I’ve been enjoying hypocritical entertainment a lot lately. That’s the nice feeling you get from exposing inconsistencies in the political views of people you already disagreed with. With the endless amount of screenshots and videos of what everyone has ever said, it is becoming easier to catch people in contradiction. Antivaxxers who see physical integrity as the highest good, until it comes to abortion. People who shout that totalitarianism has won at the sight of a mask on the train, but dismiss climate concerns as hysterical. I can’t get enough.
And I don’t seem to be the only one. The voxpop videos by Roel Maalderink, in which passers-by first explain during street interviews that the farmer’s protests should not be put in the way, and in the same breath declare that climate protesters must not disturb the order, are hypocritical entertainment in pure form and unabatedly popular. But the more I look at it, the more I fear: exposing other people’s double standards feels a little too nice.
When you start to feel really good about yourself, it’s usually time for suspicion. As a viewer I feel mega-intelligent, as if I’ve solved a spot-the-difference picture very cleverly. And I feel like a moral champion.
It falls into the same category as the worryingly fine glee that creeps up on me as I follow the Sywert case. Apparently there is a deep longing in me, a slightly cruel impulse, to see another person I already wore a low hat unmasked.
But there is a practical danger in that triumphant smile after a successful hypocrisy find. What does all this unmasking actually mean? It seems like after a shot of hypocritical entertainment, we all stop thinking. The ultimate proof of one’s own right has been delivered. While the real question is: why do climate activists provoke so much resistance? What should we do with the double standard of the police? The stocking is far from over, but it feels like the debate has already been won.
Another example. A popular argument in the abortion debate in the US goes something like this: the anti-abortion people say they would pro life but are in favor of the death penalty. ah! Checkmate? No. Such an observation must be the starting point of thinking. Because while you sit back contentedly, in your pocket with your keen eye, the Republicans casually run off with the Supreme Court.
It was also the tragedy of the satirical program The Daily Show under Jon Stewart, who had a day job highlighting the Fox News double standard but never actually achieved anything.
The complacent fixation on other people’s hypocrisy makes us lazy thinkers. Our obsession with unmasking stands in the way of a clear view of the world at all. It feels so good to catch people in hypocrisy, to discover what they secretly think, that we always look for badness to be covered up. While public wrongs and bad plans are up for grabs.
Imagine that in the years before the war, Putin had not publicly announced his colonial hate obsession with Ukraine, but had secretly wanted to keep it under wraps. And that it had come out through secret recordings. Would we have been more interested in it then? Or what if Rutte’s failing climate policy were only leaked in secret audio recordings, instead of neatly announced in every new coalition agreement. That a dingy video would appear online, clumsily filmed, in which Rutte admits to a select group that we are again not going to do enough. Would we be angrier then? Or maybe even take action?
Eva Peek is NRC-editor. Kiza Magendane is off this week.
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of 22 July 2022