the danger of aboutness

A problem that’s been creeping on me is the seldom-verbalized habit of aboutness, which is becoming increasingly entrenched in me as I spend more time on the internet.

Aboutness is a particular habit of mind which is often useful, but when misapplied or over-applied becomes an insidious trap.

On the surface, it may seem that media on the internet are not much different from offline media such as books. But consider a difference in the relative proportions of two types of content:

• first-hand information vs. second-hand / third-hand / fourth-hand — i.e., derivative — information;
• any content vs. a summary of that content, or a retelling of that content;
• content that is the thing in itself vs. content that is about other contents.

Let me define aboutness as the quality of something being about something else. In contrast, then, let me define isness as the quality of something being itself.

I posit that content on the internet has a much higher degree of aboutness and, at the same time, much less isness, than the content that isn’t online. This applies to many aspects of my experience of the internet:

• Aboutness is natural: Of course, as the internet is an information system, its virtuality readily lends itself to aboutness, just as a walk in nature unites the person with his surroundings, lending itself to the experience of isness. Instead of traveling, we watch travel vlogs. Instead of eating, we watch Somebody Feed Phil. Instead of playing videogames (which are themselves already virtual), we watch streamers play Fornite on Twitch. When I spend too much time in the midst of aboutness, I feel alienated from my surroundings. Do you? The tongue-in-cheek mutual exhortation to “touch grass” is a netizen’s yearning originating from the depths of the trap of aboutness. Life on the internet is, somehow, at tension with lived experience, and it feels good to humans to go back to nature once in a while.
• Aboutness runs rampant: But there is more to this phenomenon. Whereas primary source used to be prioritized by news media, it is now traveling by way of regurgitation through an increasingly longer chain of people (and bots) on the internet. Through the long chain of telephone, the information has become a different thing from the original. Lane Brown captures this well in his New York Magazine article “A Theory of Dumb” (which, by the way, is humorous and worth a read):

  There’s less reporting and more commentary about reporting, and sometimes just commentary about that commentary. What used to be a pyramid of original reporting topped by a layer of interpretation has flipped upside down into a wide base of takes wobbling on a shrinking nub of facts.

• Aboutness becomes inescapable: Now let’s say you are picking up a new hobby. You google how to do it. It gives you useful tutorials and wonderful examples, as well as lots of stories about others doing the hobby, including how someone spent his life perfecting the craft — what an honor it is to see a master in his element! Surrounded by an abundance of interesting stories, you begin consuming the content insatiably. Unfortunately, as you spend more time reading about and watching those who have gone before you, you devote less time to actually trying out your hobby, until one day, you realize that you didn’t end up pick up the hobby at all. You’ve channeled your original motivation to engage in the hobby into vicarious participation in others’ experiences of it. It wasn’t real at all. You’ve been led astray by the aboutness rabbit hole.

This kind of rabbit hole is everywhere on the internet. As a vast repository of other people’s experiences, the internet has transformed many a strong initial motivation into second-tier, third-hand experience. And while hobbies are not as big of a deal, this wasted potential also devours real work as well. As soon as you are consuming content about others doing something (beyond what you need to know how to do that thing), you are eroding your willingness to do the thing itself. Insidiously, the aboutness habit may eventually reach the point where you feel uncomfortable approaching anything without first painting a comprehensive framework of understanding that thing through the lens of all who have gone before you. You lose faith in trusting your own judgments for navigating an unfamiliar terrain. You’ve traded doing for thinking about doing. You’ve become alienated from action.

I should note that the aboutness habit of mind extends beyond the internet. It has countless analogues, including in academics — the student often spends too much time learning about doing something than doing it at all — and in business — bureaucratized companies often experience a slow “death by meeting,” in which much is said about work but not work is done.

Now I should add that aboutness is in fact very important. Anything that can be said about anything, including most speech and writing, engages in aboutness. Without it, humans cannot gain but a tacit understanding of reality, and education becomes nearly impossible. Notice also that aboutness is a recursive concept: each layer of aboutness becomes something different from the thing it is about. White collar work, for example, primarily involves living and manipulating concepts at certain level(s) of aboutness. I do not argue against this form of aboutness, because for people working at these levels, aboutness becomes the work itself. Rather, I warn against applying aboutness one or more levels too far. It is only when aboutness encroaches on the underlying isness that it becomes a problem. And no medium more intensively and extensively trains the mind to frame everything by way of aboutness than the current state the internet.

So what is to be done?

For now, I just want you to pay attention to whether browsing the internet (or in any high-aboutness setting) is becoming a substitute for doing the thing that you’ve set out to do. For example, even this article is high in aboutness. Read it, but don’t spend too much time on it.

Instead: Do something. Whether that is a physical activity or a mental one. Don’t spend too much time thinking about doing it. Just do it. And live in the experience itself, not analyzing it or performing it for someone else.

And as you do it, breathe in the isness.

Be.

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