Time has always been a shitty magazine.
It’s easy to pick high-profile figures and say they had the greatest influence on society. It’s like saying “My favorite band is The Beatles.” Everyone’s favorite band is The Beatles.
Stalin killed more people than Hitler. The NSA has repressed more social dissidence than Facebook, and the Chinese government has both of them beat.
Everything you know and see is not as it seems because the social narrative that is constructed for you is lazy.
It’s not evil or someone’s agenda. Okay, maybe sometimes. But usually, it’s just that someone didn’t learn everything they could before opening their mouth. They may have learned a lot, but eventually a publishing deadline came along and everyone had to print what they’d figured out by then.
Here is an exercise I know you won’t do. Write down your 5 favorite bands and your 5 favorite foods.
That should have been pretty easy. Your brain doesn’t have to work hard to put items into categories that you already understand. Chances are, if someone wrote a clickbait article about any of these topics, you’d click on it.
Okay, here is something harder, that you also won’t do. Write down a meaningful song that evokes a specific memory in your life. Write down the best meal you’ve ever eaten and why.
It’s quite possible that your favorite memories might not be of your “favorite” things. Or, if they are, you may have had a brief flash of other awesome memories that were not. Either that, or you’re not adventurous.
If your favorite foods are hamburgers, pizza, and bacon, the best meal you’ve ever had is probably more sophisticated than that. Maybe it’s not that your favorite food is a hamburger. Maybe hamburgers are a decent option that’s easier to remember than “braised fois gras medallions with bacon mustard and arugula.” I would eat the second option every day if it was handed to me for free.
It’s easier to say “Donald Trump is Person of the Year,” and then come up with the reasons after.
Every time two football teams play in the superbowl, both teams print shirts declaring themselves the winners. After the game, the loser sells all of their shirts for cheap in bulk to third world countries.
I’m not saying Time had multiple considerations for Person of the Year before the election, but I’m not not saying that either.
Time’s narrative that changing the world is a competition gives too much power to a single person. It obfuscates large social undercurrents taking place underneath that person that allows for their rise to power. It ignores everyone that isn’t already well known. It ignores narratives that are terrifying and it ignores narratives that are benign. Most importantly, it ignores narratives that are difficult to explain, unpopular, boring, or not already within the public eye.
What if Time’s person of the year was someone you’d never heard of, instead of someone who’d already been in the headlines all year.
Life isn’t a narrative. Laws of physics aren’t narratives either. Human minds use narratives to remember things and make decisions. Every time you see a narrative, it has been manufactured for a specific purpose, even if it is your own.
Because all experiences are a flawed simulation of reality, the Person of the Year will always be you, you puny, hunk of weak, gullible flesh.
