There’s a new type of energy floating around social media, and it’s not the good kind.
I’m calling it “Dig Bick Energy”
The not-so-nice flaccid cousin of Big Dick Energy.
Instead of confident competence, it’s just digging into topics you don’t understand and bickering about them online to sound profound.
Some masculine woo woo influencer just posted a rambling takedown of “48 Laws of Power” that perfectly demonstrates this phenomenon.
His hot take?
The book is “tragically incomplete” because it promotes a “zero sum scarcity model” and treating people like “game pieces in your own private chess match”
This is peak Dig Bick Energy.
He’s taking a complex work of historical analysis and reducing it to a simplistic strawman so he can argue against something that was never the actual point.
Robert Greene didn’t write “48 Laws of Power” as a self help manual for aspiring sociopaths, but you can tell a lot of people are running with the Patrick Bateman from American Psycho vibe instead… (They should ACTUALLY read 48 laws of power tbh)
The thing is.
He compiled centuries of historical examples showing how power actually operates in the real world.
And I’m fairly certain (If I can dig it out) that there was in interview where he states it’s more descriptive than anything.
I mean if I were a doctor, I wouldn’t prescribe taking the 48 laws of power to heart.
I guess we could also call it an instruction manual for being an absolute asshole, although if you look a lot deeper into what he was sharing and writing.
It’s 100% anthropology.
But this influencer missed that entirely because actually understanding the book would require acknowledging uncomfortable truths about how the world works.
Instead, he’d rather live in his fantasy bubble where “infinite resources are as freely available as oxygen” and everyone can just collaborate their way to success. (Which is possible but lol, just wait until someone uses one of the biologically hardwired laws against them and the herd…)
I’m down for willful ignorance though, cause there’s no way you can try and sound smart and enlightened by watering complex ideas like that down.
The book documents how people like Cesare Borgia, Napoleon, and countless others actually gained and maintained power throughout history.
You can find those lessons morally repugnant, but pretending they don’t exist won’t make power dynamics disappear.
This is what happens when people consume content in bite sized chunks and think they understand complex topics.
They dig for surface level criticisms and bicker about half baked interpretations instead of grappling with the actual ideas.
Social media rewards this behaviour because nuanced understanding doesn’t get engagement.
Hot takes and moral posturing do. (Join Twitter and you’ll see exactly what I mean)
Next time you see someone confidently dismantling something they clearly don’t understand, you’re witnessing Dig Bick Energy in action.
Don’t be that guy.
This is also why I wanted to rip my eyes from my skull when someone tried to tell me that Blinkist would increase my book reading speeds and comprehension and LmaoGPT would fully change our views…
Anyways. That’s my Friday Soap Box session done.
Go have a kickass weekend.
Stephen Walker.