Memo 34: Scaling Down
journalism, socialites and entropy all walk into a bar
I usually don’t like to give away my big idea at the top of a memo; I prefer to layer into it, to succumb to it slowly. But this idea is potentially too big and hard for me to parse down into words (or, maybe just wrong). For the sake of clarity, I’m putting it up here and together we can see if my logic backs it up:
People often aim to gain power by making the world feel big and more expansive than it is, but those with actual power often want to make the world feel small.
What got me started on this idea were the pre-Oscar parties that dotted LA and the trades a bit ago. I became more interested in how they were covered in articles than anything else. The articles ran through where the parties took place, gave some names of who attended and included a thin action line - like if someone hosted it, or if someone else blew out a birthday candle. Little to no drama was mentioned, so it wasn’t quite gossiping; it also didn’t overtly promote any celebrity or a project they are related to, so it didn’t feel like classic PR.
One of the core tenets you learn in journalism is that unless you have unlimited resources (very few do), every time you choose to publish one story is also you choosing not to publish another. So why publish non-gossip, non-PR articles like that?
As fate and my search history would have it, it turns out that this is nothing new. While tunneling down San Franciscian history for my own pleasure, I came upon this digitized excerpt from William Chambliss’ diary from 1895.
Chambliss first came to California as a crew member of the U.S. Essex in 1886 and lived in San Francisco for a bit, both shipping out on merchant's vessels and trying to break into advertising. During his time in SF, he kept a diary that kept tabs on those with excessive influence through celebrity status or wealth and how they operated in the city, which he nicknamed the “parvenucracy.”
This specific excerpt harps on socialite pieces in San Franciscian news outlets that appeared often at that time; in a similar manner to the pre-Oscar party pieces, articles would just mention that a socialite is, say, thinking of visiting a friend. If you think that is ridiculous, then you are on the same page as Chambliss. In this entry, he does not hold back from satirically making fun of both those socialities and those in the press allowing the articles to be printed. He has a specific disdain for society publicist E.M. Greenway, going as far as to create ten commandments from Greenway’s point of view. I pulled some of them below, to get a taste of Chambliss’ attitude:
IV. Honor thy father and thy mother as long as they honoreth thy check.
VI. Thou shalt not commit any depredations upon thy neighbors' marriage rights, unless thou art sure of not getting caught.
VII. Thou shalt not steal any more at one time than thou canst get away with.
X. Thou shalt not drink soup out of a plate with thy face, nor go riding in evening dress at high noon, nor serve soap with finger bowls at thy dinners, any more, unless thou serveth Greenway's Cotillion Soft Soap.
After sifting through the pettiness and some very untasteful/questionable remarks in the entry, what lies underneath is helpful to my search: the benefit of these society news articles is solely for those in those circles. That’s how it operated then, and I bet it’s also how it operates now. Not everyone is taken with jealousy after reading a celebrity’s random journeys or outings, so why put them out?
This is where my line of thought above comes in: theoretically, these socialities and those with power/wealth could have put their going-around-town updates in any other newspaper circulation. In 1895, Greenway could have placed articles in New York papers and today, those pre-Oscar party articles could have shown up in London papers (it’s a little less clean of a comparison with the internet, but you get my point). Surely, having people from around the world read about you widens your popularity and power easily.
But they likely didn’t then, and outside of trade papers with international reach, they likely didn’t now. Back in 1895 San Francisco, socialites wanted those articles in their hometown so that they could open up a newspaper - something that is meant to be a reflection of San Francisco, and the world as a whole - and see information only they and a few others would find useful. However, the space those articles take up limits what else others can learn about the world. In that way, the personal world of the parvenucracy limits the size of the actual world.
The creation and placement of those articles come back to my point: sometimes, when you really have it all, all you want to do is make the world feel small. When one has very little, making the world feel limitless and expansive is uplifting. Making something out of nothing, meeting people and knowing that you are known gives one many opportunities for gaining power. But once you have that power, sometimes gaining more power isn’t freeing anymore. It’s overwhelming.
Because I’m me, I can’t help but loop this all back towards entropy. To quickly re-explain, entropy is a measure of disorder that appears across scientific fields and facets of life. When grounded in the second law of thermodynamics, for example, entropy in a self-contained system can never go down; it only will increase or stay the same over time. As Peter Atkins put it, entropy is like nature’s tax that affects many parts of life.
I know entropy is riddled with exceptions and asterisks and is not fully an arrow of time, but I see it reflected in our lives often. I think a lot of others do as well, even if just subconsciously. The world is a big place and the larger you get in it or by simply existing for a while, the more disorder can arise.
When people have genuine power or status, knowing that you can do anything or have anyone learn about you sometimes isn’t satisfying; there’s elements there outside of your control. Trying to push back against looming disorder is not something that many can do, unless you have power. Sometimes, that’s becoming a recluse; other times, that’s having your goings-about-town published in the local paper. Forcing the world to become your world is satisfying because it’s taking back control and not bowing to disorder.
I don’t think my big idea here is perfectly executed, logical or true all the time. There are many examples that counter my argument and loose threads in here one can pick up to undo my point. But even if my idea is not true always, I think it’s true sometimes, and I don’t see it come up often. Pushing yourself to view how power works in new ways is a muscle that should constantly be used. I hope it does that for someone, even if it’s just me.
And because there is always more to consume, here are some LINKS from this past week:
Meet the Secretive US Company Building an ‘Unbreakable’ Internet Inside Russia. This sub-problem of the war and other censorship-heavy places - i.e. China and their Great Firewall - was not on my radar before now.
Some more food for thought is this response to a short story that dissects the ways climate migrants might be received, treated and categorized in the future (currently, there’s no international legal framework for even recognizing climate refugees - how crazy is that?).
Midwestern lawmakers are trying to replace Russian oil with ethanol and it’s a real pickle all around.
Charlie Tyson’s Baffler piece on how burnout became the buzzword of the moment is very thorough and enjoyable.
In Rothaniel, Jerrod Carmichael Tells Us Who He Is and it’s so good (the special, I mean). The article brings up some good questions, and some that are a little over-indulgent; regardless, the special really stuck with me precisely because it brings up so many thought-provoking questions.