Wednesday Potpourri

First, Mark Zuckerberg knows how to read the room. His most recent efforts to remove fact checkers from Facebook and Instagram show that he understands that certain leftist cultural politics have failed.

As you saw professional football players doing the Trump dance in their end zones you might have concluded that large segments of the male population had decided to embrace, not to disparage, masculinity. 

Clearly, the most recent presidential election was not merely about a man vs. a woman. It was about the ethos, and answered the question of whether the country was becoming too girlified.

At the least, that was the lesson that Zuckerberg draw, and explained to Joe Rogan, via Bloomberg:

Mark Zuckerberg lamented the rise of “culturally neutered” companies that have sought to distance themselves from “masculine energy,” adding that it’s good if a culture “celebrates the aggression a bit more.”

Second, Christopher Rufo offers some commentary on the Meta move:

Executives at Meta quickly implemented the new policy, issuing pink slips to DEI employees and moving the company’s content-moderation team from California to Texas, in order, in Zuckerberg’s words, to “help alleviate concerns that biased employees are excessively censoring content.”

The most important signal emanating from this decision is not about a particular shift in policy, however, but a general shift in culture. Zuckerberg has never really been an ideologue. He appears more interested in building his company and staying in the good graces of elite society. But like many successful, self-respecting men, he is also independent-minded and has clearly chafed at the cultural constraints DEI placed on his company. So he seized the moment, correctly sensing that the impending inauguration of Donald Trump reduced the risk and increased the payoff of such a change.

And Newsmax adds that Meta is firing 3600 employees for poor performance.

Third, on the office front, more and more companies are requiring staff to be in the office every day of the week. The latest directive came from Jamie Dimon at JP Morgan Chase. 

Now we learn why. Apparently, young staff members are incapable of having conversations with their colleagues, because they are too used to communicating via text message and email.

The New York Post reports:

The art of office small talk is dying out because younger workers feel more comfortable communicating online, according to research.

A poll, of 2,000 employed adults, found 74 percent struggle to make light conversation with co-workers in the kitchen or elevator.

Nearly half of those (48 percent) admit to using WhatsApp, Teams or email because it’s more convenient – even if they are sitting near the recipient.

Overall, 27 percent say they are more comfortable communicating online than in person.

Fourth, in the therapy world, the latest news tells us that venting is not necessarily a good thing. Giving full-throated expression to all of our emotions is not necessarily therapeutic.

This is from Greater Good Magazine:

For many years, psychologists believed that dark emotions, like anger, needed to be released physically. This led to a movement to “let it all out,” with psychologists literally telling people to hit soft objects, like pillows or punching bags, to release pent-up feelings.

It turns out, however, that this type of emotional venting likely doesn’t soothe anger as much as augment it. That’s because encouraging people to act out their anger makes them relive it in their bodies, strengthening the neural pathways for anger and making it easier to get angry the next time around. Studies on venting anger (without effective feedback), whether online or verbally, have also found it to be generally unhelpful.

People who vent too much seem to be wallowing in their emotion, and to be showing no real concern for their interlocutors.

While supportive friends and family hopefully care enough to listen and sympathize with us, it can be frustrating to sit with someone who vents frequently when that person seems to be wallowing in emotion without learning from their experience. And being around someone stuck in anger, fear, or sadness cycles can be overwhelming for listeners who may end up “catching” the emotions themselves.

“Repeatedly venting over and over and over again, can create friction in social relationships,” says Kross. “There’s often a limit to how much listeners, your friends, can actually hear.”

As Aristotle put it, it is acceptable to express anger, but only as long as you do it in the right way, to the right person, under the right circumstances, in the right place.

I hope that that clarifies the issue.

Fifth, hot off the wires, columnist Jennifer Rubin has quit the Washington Post. One would like to think that the editors finally found their good sense and fired her, but surely it is good to see her go.

In another context, it would be called a cleanse.

Sixth, remember the Tiger Mom, a fan favorite in these pages. Considering the violent reaction provoked by Yale Law Professor Amy Chua’s book, The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, it is good to see her vindicated.

Next week she and her husband will be attending the presidential inauguration, as guests of the vice president elect, JD Vance. You see, Chua was instrumental in getting Vance to write his best seller, Hillbilly Elegy, when she was his teacher at Yale Law School. 

She was also a mentor to Vivek Ramaswamy. 

Seventh, the latest from Sweden, suffering under the weight of its overly mindless immigration policies:

Sweden now has almost 60 no go zones with gang crime out of control. The government wants to change the law so that they can revoke the citizenship of gang criminals and deport them. 

Eighth, more than a few commentators have come away from the Pete Hegseth hearings with the same reaction.

Here is one from Bonchie Red State:

I'm not sure having a bunch of deranged women scream at Pete Hegseth was a good strategic move. A lot of people are going to see the clips and immediately relate to Hegseth, not the lunatics ranting and waving their arms like inflatable tube men.

Ninth, speaking of guy culture, three of America’s wealthiest men will be attending the Trump inauguration. Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk will all be present.

Michelle Obama will sit this one out. Happily for her, the nation does not fine people for petulance. 

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