Here’s a wild fact you might not have heard before: In December 1963, a Soviet natural gas field in what is now Urtabulak, Uzbekistan, was being drilled when an unexpected malfunction resulted in a spectacular blowout explosion and an uncontrollable fire.

Having accidentally created the equivalent of a giant gas burner that wouldn’t stop, the Soviets were horrified that more than 12 million cubic meters of natural gas were being burned per day, frying all animal life that came near to the towering pillar of flame it produced.

After three years of repeated failures to stop the fire, the Soviets came up with a desperate solution to detonate a 30-kiloton nuclear bomb — twice the power of the Hiroshima bomb — in a nearby well. The theory? Extinguish the fire with a bigger thermonuclear fire, one hot enough to melt or pinch the underground gas fissures shut. On September 30, 1966, the Soviets detonated the nuke and succeeded in suffocating the fire.

The thought of a “nuclear warhead fire extinguisher” seems absurd because it sounds like the logical equivalent of solving a problem with an even bigger problem. And yet, we seem to have reached a similar point in local and national politics where we “fix” crazy with crazier, angry with angrier, and bad with worse.

In 2010, Council on Foreign Relations vice president Kay King warned that “lawmakers quickly learned that public posturing and demagoguery received television coverage at the expense of thoughtful debate and compromise. Similarly, the relentless presence of the electronic media makes deliberation obsolete … The Internet has also tended to encourage incivility, enabling rantings and misinformation to spread without the benefit of an editor … inaccurate information is virtually impossible to correct and is repeated as gospel by those who do and do not know better.”

Playing With Attention Nukes

That was then. Four presidential elections, a pandemic and 15 years later, we are in absolute deep kimchee. Social media, with its algorithms optimized for controversy, and corporate media, with its need to draw human moths to a fire for advertisers, has given rise to what’s been called an “attention economy” where it doesn’t really matter what one says anymore, it just matters whether it’s a bigger public relations nuke than the one before it.

This naturally attracts the worst, rather than the best, of society, to rise to the publicity launch pad, because only persons with narcissistic tendencies and lack of human empathy can sleep at night setting fire to the world just for the sake of being visible. It’s actually not about being ultra-MAGA or ultra-progressive, woke or conservative, anymore, it’s about “today I will intentionally do something to force you to look at or engage me.”

Narcissists do not necessarily fear shame or criticism. Rather, they have a disordered way of thinking that simply requires a supply of attention, and one common strategy for attention-getting is crazy-making behavior.

This is why I worry about Time Magazine putting Elon Musk on its cover or liberal activists referring to him as “President Musk” in an attempt to drive a wedge between him and President Donald Trump. You’re playing with attention nukes and don’t realize it. Critics might think that by pitting Musk against Trump they are locking two scorpions in a bottle to fight, but as someone who has multiple family members who exhibit narcissistic tendencies, I will tell you that this empowers people like Musk to do even more outrageous activities, rather than deter him. 

By the time that Trump even thinks to discard him, Musk will probably have disrupted so much of America that you won’t even recognize the wasteland that such a petty pyrrhic victory left in its wake.

We’re seeing similar trends emerge in Hawaiʻi, with legislators behaving crudely and then spin-cycling rage over their behavior to recruit more followers to their cause. I’ll refrain from naming names, because that is exactly what these people want.

One of this session’s opening day speeches was reprehensible. The State Senate behaves badly over issues as minor as what to call a holiday. Its leaders deny being bullies. A senator apologizes for comparing a state official to the devil, then doubles down on his criticism of said official.

Some of our elected officials are acting like spoiled brats, showing themselves to be attention economy mavens. And the more you say their names, the more you report on the petty things they do, the more they’ll spin cycle that into social media self-amplification to claim they’re victims (or crusaders).

It Should Stop With You

Gosh, I miss the late Sen. Sam Slom. He had a flair for grandiosity, he threw “no” votes as wrenches into bills everyone else voted “yes” on. He often poked fun of his Democratic colleagues but yet, he never made fun of a colleague in public that wasn’t privately his good friend. 

A friend of mine testified at several Senate hearings and told me that she was shocked that many of the members seemed to be unaware of key developments in the news. I only half-sarcastically suggested to her, “Of course they haven’t seen the news, unless a state senator’s name is mentioned in it, they ain’t watching or reading it!”

So how do we beat this attention economy? Like rock star Alice Cooper benefitting from negative publicity over a chicken incident that may or may not have happened, hype and controversy pay off.

It’s not good that we’re always upset at each other, creating scenes like hundreds of pissed-off liberals sign-waving on Beretania Street and a couple dozen pissed-off conservatives on the opposite holding “F*ck your feelings loser!” counter-signs. Some of you may enjoy that adult Halloween costume party rage theater, but it’s only fueling an attention economy that does us no good.

First, we need to refuse to platform uncivil statements and individuals, no matter who they are. There are people who know what buttons to push to make you mad, who seek to inflict trauma. When media platforms that rhetoric, it isn’t reporting current events, it’s providing a launch platform to fire attention nukes.

Second, are you a Republican? Are you a Democrat? Good! Then you should demand your faction be the most kind, the most diplomatic, the most professional of all. Beat adversaries by being so above reproach that your critics end up looking like thugs. If anything, you should rebuke your faction and hold your thought leaders to a higher standard of quality than your rivals.

Last, all of us can be potentially drawn to the fire of the attention economy, but a balanced education and worldview can insulate you against its throes.

It stops with me, and it should stop with you. Unproductive content is not “news.” It’s poison for your mind. People who are not self-fulfilled, self-actualized, or who crave attention need to provoke a reaction from you. Deny them the reaction. Don’t follow them. Don’t argue with them. Don’t share their ideas. Don’t report on what they do.