Welcome to Moderate Hypocrisy

What on earth is happening and how did we get here?

These are the two questions that bolt through my head every time I come across the latest glitch in the system in our cultural zeitgeist. 

And I’m not “old”. I promise! At age 35 I think I strike the perfect balance between youthful appetite for pop culture and chronically online behaviour, as well as the jaded and cynical nature of someone who’s experienced what it’s like to patiently sit in front of a massive personal computer (PC, baby!) and wait throughout the full length of the dial-up internet connection tune (spoiler: it didn’t always connect.)

I didn’t know it back then, but those two questions, perhaps more elegantly phrased, were what drove me to study social anthropology abroad — a move that was unheard of in an Eastern European society that only rewards hard science careers (understandably, and more on that later). I never did become a professional anthropologist, mostly because no one really knows what, how or where professional anthropologists would exist outside academia and in what capacity. But it certainly, and irreversibly, formed my “intellectual discipline,” to quote good ol’ Claude Levi-Strauss, and set me up for a lifetime of not being able to not see through the bullshit.

Anthropology is a discipline that constantly reinvents and questions itself — it’s a study that has been canceled over and over again throughout its history, and constantly had to cut through epoch-specific hypocrisies, from colonial evolutionism and ethnocentrism to accusations of exoticising the other. It’s a study that, at the end of the day, shows us how flawed we are as humans trying to understand other humans. Its most salient dictum is that we should accept that 1. we know nothing, and 2. we should be open to trying to understand something — by listening (tough ask today), by seeing, by observing, by engaging. Anthropology questions everything — and this critical stance is a great muscle to exercise, especially today.

in a nutshell (Songs from the Second Floor, 2002)

What’s Moderate Hypocrisy?

Hypocrisy permeates all timelines, of course. People love to think that we are living in a unique time marked by unique challenges — and while it’s true that every generation comes with its very own peacock characteristics, things are in fact always kind of bad and, yet, better than before (you win some, you lose some!). That’s never stopped people from proclaiming the “death” of things every goddamn couple of decades though. The death of cinema! The death of criticism! The death of publishing! The death of music! The death of civilization! 

In reality, we are but at the beginning of our history, and apparently we have some 700,000 years ahead of us according to the average mammal species stats — so better keep that cinema alive.

Every era has its personality, and I would argue that moderate hypocrisy is one of the defining personalities of ours. The behavioural inconsistency enabled by the internet, the perception of open access knowledge, the speed and turn-over of said knowledge, and the urgent need for self-presentability and self-visibility create the perfect cocktail for dissociation. Dissociation between what is said, believed, claimed, and reported, and what is actually acted upon. The fact that a large chunk of our lives is spent online is the breeding ground for this. It’s not for nothing that the word “performative” has experienced its peak Broadway moment in the last decade.

Whether we want to admit it or not, none of us are immune to this — unless you’ve gone off grid somewhere in some mountains in which case you wouldn’t be reading this, so I can get away with not factoring you in. We all embody moderate hypocrisy by default, as a result of the world we live in, and — most importantly — the lifestyles we consume. So then, why not embrace accountability and call it out?

Moderate hypocrisy is a trend I’ve noticed in journalism, arts and culture, relationships and, biensûr, in consumerism and the wave of purpose-driven businesses, too. Surrounded by so much noise, visual and verbal attention vertigo, and trapped by our own addictive natures — pulling your head out of the whirlwind is the only way to go. More than ever, this is the time to exercise critical judgment, which is, behold, possible without the intellectual arrogance de rigueur. 

Over the past decade I’ve worked as a journalist for publications like Monocle Magazine and The Talks, and been carving a career as a strategist working with both young and established brands alike. Experiencing the overlap of what was once heralded as the “creative industries” with start-up culture allowed me even further scrutiny. 

I see, and I judge. To quote Rihanna, I “quietly troll.” And there’s another layer to my “quiet trolling” — I can’t help it, as an Easterner living in the West. There’s a sort of critical duplicity radar that I carry within me and will probably do so for the rest of my life. I am sure many coming from non-Western backgrounds will know exactly what I mean; it’s a kind of inbuilt radar for double standards; a sixth sense if you may.

Why is everyone suddenly a narcissist? How did we end up putting so much content into the world whilst absorbing so little of it? Why are we the most open and progressive we’ve ever arguably been, yet the most populist and right wing in recent history? Why is there a woman called Pinkydoll doing Lives behaving like a human slot machine — gang! gang! Does the world really need any pyjama networking parties? Why are grown professionals pontificating on the link between the death of their grandmother and their B2B business strategies on platforms like Linkedin? Why is Julia Fox so damn delightful? Why is every single new company shouting about saving the world when they are clearly not? How did we come to be so obsessed with self-actualisation? 

So here we are. I am just a girl, standing in front of an online audience, asking them to join me on this trip as we try to look at the all the spicy facets of our zeitgeist with a few more words than can fit into a one-line Twitter joke. 

Come for the Eastern European sass, stay for the deep dives.