A few words from Officer K: The Contarian
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In the last several years, we have seen a rise in prominence of a figure that has become our wretched substitute for a public intellectual: the contrarian.
Contrarians are, as the label implies, notable not what they are for, but what they are against. Some explicitly position themselves as reactionary, but many take the tactic of professing to be above the fray — someone who sees through the b.s. on both sides. He’s not here to tell you what to think (he says!), but what not to believe. What he actually believes is anyone’s guess, because his behavior makes plain that he does not actually believe in anything.
I long suspected there was a common thread that bound together the likes of Tucker Carlson, Bill Maher, Joe Rogan, Glenn Greenwald, and so on, despite their overall heterogeny. I could not say with any degree of certainty what these people actually believe, because even the fieriest rhetoric offered by them never amounts to anything more than, well, smoke. To my mind that is the key hallmark of the contrarian: one who professes, but does not believe — and who sees actual belief as dangerous because it stands in opposition to them.
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A belief requires some deep-seated conviction in a person, and the only deep-seated conviction a contrarian has is to be contrary for their own benefit. The contrarian may speak about what point of view they hold, but that viewpoint is only held for the sake of being in opposition to other things, not because there is anything in it worth elaborating on constructively.
Follow a contrarian’s words for long enough and you will find gaping inconsistencies. The contrarian worldview is necessarily inconsistent because it is not even designed to hold together on its own terms. It is designed solely to be in opposition to others, in the moment. That it sometimes achieves internal consistency is an accident, a happenstance, but not the purpose.
I should note this is not the same as having one’s views change over time. Some dismiss this as “inconsistency”, but this is an artifact of bad-faith regard, not its real nature. People do change, and sincere regard for that change is how society heals faults and evolves.
Contrarians do not even have this kind of inconsistency over time. They do not profess one thing today and another thing tomorrow because their beliefs have changed, but only because their strategies have. The one who is suspicious of a hostile foreign power X yesterday, now argues angrily today against “X-phobia”. A culture of showbiz-grade public figures guarantees there will be no need for continuity, no need for someone to explain why they were against X yesterday but support X today. Explanations, motives, are for the little people.
A contrarian does not change their mind because they were persuaded, or because they thought about the issue. They perform an about-face only because it would otherwise be disadvantageous. The only constancy in their worldview is the need to look good for their self-selected audience, whoever that currently happens to be. You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows, but a contrarian might do. Just be sure to look in the opposite direction they’re facing.
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The contrarian of today is a product of two conditions. One is modern media’s short feedback loop, as I hinted at above: showbiz-grade public figures only need to show up in the now. The second is what could be called the phenomenon of parasocial affinity.
The first of these two conditions is the simpler one. We have made it easier than ever to seal ourselves in a hermetic bubble of ideas, to select for people who give us nothing that doesn’t already confirm our worldview, and to have that worldview increasingly consist of contrarian insularity. This is bad enough when the issues are “mere” politics; it has now become outright deadly when the things being sneered at are public health and scientific evidence.
The second phenomenon, parasocial affinity, is a misconception on the part of someone who idolizes, or at least prefers, a contrarian and their views. It is the notion that this person “speaks for them”, or “understands them”, or some variation of that sentiment. The victim of parasocial affinity cannot discern between someone who actually does advocate for them, and someone who simply knows how to appropriate the victim’s signaling mechanisms for approval — how to speak their language, how to use their cultural totems, how to posture as they would posture and shout as they want to shout, how to make them think you’re their friend.
Both of these conditions support and feed into each other. A hermetic media bubble creates a breeding ground for grifters and rubes to move in and find suckers by way of parasocial affinity. And the victims of parasocial affinity gravitate towards bubbles of one kind or another where they will continue to be fed the same kind of grift.
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I need to contrast the contrarian view with its more sincere cousin, the skeptical view. Skepticism is not the mere fact of opposing dogma, or contravening established wisdom. It is the process of subjecting claims to tests to determine their rigor, and it requires more than simply the ability to be scornful. It requires good faith on the part of the one employing it, and an arena to employ it in that is also supported by good faith.
(This is why offers for “public debate” by counterscientific types can be safely ignored by anyone who practices science seriously. Scientific issues are not resolved by way of round-table debates, where the best rhetoric wins. Such debates are more like theater, where the audience is [whether or not they know it] looking for fireworks and not actual answers.)
Contrarians look skeptical at first glance, and provide enough ersatz, showbiz-grade “skepticism” to pass low-level inspection. But nothing they do or say is about the rigors of the process, which is rarely glamorous and makes for poor media fodder. It is about professing a point of view staked out chiefly for the sake of getting and keeping a devoted audience. Contrarians are not interested in either the facts or the truth. But they can serve up a dandy simulation of the quest for both of those things, and today a simulation is often enough to pass.
Proper skepticism may include skepticism for authority, but in the contrarian the thing being resisted is less important than the act of resistance itself, of resistance for resistance’s sake. The “ordinary” (what a word) antivaxxer is typically someone who harbors resentments towards authority, but may not necessarily be a full-out contrarian. The contrarian may also harbor resentments towards authority, but their main impulse is not the defiance of authority as such; it’s the need to be right, by way of being contrary, in the eyes of their chosen audience. Defiance of authority is just a convenient side effect.
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Of all the points I am trying to make with this essay, the one I find myself returning to most is that the chief feature of the contrarian is they do not believe in anything. Actually holding a belief is dangerous to the contrarian, because then they would have to uphold their beliefs in ways that were bigger, and more personally risky, than self-satisfied gadflying. It would require them to be responsible for what they say and do.
That contrarians believe nothing is expressed most succinctly by their need to evade any actual responsibility for their behavior. In September of 2020, a defamation lawsuit against Fox’s Tucker Carlson was dismissed on the grounds that no “reasonable” viewer would take him seriously. This has long been one of the standard escape hatches for contrarians: that this is opinion, not “news”; or, I’m only “asking questions”; or some similarly lame evasion.
But at least some of the responsibility has to be laid with the audience. Not all of them are passive victims; some are active maintainers of the charade. They know evasions like “it’s just opinion” are exactly that, evasions, but they also know it would break the kayfabe to say otherwise. They are only too happy to conspire with the contrarian to let them get away with believing in nothing, because it absolves them of the responsibility of believing in anything as well.
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The proper word for everything I have been outlining her is not contrarianism, but nihilism. Most of us, I imagine, conceive of a nihilist as a mere moper: someone sitting in a corner somewhere staring into space, with a volume of Thomas Ligotti or E.M. Cioran in their lap. Gloomy, but harmless.
The contrarian form of nihilism, though, is outwardly fiery, and anything but harmless. He believes nothing not as a way to get you to believe one thing or another thing, but as a way to absolve you entirely of the responsibility of believing anything at all. He is the perfect complement to, and support for, the face of reactionary power — of power that believes in nothing but power, and demands only that you nod along.