Where are the interesting people?

In our strive for greater authenticity, we’ve somehow become all the same.

There’s something to be said about blending in with the crowd. However, rather ironically, in our bid to stand out from the crowd, we’re becoming more like the crowd. This is not the full story, though, a lot of the people thrown in front of us aren’t interesting people. From world and company leaders to entertainment and social media “stars”, it's astonishing how bland people have become. Even everyday folk seem to be lacking in this department. So, what is behind this? Is it our drastically shortened attention spans? Is it the shallowness of modern life? Has the narcissism and constant pursuit of attention made people jaded? Shall we ask Mr Charisma fucking Pablo Escobar?

This drying up of interesting people, it’s an observation I’ve had for some time now, but have been hesitant to write about it without it coming off as nothing more than a whine or worse, bitterness and resentment, especially at a world that has seemingly passed me by. The sheer amount of vain and vacuous people, lacking depth, empty and certainly not erudite, disturbs me greatly. This degenerative maelstrom we seem to have sailed into at world’s end, could it have been avoided? I’m not sure, there’s too many forces at play and the average person doesn’t have the defence system to combat it, probably even most people.   

Photo by Jacek Dylag on Unsplash.

We used to celebrate our differences – and take the mick out of some – now we chastise them. We used to champion those with character, now we beat people into shape with the PR shovel. It’s a strange form of ethical puritanism – one minor transgression and you’re done for…and yet, you can be completely diabolical and still be fine? It makes no logical sense.

We’re all becoming too streamlined for my liking. Soon you’ll be able to package people like you do your phone/TV/internet bundle. As I wrote previously, humans are being turned into disposable products – consumable if and when required, only to be discarded when no longer needed. I always remember Alan Watts talking about this: “Look, the only thing you can do, just be sure that a vast variety of human beings is maintained. Don’t, please, breed us down to a few excellent types. Excellent for what? We never know how circumstances are going to change, and how our need for different kinds of people changes.”

What the internet and social media have done is open up the world to so many more people. So, while this increases our likelihood of potentially finding an interesting person (by sheer volume), the greater access to more people weakens the concentration of interesting ones. I see a greater propensity for people wanting to only associate with those similar to them, which, rather ironically, has different people acting more like two sides of the same coin than true opposites.

Photo by Josh Mills on Unsplash.

So much of what we see from people has become (or is) performative in nature. Some of it is easy to spot, but generally this has increased the load of working out if a person is real or just acting. While there’s always been eccentric people (and a natural curiosity in them), the amount of people who make a small part of their identity their entire identity/thing/schtick – especially in a performative manner to garner traction online – is getting a bit ridiculous.  

I largely joke that the majority of my “friends” have been dead for hundreds of years. I would of course be referring to the likes of Plato, Socrates, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, and Jung. I’ve always tended to find people in the past more interesting than the present and thankfully the litter is full of historically interesting characters and their ideas.

Interesting people can have a slightly mysterious nature to them, and this mystery can be what captures people’s attention (it also can be what turns people off, all things being equal). I’m not saying they all have to be literary or philosophical geniuses, but they have to have some sort of intellectual and emotional depth and/or supreme skill. I find these characteristics sorely lacking in today’s world especially in the people given the most airtime and attention.

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Photo by Justin Heap on Unsplash.