Designer Mike Monteiro sent a newsletter before the inauguration that I had to re-read yesterday. Things seem like they’re getting so bad, so fast, and I had to remind myself that’s the point: The barrage of bad things is supposed to get us so worn down that we give up. But you know what? We don’t have to pay attention!
As Monteiro says (emphasis mine):
For a narcissistic sociopath, attention is oxygen. And there’s no difference between good attention and bad. They live for your reaction and they will get progressively more erratic to keep that attention coming. So every time you react, they know it’s working. Their goal is to be on stage. Their demand is that you be their audience.
[…] The only way to defeat a narcissistic sociopath is to starve them. Protect yourself from their bullshit, of course, but move away from it. Let them have their stage, but refuse to be their audience.
This isn’t easy. It’s especially difficult because capitalism is an attention economy. The New York Times and The Washington Post love a narcissistic sociopath because they generate clicks and clicks sell ads. Social media loves a narcissistic sociopath for the same reason, but it’s even worse. On social media, we’re the ones carrying their water. Trump says something that he knows will get him attention (i.e. renaming the Gulf of Mexico) and not only does it fire up hundreds of media outlets, who now divert attention to this idiocy, but it also fires up tons of people like me and you, who end up reposting his garbage.
[…] The first four years of Donald Trump was a continuous panic attack. I’m not going through that again. You don’t have to either. They’re on stage, but you don’t have to be their audience.
In other words…
