Newsletter from Jay Wilcox - October 2024: On Weird

Good morning/afternoon/evening!

My number-one goal, should I ever find myself in a position of fame and influence, is to not get weird.

Why can't J.K. Rowling keep her mouth shut? What the hell's the matter with Elon Musk? I don't know if fame makes people weird, but it often makes them vocal--and as annoying as I find these people, part of me understands their impulses. I feel helpless a lot of the time. Drowned out by a world that's so much bigger than me, I daydream about what I would say to All of Humanity if I had their ear for just a moment.

Unlike Rowling, I have no fear of trans kids.

Unlike Musk, I'm not afraid of "woke."

However, like many of you, I see the world changing in ways that make me itch. AI is replacing artists. Kids don't read for fun as much as they used to. Adults struggle with media literacy and critical thinking and even common decency, and if I could just vent my frustrations to a wider audience--if enough people listened to me, accepted me--maybe I could do my part in righting this ship.

We're all uncomfortable. Maybe such vocal weirdness is a sort of stretch mark on the soul, something that occurs when our platform grows beyond our restraint. I don't write to defend people like Rowling or Musk but rather to examine our relationship to our influence. The question of whether power corrupts strikes me as a sort of chicken-and-the-egg situation, in that those who seek copious power and influence were probably already morally corrupted to begin with. At the same time, imagine if you, a regular, not-weird person, felt like you finally had the capacity to tell the world your Big Important Thing. Might that not make you speak louder? Might the sudden accumulation of an audience not validate said beliefs and drive them deeper?

You can't beat a dead horse to make it drink. In their flailing, frustrated efforts, the weird loud people rage against their inability to effect change, and as much as we may love to hate these people, the moral of the story is We Could Be Just Like Them. I do think there's something inherently wrong with Elon Musk that may not be similarly wrong with me and you. That said, I fear an unexamined, unrestrained life. I wholeheartedly endorse crippling self-doubt.

We all want to be heard--and, in the spirit of listening, I welcome you to write back. I hope you've been well.

Infinite Regards,

Jay