Assault on Habituation
In “The Assault on Reason” (2007), former Vice President Al Gore criticizes the dumbing-down of American culture and political discourse. In particular, he targets the prominence of TV in American life. Since the brain passively absorbs what’s presented visually, TV dulls our critical faculties and harms our capacity for reflective, thoughtful citizenship. With our primitive, emotive brains targeted, it turns out that we were the lizard people all along.
With that in mind, I want to talk about …memes.
2019’s “Kombucha Girl/Trying Kombucha for the First Time” went viral. It was so ubiquitous that I had seen it on Twitter without ever having been exposed to the original source material.
A few weeks ago, I decided to throw my hat (and face) into the meme ring by making a version myself.
This was a departure from my usual Instagram content, which involves several hours of writing, costuming, make-up, and editing. Those longer skits were usually accompanied by a short comment explaining the point of the video, just in case the viewer didn’t quite “get” it.
The Kombucha Girl meme format was easy to make and replicate: once I was happy with the photos, I just wrote different text every day in the afternoon and posted it to stories. The response was generally positive: a handful of likes and reliably over 100 views (my account is small — help it grow!)
Rather than simply taking advantage of a recognizable visual, though, I did add one innovation: while the American Teacher character follows the traditional format…
Russian Student does the opposite:
He’s supremely confident about the incorrect version and rejects the correct version, which is my commentary about what English-language education in Russia produces.
I even kept the colors consistent: red text denotes what is incorrect, and green indicates what’s correct. However, it demands that one pay attention to “get” the meaning.
One follower had trouble with this:
While it’s always disappointing to see that one’s art hasn’t been understood/appreciated, this interaction shows precisely why disrupting easy consumption is valuable. To really learn a language, or anything, it requires mental effort, that System 2 kind of thinking that we instinctually avoid. This deliberately included hiccup aims to get Followers’ attention and to let it linger a bit on the lexical or grammatical point in question.
She wrote back:
It’s just that several days ago I saw you smiling for the correct answer and being sad for the wrong one. And now I am confused…
After a couple more posts, though, she understood, even writing me again to say “OK, now I got the difference…”
In the 24/7, endless scrolling world of social media, we can become habituated to easily digestible amusements. Even ostensibly educational content gets consumed without a thought. This defeats the purpose of using these platforms to educate people, and it contributes to the stupefying of the public at large.
I’m proud to have contributed, at least a little to “disrupting” this process.
