09.22 | the mystery behind internet quotes

Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.
– Grey's Law (maybe)

✉️ letter #8

I didn't have the happiest Mid-Autumn Festival vacation period, but it was all my own doing. I couldn't get out of my head about how miserable I am right now, and any attempt to vent about that misery just made me feel even more helpless and overwhelmed.

I probably should have stuck with my original plan of doing a full-on dopamine detox and cleanse, but instead I went out to play, got super hungover, and binged watched hours upon hours of shows throughout the last five days. Oopsie daisy.

Anyway though, one of the reasons life sucks for me right now is encapsulated in the quote above, and I'd rather talk about it than navel gazing about what's going on in my life.

This quotable "law" is a combination of sci-fi author Arthur C. Clarke's law of robotics, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic," and Hanlon's Razor, "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."

When I came across the phrase in a meme, it was attributed to a Fred Clark.

So naturally, I googled who this wise Fred Clark could be. Turns out it's no one notable. In fact, it seems like the only reference to Fred Clark is this opinion piece on Patheos about Hurricane Katrina in which the author Fred Clark mentions the quote as something he had heard, and found applicable to the government's handling of that terrible disaster.

When you type the phrase in on Google images, you see it attributed not to Fred Clark, but a J. Porter Clark instead.

But from what I could tell, the only famous J. Porter Clark is an architect known for several buildings around Palm Springs, California. Hardly the kind of guy to make a bunch of pithy statements on incompetence and malice.

Wikipedia posits the variations on this quote as both Clark's law and Grey's Law, and interesting new wrinkle. But who was Grey? Urban Dictionary has an entry explaining what the law means (as if it wasn't obvious), but doesn't explain where the name Grey came from.

Apparently I'm not the only one to wonder who Grey may have been. A Wikipedia blogger asked the same question back in 2007, and could only find that "The quotation itself appears to have spread through email sig blocks and various social bookmarking websites, and appears to be of recent origin."

In any case, the quote is now at least just famous enough to warrant etsy stickers:

But not enough for people to really dig out its origins.

It really makes you wonder if some things speak to such a universal truth that nobody needs to truly create it. And yet, without a name - any name apparently - behind it, we seem loathe to acknowledge its truth.

In future years, perhaps instead of trying to attach a name and body to this quote, it will fall into the realms of lore. Future generations will put it in their digital yearbooks as:

"Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice." - Ancient internet proverb.

🌱 the ethical ideas newsreel

• Have you ever heard of Blue Food? Apparently that's the term for food in the sea (but not seafood?) and a sustainable version of it could solve our future hunger crisis.
• President Xi Jinping scored a big hit for climate activists when he promised China would end support for new coal power abroad. Now Xi promises, "China will step up support for other developing countries in developing green and low-carbon energy and will not build new coal-fired power projects abroad."
• People to look up to: Mariama Sonko is an ecofeminist and an unstoppable force who continued her work even when she was ostracised by her community in Senegal

🎵 song of my week

One of the chillest albums I've been enjoying recently has been Deb Never's "Where Have All The Flowers Gone," which manages to remix all of the college sounds I love with this modern 2020s vibe.

I'm always excited to feature Asian-American women songwriters especially! Deb is Korean-American and you can learn more about her philsophy and her background in this excellent Fader interview.

✨enjoying: one final piece of pop culture fun

Norm Macdonald passed away from cancer, and one of the day-long binges was going through the archives of his comedy on Youtube, helped by the Conan team taking the time to find every appearance he'd made on all Conan O'Brien projects over the last 20 years.

The tribute to him on the Conan O'Brien podcast, "Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend," is well worth listening to - it goes into what made him so beloved by other comedians, as well as the legitimate issues people had with some of what he would say (he had, amongst other questionable choices, a notably problematic propensity for jokes where the punchline was just "you're gay").

I don't know the guy and I don't know how equipped I am to comment on a comedian's legacy only being good if he's always punching up. But I will say that I have watched a lot of Norm Macdonald, and one of the best parts about him was his absolute lack of fear punching up.

I highly recommend the Team Coco playlist. But also, before they get taken down, here's some supplemental Norm material that, in my mind, encapsulates why he was so fantastic.

His early appearances on Letterman showcase how much he had already decided on a style and cadence so early into his career.

If you knew Norm from the 90s, you probably knew him as one of the best hosts of Weekend Update, a job that he was fired from after he refused to stop doing O.J. Simpson jokes. He made so many O.J. Simpson jokes. This channel has a full on 35 minute marathon.

And finally, his legendary appearance at the Bob Saget roast, of which the only video I can find is this grainy one. Apparently Norm didn't want to say mean and crude things about his friend Bob, and so he turned the whole idea of a roast on its head with a comedy routine that feels as hilariously comfortable in the 1940s as it does in our contemporary world.

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