LARPing Expertise: The Anti-Hero's Journey

News Media Scandal of the Century!

Politico is a news agency that specializes in—you guessed it—politics.

Founded in 2007, it “strives to be the dominant source for news on politics and policy in power centers across every continent”.

So why did the United States Agency for International Development (US AID) send millions in grant dollars to this for-profit company?

It didn’t.

US AID spent a grand total of $44,000 over two years on subscriptions to Politico’s in-depth energy and environment reporting. Other federal agencies—including the Departments of HHS, Energy, and Interior, and, previously, Trump’s Executive Office—also subscribe.

All told, the government spent about $8.2 million last year on Politico subscriptions, just as it does for The New York Times, Reuters, etc.

It’s all pretty standard and boring.

But the sleuths on Twitter thought it was the “biggest scandal in news media history”.

And no less than the President of the United States picked up on their “bombshell reporting”:

This was not a scandal.

Honestly, this story is like a single tamborine shake in a heavy metal song. It’s ok if you missed it.

I only mention it because it illustrates a worrying trend: the LARPing of expertise.

LARPing Expertise

If you’re not familiar, Live Action Role-Playing, LARP for short, is a perfectly fine hobby in which people act as characters in a shared fantasy world. It combines storytelling, drama, physical activity, and gaming.

Think Ren Faire. Civil War Reenactments. Murder Mystery Parties.

The draw is obvious. You get to escape from the real world and be part of something bigger, nobler, higher stakes … better.

But at the end of the day, participants know it’s a fantasy. The people LARPing Quidditch know they aren’t flying.

The Twitter users LARPing forensic accounting, on the other hand, think they’re defying gravity.

That’s where things get dangerous.

The Chosen One

A common fantasy trope is “The Chosen One”.

Due to some innate or accidental trait, the main character happens to be the only one who can save the world from certain annihilation. Maybe it’s a dormant genetic mutation, a radioactive spider, a prophecy, childhood trauma, unusual cunning, unnatural courage.

Whatever the origin story, we love to ride with the chosen one. We might want to be The Chosen One.

But then there are people who believe they are The Chosen One.

One of those people is Elon Musk.

Kara Swisher, a journalist who has covered Silicon Valley for decades, recently described Musk like this:

This time, Musk has engineered himself into the actual center of the universe. And that’s not great, for several reasons [Exhibits A, B, C, D, E, for starters].

He has no experience running large-scale government operations, but he’s LARPing his way through anyhow - hacking away at anything that seems “leftist”, wasteful, or has a purpose he doesn’t understand. Because “he alone can fix it”.

Similarly, RFK Jr. went before the Senate HELP Committee and repeatedly argued that he knows better than the overwhelming majority of scientists who have, among other things, proven vaccine efficacy and safety, and debunked race-based medicine.

Take a peek on social media and you’ll see this unfounded self-belief everywhere. People with no background in science genuinely believe that their interpretation of a single journal article carries more weight than every scientist in that field.

They believe that they alone can see the truth. That they’ve been chosen to free others. And that this public health stuff isn’t that hard, after all.

We Can Be Heroes

So, what do we do about this?

Honestly, I think this is going to get worse before it gets better. But, a few things to chew on:

• Sweat > Status

  Let’s emphasize the effort it takes to develop expertise, not just the prestige of having it. Simple change: Instead of saying someone got a degree, say they earned it. Example: “She earned her PhD for her work investigating…” instead of “She got her PhD from Stanford.”

• Show Our Work

  No one reads the methods section. Ok, scientists do eventually, but the point is it’s dense, boring, and full of jargon. Uninitiated readers either skip them or struggle to understand them. That’s a shame, because when you think about it, the methodology is where science shines. It’s the critical thinking, the problem-solving, the good stuff. We have a ton of communication tools at our disposal. Is it time to refresh the methods section?

• Normalize Not Knowing

  I don’t know everything. Neither do you. It’s exceedingly rare, if not impossible, to be an actual know-it-all. Instead of pretending, obfuscating, or lying, we should all get better at saying “I don’t know”.

• Celebrate that it Takes a Village

  No one achieves greatness alone, yet we often tell stories as if they do. It’s expedient. It’s exciting. But can we resist that impulse? Can we shift from idolizing singular heroes to embracing the interdependent collective?

  
  We need to make it abundantly clear that there is no such thing as a nonplayer character, and none of us are The Chosen One.

Around the Internet

• The RFK Jr. Playbook

  The latest from Dr. Paul Offit’s “Beyond the Noise” newsletter. Identifies 3 strategies used by RFK Jr. to skirt science that conflicts with his views: deny good studies exist, promote poor studies that reinforce your opinions, call dissenters shills for Big Pharma.

• Medical journal editors must resist CDC order and anti-gender ideology
  A BMJ opinion piece that pulls no punches: “Publication ethics and professional standards define the work of medical journals, editors, and researchers. These are safeguards of best scientific practice and integrity—and will not yield to bad practice like gag orders, suppression, and authoritarian whims.”

• American chaos: standing up for health and medicine

  Editorial in the Lancet published on February 8th. “This moment is a test. How should our community react?”

• Outnumbered, Outspent, and Out-Messaged: How Democrats Must Reset Their Communications Strategy To Win The Current Attention Economy

  A strong case for building up an attention-generating machine to persuade voters on immigration issues. Swap in health care/science and it’s just as compelling: “That means going beyond press releases and panel discussions—it means engaging in a full-scale, coordinated communications offensive built for modern media consumption.”

• In Idaho, a preview of RFK Jr.’s vaccine-skeptical America

  A Washington Post article about an Idaho Board of Health that has prohibited public health clinics from offering the Covid vaccine. The story highlights the medical doctors who led the charge for prohibition - despite having been sanctioned by their state licensing boards.

Living Rent-Free in My Brain this Week

Quote I Like

Thanks for reading. Hang in there, everybody.

Ky

Did you find this newsletter interesting? Forward it to a friend

Are you that lucky friend? Subscribe to this newsletter for free

This newsletter will always be free.

If your love language is buying people coffee: