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The Assassination Attempt and the Comfort of Certainty

2024-07-19 · letter vlog · Hank · 7:39 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Internet & YouTube (also: US politics & society) · mode: Personal essay · tags: timely hook, heavy topic

After the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, Hank argues that doomscrolling is an attempt to learn what world we now live in, but that people pick facts about the shooter, Thomas Crooks, to fit stories they already believe; the one true answer, that we don't know, is the hardest to live with.

What is said

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

00:00:00 — Why Hank gets stuck on the internet after major events: doomscrolling as a search for what world he lives in

  • ★★ Hank says he gets stuck on the internet after major events like the attempted assassination of Donald Trump; when Katherine asked why, he couldn't explain. — 00:00:00 · Donald Trump, Katherine Green
  • ★★ Hank says he doesn't feel he must make content about major events, but they make him think and he looks for thoughts worth sharing; many he keeps to himself. — 00:00:35
  • ★★★ Hank says that after significant events he doomscrolls to figure out what world he now lives in: the change unsettles him, and he seeks the comfort of understanding. — 00:01:04

00:01:33 — Recency bias, unchanged polls, the shooter's identity lowering the temperature, and the rational side of doomscrolling

  • ★★ Hank says this is itself recency bias: he assumes the assassination attempt will fundamentally change the world because recent things feel more important. — 00:01:33
  • ★★ Hank says that on Sunday everybody, including him in a text to John, said Trump would now definitely win, but the attempt does not seem to have changed polling much. (hedged) — 00:01:49 · Donald Trump, John Green
  • ★★ Hank says the most important thing doomscrolling revealed was the shooter's identity: white, American, not a recent immigrant. — 00:02:01
  • ★★★ Hank thinks a shooter of any other identity would have changed the narrative, not the tragedy: more to yell about and more fear of already over-feared people. — 00:02:13
  • ★★ Hank feels weird saying it, but the shooter being a white American born and raised lowered the temperature in an already very hot moment in America. — 00:02:40
  • ★★★ Hank says doomscrolling has something rational in it: we want to know how bad things will be for everyone, so it is self-protective as well as self-destructive. — 00:03:00
  • ★★★ Hank says understanding something new does two things: we change our picture of reality from the information, and just as much our brains fight to fit it into our previous picture. — 00:03:14

00:03:29 — Thomas Crooks's politics: conflicting facts and the viral 69-year-old namesake let everyone build a comfortable narrative

  • ★ Hank says he doesn't want to get into conspiracy theories because those people can get a little scary. — 00:03:29
  • ★★ Hank says it is more comfortable for progressives if Thomas Crooks was conservative, and for conservatives if he was progressive. — 00:03:37
  • ★★ Hank says Crooks was a registered Republican who once gave $15 to a progressive get-out-the-vote organization. — 00:03:58 · Republican Party
  • ★★ Hank says Crooks was wearing a shirt from a gun-focused YouTube channel. — 00:04:05
  • ★★ Hank says it was later reported that Crooks once told a classmate he was stupid for supporting Trump. — 00:04:09 · Donald Trump
  • ★★★ Hank says there is now enough information to pick from to build whichever narrative we like, and to discredit what we don't want to believe. — 00:04:15
  • ★★ Hank says a conservative might claim Crooks registered Republican only to vote against Trump in the primary; maybe, but nobody saying it knows, and loving guns is not generally liberal. — 00:04:22 · Republican Party, Donald Trump
  • ★★★ Hank says the progressive donation was not from a 69-year-old Thomas Crooks in Pittsburgh but from the shooter, four years earlier, at 17. — 00:04:35
  • ★★ Hank says a viral tweet tied the donation to the 69-year-old but linked nothing; it only noted that such a namesake exists. — 00:04:45 · Twitter
  • ★★ Hank says the donation record listed Crooks's address, blacked out in the social media screenshot, so it was him. — 00:05:03
  • ★★★ Hank says there is enough information, supposition and misinformation for either story but no shared narrative: people see what their bubbles share and build comfortable realities. — 00:05:11
  • ★★★ Hank says we don't just fit our stories to reality; we inevitably pick the pieces of reality that fit the stories we already believe. — 00:05:26
  • ★★ Hank's own reading: Crooks does not seem to have hated Trump in particular but to have hated everything. (hedged) — 00:05:40 · Donald Trump

00:05:55 — Hank's own preferred story, the fourth option 'we don't know', why we scroll, and trading certainty for truth; sign-off

  • ★★ Hank says Crooks googled where Joe Biden and Donald Trump would be, and also Merrick Garland, Christopher Wray and an unnamed member of the British royal family. — 00:05:57 · Donald Trump
  • ★★ Hank says that sounds like a man convinced, by himself or by others, that everything is terrible and that hurting the world would be good. — 00:06:08
  • ★★★ Hank says his own reading is itself the same thing: he is fitting the facts to his existing view of the world. — 00:06:17
  • ★★ Hank says he is sick of people tearing everything down, of the nihilism it creates, and of the space it leaves for strongmen who demand all the power. — 00:06:24
  • ★★★ Hank says the fourth, definitely true option is that we don't know; it is powerful but the hardest thing to live inside, and people rarely do it in public or on social media. — 00:06:54
  • ★★★ Hank says we scroll because we hate not knowing, and Twitter's many voices give us the illusion that our stories are true and the future knowable. — 00:07:15 · Twitter

  • ★★★ Hank concludes that an allegiance to truth means giving up the comfort of constant certainty. — 00:07:29

    “If you want to have an allegiance to truth you have to trade in the comfort of constant certainty.”

In the description and comments

  • ★★ The description says doomscrolling during a significant event makes sense even if unhealthy; called irrational, Hank answers he is an animal trying to feel safe. — video description
  • ★ In a channel comment Hank clarifies that Crooks gave to a progressive get-out-the-vote organization through ActBlue, a payment processor. — creator comment

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: Attempted assassination of Donald Trump in Pennsylvania · confirmation bias · doomscrolling · Intellectual humility · Thomas Matthew Crooks

Also: People: Christopher Wray · Donald Trump · Joe Biden · Katherine Green · Merrick Garland

Organizations: Republican Party · Twitter

Groups: British royal family

Concepts: conspiracy theory · echo chamber · misinformation · motivated reasoning · nihilism · political polarization · recency bias

Places: Pittsburgh

Only in the description or credits: ActBlue

Also centred on confirmation bias: John Green is an IDIOT! And so are you. · The Golden Gate Bridge Didn't Collapse!! · The Liger Delusion

Also centred on doomscrolling: The Anxious Scroll

Also centred on Intellectual humility: Towering Mountains of Ignorance · Does Human Life Have Real Meaning? · How's the Water? · Fine, I'll Talk About the Drones…

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