Beware the politics of attention

Two Christmases ago, I wrote about the tasteless, R-rated Santa slasher film, “Violent Night.”

“When nothing is sacred, there’s nothing to lose,” I quoted from one of my favorite songwriters. “When nothing is sacred, all is consumed.”

My point was that our decency-insensitive, attention-obsessed society had lost its sense of the good, the holy, the sacrosanct. We would do just about anything, cross any line, for views. 

That is very dangerous for society. Turn back the clock to the time of newspapers and the Pony Express. “Shocking,” “gratuitous” news might easily fall on deaf ears. At a minimum, it would take many days, maybe even weeks, for word of the wanton deed to spread throughout the country. Would this not have a deadening effect on reckless attention-seeking?

Today, however, atrocities, hot takes, and bombastic stunts are instantaneously broadcast to millions of bored, hungry onlookers. The economy of attention rewards stupidity, perversion, and meaninglessness.

This week, for example, a young woman (whose name I won’t mention) broke the internet by making a documentary about how she had sex with 101 men in one day. The OnlyFans adult model already makes millions online, but apparently, that wasn’t enough. She wanted the attention — and that’s exactly what she got.

In an interview, she confessed that the experience was “more intense” than she expected. Visibly shaken, she then broke down crying. “It’s not for the weak girls, if I’m honest,” she said. “It was hard. I don’t know if I’d recommend it.”

Don’t fall for the crocodile tears. Despite expecting sympathy for her bad behavior, the model subsequently announced she is “training” for a new challenge: 1,000 men in one day.

“I can’t wait,” she said. “It’s very exciting.”

I hope you realize how disgusting this is. As Ben Shapiro pointed out, disgust has fallen out of fashion lately (it isn’t “tolerant” enough), but sometimes, it’s entirely necessary. This would be one of those times.

What motivates her (and the equally shameful men who line up to sleep with her)? Are they merely sex-obsessed? No. It’s much worse than that. She craves attention — so much so that she’s willing to set fire to any semblance of morality, virtue, and dignity. Bad people will always do bad things. Bad people who also crave attention are incapable of saying, “Enough’s enough.”   

This model’s stunt is indicative of a broader problem in American politics and culture. We have learned that substance very rarely sells. We have sacrificed nuance, truth, beauty, and, indeed, art itself on the altar of tabloid trash and pleasure-seeking. There’s no such thing as a bridge too far, a taboo subject, an unspeakable word in the unending quest for more likes!

We must begin to see how this mentality has seeped into our politics: Earlier this year, for example, “tradwife” influencer Lilly Gaddis, who uses very profane language, casually dropped the n-word in one of her videos, catapulting her overnight to national notoriety. Of course, using a racist slur should have resulted in Gaddis’s (rightful) expulsion from polite society. Instead, it purchased her the most valuable commodity: attention. 

In Jordan Peterson’s “We Who Wrestle With God,” the famed psychologist proposes that the forbidden fruit at the center of Eden represents the sacred, non-negotiable crux of the God-ordained moral universe, which no human must tamper with. However, despite the nearly limitless freedom available to humanity elsewhere in the garden, mankind is perennially, rebelliously, pridefully drawn to that which remains off limits.

This is what G.K. Chesterton called the Fairy Godmother Principle or Philosophy — the idea that when a great world of magic has revealed itself to us, humanity chafes at the boundaries.

“If Cinderella says, ‘How is it that I must leave the ball at twelve?’ her godmother might answer, ‘How is it that you are going there till twelve?’” he wrote.

“[It] seemed to me that existence was itself so very eccentric a legacy that I could not complain of not understanding the limitations of the vision when I did not understand the vision they limited. The frame was no stranger than the picture. The veto might well be as wild as the vision.” 

If the human penchant for trampling the divine extends back to Eden, social media only exacerbates the problem. Tending to the garden is passé; a post about eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil might easily go viral. In a world where rebellion is applauded, boundary-breaking becomes an endlessly self-perpetuating problem.

It’s time to rob the attention-seekers of what they’re looking for. Between sleeping with 1,000 men to shooting up schools, unstable, immature people who want the internet to know their names tend to do dangerous, immoral things. Moreover, they set a terrible precedent for young people: “Simply infect the sacred, transgress the untouchable, and you, too, can become ‘popular!’”

For the health and well-being of our culture, it’s time to reimpose a forbidden tree at the center of our society and a healthy sense of disgust at those who dare to cross the line.