotelconcierge.tumblr.com/post/112348171109/the-null-hypothesis 12/22
3/26/2018 Hotel Concierge — The null hypothesis

 Search hotelconcierge       Follow

Trigger warning for everything that follows: the coddled, over-sensitive, “triggered” millennial
crybaby does not exist. Hold your applause—the COSTMC is an oxymoron because coddling does
not sensitize, it scleroses. Have you met these people? They can’t feel an emotion without an
audience and a week to rehearse. The performative offense of this group results from high
emotional tolerance, not low; sad-rage is heroin to everything else’s Motrin, and no matter how vast
the safe space, some kids are gonna hang at the outskirts hoping to score.

Of course, even the phoniest opportunist has a few real triggers—the type that precludes rage
because you’re numb in the fetal position. And of course, there are many uncoddled e.g.
traumatized people who are genuinely vulnerable to the many, many instances of genuine cruelty
and callousness.

Every community with a code of conduct is a safe space to some extent. My lawyer advises no
comment on whether safe spaces are good or bad in principle, because it depends: who is being
included, who is being excluded, where will they go, and who is enforcing the rules.

My concern is the way these debates are settled. And when the excluded protest against political
correctness—that human resources plot to merge all safe spaces under one state capitalist thumb
—they ditch culture war bushido and strike at whomever can be hurt the most.

Keep reading

45 notes

https://hotelconcierge.tumblr.com/post/112348171109/the-null-hypothesis 13/22
3/26/2018 Hotel Concierge — The null hypothesis

YOUNG ADULT FICTIONS


 Search hotelconcierge       Follow

Slate Star Codex, “Some groups of people who may not 100% deserve our eternal scorn,”
defending Harry Potter political analogies:

Comparing politics to your favorite legends is as old as politics and legends. Herodotus used an
extended metaphor between the Persian invasions of his own time and the Trojan War. When
King Edward IV took the English throne in 1461, all anybody could talk about was how it
reminded them of King Arthur. John Dryden’s famous poem Absalom and Achitophel is a
bizarrely complicated analogy of 17th-century English politics to an obscure Biblical story.
Throughout American history people have compared King George to Pharaoh, Benedict Arnold
to Judas, Abraham Lincoln to Moses, et cetera.

Well, how many people know who Achitophel is these days? Even Achilles is kind of pushing it.
So we stick to what we know – and more important, what we expect everyone else will know
too. And so we get Harry Potter.

“But a children’s book?” Look, guys, fantasy is what the masses actually like. They liked it in
Classical Greece, where they had stories like Bellerophon riding a flying horse and fighting the
Chimera. They liked it in medieval Britain, where they would talk about the Knights of the Round
Table slaying dragons as they searched for the Holy Grail. The cultural norm where only kids
are allowed to read fantasy guilt-free and everybody else has to read James Joyce is a weird
blip in the literary record which is already being corrected. Besides, James Joyce makes for a
much less interesting source of political metaphors (“The 2016 election was a lot like Finnegan’s
Wake: I have no idea what just happened”)

Hoo boy did he walk into that one.

Keep reading

https://hotelconcierge.tumblr.com/post/112348171109/the-null-hypothesis 14/22
49 notes
49 notes
3/26/2018 Hotel Concierge — The null hypothesis

 Search hotelconcierge       Follow

THE SOUND OF MANY ONE HANDS


CLAPPING

All of the blind men trying to describe the alt-right elephant seem to agree that anti-political-
correctness is part of the picture. Maybe anti-PC isn’t the most important issue to any one alt-
righter, but it’s the stance that is most widespread among them, sensitive but not specific. Okay.
Why?

Keep reading

27 notes

HILLARY CLINTON, ALT-RIGHT LEADER

https://hotelconcierge.tumblr.com/post/112348171109/the-null-hypothesis 15/22
3/26/2018 Hotel Concierge — The null hypothesis

 Search hotelconcierge       Follow

Who do you think is running Congress? Farmers? Engineers? Teachers? Businessmen? No,
my friends. Congress is run by lawyers. A lawyer is trained for two things and two things only.
To clarify – that’s one. And to confuse – that’s the other. He does whichever is to his client’s
advantage. (Nashville)

The motives of race-nationalism are different today than in 1939 Germany. In that time and place,
per the Nuremberg Trials, lots of people became Nazis because…that’s they were supposed to do.
When your boss is bumping the new Wagner album and all cool kids are talking eugenics, sharing
Aryan memes, getting mad retweets and faves for their Holocaust jokes—well, you can convince
yourself of just about anything. And no one wants to feel left out.

Keep reading

20 notes

THE HYPERREAL GRAMMARIAN


CONSPIRACY AGAINST THE HUMAN
RACE

https://hotelconcierge.tumblr.com/post/112348171109/the-null-hypothesis 16/22
3/26/2018 Hotel Concierge — The null hypothesis

 Search hotelconcierge       Follow

i’m trying to tell you now, it’s sabotage

Wittgenstein:

A proposition may well be an incomplete picture of a certain situation, but it is always a


complete picture of something.

Scepticism is not irrefutable, but obviously nonsensical, when it tries to raise doubts where no
questions can be asked. For doubt can exist only where a question exists, a question only
where an answer exists, and an answer only where something can be said. (Tractatus Logicus-
Philosophicus)

We thus derive the first law of comedy, that which allows it to travel faster than light. By the logic of
a closed system: if the set-up exists, then so must the punchline.

https://hotelconcierge.tumblr.com/post/112348171109/the-null-hypothesis 17/22
3/26/2018 Hotel Concierge — The null hypothesis


Neo-nazi Richard
Search Spencer getting punched in the face
hotelconcierge (Bruce
Springsteen
   - Born
In… Follow

Keep reading

19 notes

The Tower

https://hotelconcierge.tumblr.com/post/112348171109/the-null-hypothesis 18/22
3/26/2018
hey Hotel Concierge
man there’s a hole in my head where information goes — The null hypothesis

 Search hotelconcierge       Follow

I. 
1 And the whole earth was of one language and of one speech.

2 And it came to pass, as they journeyed east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and
they dwelt there.

3 And they said one to another: ‘Come, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly.’ And they
had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar.

4 And they said: 'Come, let us build us a city, and a tower, with its top in heaven, and let us
make us a name; lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.’

5 And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded.

6 And the LORD said: 'Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is
what they begin to do; and now nothing will be withholden from them, which they purpose to do.

7 Come, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one
another’s speech.’

8 So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth; and they left
off to build the city.

9 Therefore was the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the
language of all the earth; and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of
all the earth. (Genesis 11:1–9)

In Sunday School or Illustrated Classics, we are taught that God punished humanity for hubris, for
daring to disobey Mesopotamian zoning laws. That’s not what it says here.

Keep reading

95 notes

The Subprime Directive

https://hotelconcierge.tumblr.com/post/112348171109/the-null-hypothesis 19/22
3/26/2018 Hotel Concierge — The null hypothesis

 Search hotelconcierge       Follow

no one likes us / i don’t know why

I.

Trying to extract useful information from the 24-hour thinkpiece cycle is like trying to learn English
by listening to low fidelity death metal: the signal to noise ratio is very, very low. (Admittedly, kind of
a silly comparison—one imbues the audience with depraved bloodlust for unspeakable atrocities,
the other is a genre of music.) The cacophony of 40,000 anhedonics exhausting every topical
combination of syllables would be enough to institutionalize the Dalai Lama; words are infectious;
once you find yourself forming political opinions about internet memes, your life is game over, A + B
+ Select + Start. I mean damn, I love pattern matching as much as the next former toy-sorter, but
sometimes it’s okay to accept that a cigar is a cigar and a butterfly in New Mexico was having a
bad day.

If you do want to stay “informed,” instead of doing something worthwhile like working at a soup
kitchen or practicing the yo-yo, my advice is that you train yourself to zoom out. No one post-
puberty will make a significant error of deductive reasoning. Nothing horrifies a teenager like
hypocrisy: the first thing we learn out of Eden is how to circle A —> B around into Z —> A. Logic is
easy, ask any expert on Aether. Nor will anyone worth rap battling commit a decisive factual error.
https://hotelconcierge.tumblr.com/post/112348171109/the-null-hypothesis 20/22
3/26/2018
Our Hotel Concierge
flat earth has enough case studies to support even the — The
mostnullwhacked
hypothesis ideology, ask any

 Search hotelconcierge      
schizophrenic. Further, we humans of latitude have practiced the art of the squeal since our first
Follow

lung expansion. We may be terrible at diagnosis, but we are the GOAT at identifying symptoms. So
when you roll up your sleeves to shadowbox with a Bad Argument, you are going to face an
internally consistent worldview backed by genuine hurt and fitting examples. This is why change is
so difficult, and why other people are so infuriating: the problem is not bias, it is incompleteness.
The only way out is to spot what is not included, the lie of omission, which requires perspective.
Any given data point is both true and meaningless, a straight line across points makes you
Nostradamus. Most arguments are nonsense, but when everyone chooses the same type of
nonsense, that tells you something very interesting indeed.

With this methodology in mind, it is my contention that three of the most prevalent post-election
news trends are designed with a single goal in mind: to prevent you from looking too closely at this
picture—

—while humanity gets crunched into Google AdWords and fed to Cthulhu. The end of all things will
be search engine optimized, at least we can take comfort in that.

Keep reading

64 notes

https://hotelconcierge.tumblr.com/post/112348171109/the-null-hypothesis 21/22
3/26/2018 Hotel Concierge — The null hypothesis

 Search hotelconcierge Show more       Follow

https://hotelconcierge.tumblr.com/post/112348171109/the-null-hypothesis 22/22

You might also like