Skip to content

Are You Stuck in The Sad Gap

2022-04-15 · letter vlog · Hank · 4:00 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Internet & YouTube (also: Philosophy & meaning) · mode: Personal essay · tags: civic or action cta

Hank names 'the sad gap': learning about a problem first shows its frightening consequences and villains, often oversimplified for engagement, leaving people in outrage and hopelessness; more knowledge reveals complexity and solutions, but an internet that rewards adding worries keeps us stuck on many topics at once.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Stacking panics, simple takes online, and naming the sad gap

  • ★★ Hank says panics are stacking up on each other, partly because the world has real problems, but this is more than a normal reaction to an imperfect world. — 00:00:00
  • ★★ Hank says people find it easy to get angry and scared on a surface level but hard to engage in deeper, more helpful ways. — 00:00:00
  • ★★ Hank says this is sometimes caused by awful people who manipulate others into fear to get views, follows or votes. — 00:00:00 · YouTube, Twitter
  • ★★★ Hank says it is also how internet communication works now: simple takes are easier to have and share, and clear problems are easier to spread than vague, uncertain solutions. — 00:00:30

  • ★★★ Hank says all this leaves many people stuck in a place he names the sad gap. — 00:00:30 · sad gap

    “It is the sad gap.”

00:00:59 — How learning about a problem leads into the sad gap and, with complexity, out of it

  • ★★★ Hank says that learning about a problem first exposes you to its terrible consequences and to the people causing or blocking it, usually oversimplified so you engage: that puts you in the sad gap. — 00:00:59 · sad gap
  • ★★★ In the sad gap evil seems to create the problem and block its solution; it mixes outrage and hopelessness and is always filled with anxiety, depression and panic. — 00:01:28 · sad gap
  • ★★★ Hank says learning more reveals complexity: fossil fuel workers see themselves not as Darth Vader supervillains but as people who keep your house warm and refrigerator cold. — 00:01:28
  • ★★ Hank says the cost of solar power keeps going down. — 00:01:57
  • ★★ Hank says that for the first time since the Industrial Revolution we have decoupled economic growth from carbon emissions. — 00:01:57 · climate change
  • ★★★ Beyond the gap you see people working to solve the problem and may become one, but in the sad gap you can't believe a problem is solvable or help solve it. — 00:01:57 · sad gap
  • ★★ Hank shows an incomplete list of his current worries: too long, with nothing he'd remove and much that should be added. — 00:01:57

00:02:27 — Too many worries: an internet that makes us only add to the list

  • ★★★ Hank says all of us who make and share content are pushed by our minds and an internet built to keep us on it to only add worries and never go deeper, so we are in the sad gap on many topics at once. — 00:02:27 · attention economy, sad gap
  • ★★★ Hank says that is bad: it makes us depressed, anxious and easy to manipulate. — 00:02:56
  • ★★ Hank says he could have blamed social media platforms much more, but that oversimplification would make it seem caused by evil rather than a problem to be solved. — 00:02:56 · social media

00:03:38 — Ways across exist; Hank asks John for his on Tuesday

  • ★★ Hank says it is too easy to get sad and angry and too hard to cross to being engaged and helpful; there are usually, not always, ways across, but no time in four minutes. — 00:03:38 · sad gap
  • ★★ Hank asks John to tell him his ways across the sad gap in his video on Tuesday. — 00:03:38 · John Green, sad gap

In the description and comments

  • ★★ The description says some people treat the sad gap as the honorable place to be, as if leaving hopelessness and outrage were bad; Hank is over that and thinks it makes things much worse. — video description · sad gap
  • ★ Hank doesn't know how far this comes from how people communicate and how far from how the social internet is built. (unsure) — video description
  • ★ The description asks viewers for their thoughts in the comments, which Hank will read voraciously. — video description
  • ★★ In a channel comment on the pressure to care about every issue, Hank says he copes with gratitude for people who care deeply about the issues he can't put first. — creator comment

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: sad gap

Also: Organizations: Twitter · YouTube

Concepts: attention economy · climate change · economic growth · fossil fuel · moral outrage · social media · solar power

Events: Industrial Revolution

Characters: Darth Vader

Also centred on sad gap: How do you cross the Sad Gap?

Later videos replying to this one