Ted Talks hell

I had it down to a science. Laptop open on the kitchen counter, body still, head high, play a TED Talk on clinical depression: move the body to the bedroom, laptop goes on the floor, play a TED Talk on bipolar disorder. And on and on. There was no listening to the news, no reading of books. Distraction could be found in the safety of running water, something I would come not to take for granted, along with heat and shelter. But that was the Christmas break I was crashing out of the antipsychotic medication I'd been put on three seasons earlier, through a misdiagnosis whose scope and depth would still shock me when I traced the steps leading to it – high anxiety, anhedonia, sure, let's put this woman on the single worst pharma cocktail we can conjure based on a ten-minute conversation, off the record – so the season made its own rules. Binge-watching mental health stuff it was. Avoiding family it was.

I might have kept up with some appearances – sassy public pictures, low-wattage holiday cheer. Who knows. I blocked the entire season out right until I landed in a cold, damp residency house earlier this year. At noon, a wave of physical discomfort kicked scattered memories to the surface in a courtyard. Hey, do you remember when... Because it happened.

F%$# me, that was real.

The past is a woman wearing snow boots indoors.

Mental health commodities

For the occasional clarity spark, a compelling TED Talk brought on – Law professor Elyn Saks spoke forcefully and beautifully about her lifelong co-existing with schizophrenia – that spark washed out in a deluge of “... and here's how I made it through the wilderness” monologues that didn't change my state of mind, let alone the realities in and around my body. All compulsive media did was allow me to hit pause for twelve to fifteen minutes at a time.

In a darker timeline, I've kept my name to become a mental health influencer. Or a mental health ambassador. So it's reasonable to assume I'm still shredded by panic attacks, mood swings, quick-bang flashbacks to many violent events, and a most persistent call of the void on a daily basis, but now I also must maintain the thriving doll facade I've created out of a pretty face with a narrative. That's me. I struggle with anxiety, just like you – people!

It seemed doable at the time and expected. Showgirls forged a career out of the wreckage of the past. The thrive economy dictates such a move, in fact: Homeless to Ivy League, Financial Ruin to Luxury Boat Empire.

Circumstances made me malleable to the TED trick. Having been socialized from childhood to believe no one cared if you lived or died until you had unconscionable amounts of media attention, I grew up with a seething resentment that bordered on hatred for the hype machine, mixed with the quicksand awareness the machine was the one shot I could ever take, so, may as well enter a prolonged coping and bargaining stage: if only I get that (the big shoot, the ad blitz, savvy management, the correct personal brand), then surely I'll be able to do what I want later on.

Wanna know what comes later? More of what you hate. Know what's at the end of the hallway? Another hallway.

But the fracture between consuming content and acting on it, wasn't a me problem. Not exclusively. I've since spoken with literary authors who can't breathe without calming apps, habitual self-help bingers who never got any treatment, legions of Ph.Ds who tossed suitcases of money they did not have in a gaping volcano of personal growth seminars.

No, it isn't. At best, it's faith healing. And TED Talks legitimized it early on.

The personal development market size, valued at USD 41.81 billion in 2021, is anticipated to expand at a compound annual growth rate of 5.5% from 2022 to 2030. Ain't that a sentence. “Personal development” is a catch-all term for “get better,” “fix it,” or “problem-solve in style.” Not that big of a stretch from “technology, entertainment, design,” the original mission statement for the TED conference.

To this day, if you want to use the TED name for a local event, say, a TEDx, you must adhere to strict parameters in terms of stage design and stage dimensions.

Mission above speaker? Design above message.

TED takes over the world

TED as a global sensation started in 2006, when the first recorded Talks were uploaded to the website TED.com to be streamed and accessible for free worldwide. Subtitles are now available in 115 languages courtesy of an army of volunteers. Lucky timing and access allowed TED Talks to dominate a crucial moment in the thrive economy.

“Thriving” is the kind of measurable growth that happens despite obstacles such as mental and physical damage. You don't just overcome adversities; you shine through to the other side. It's not enough to suffer rounds of chemotherapy; you need to make cancer your bitch, and laugh in the face of impending death. The bleaker the odds, the hotter the comeback. There's the thrive.

Up until 2006, the TED business was fueled by audience members, who'd go on to pay $ 10.000 to catch the miracle live, and bountiful sponsorship deals. It was all about creating more resilient entrepreneurs offering the promise of luster and solutions. Sharing the talks online made the organization more popular, and the brand better known, and it encouraged any random watcher to project themselves in the CEO / Founder role. You, too, can be a success story; you too can one day rise up from the peanut gallery to talk about the unique yet relatable challenges you slayed in the marketplace. You can become a thought leader if you're telegenic and coachable. Smile bigger. Talk big, sell big. Believe in your own spin. Believe in the goodness of your manifest destiny. You're a doer.

What was the YouTube “spontaneous confession” genre, if not a homespun adaptation of the TED faith model, a bedroom/living room background in lieu of the holy stage.

In the year 2012, TED Talks reached number one billion views overall. When the dam broke, there was no escape from the bad science—the shoddy research. The viral TED label shepherded bad, bad crash books to the stores. Faith-based advice was elevated as truth. In the Marianne Williamson episode of Maintenance Phase, co-hosts Michael Hobbes and Aubrey Gordon lamented the number of nonprofit donors who had all watched “the fucking TED Talk about the overhead cost for NGOs” – it seems like nobody wanted to be the sucker whose contribution paid for the office Internet, no, everyone wanted to be bright and unique. Like you!

There has never been a TED way out. That much I sensed. In his multi-viral talk about major depression, journalist Andrew Solomon said he knew, rationally, he could have a nice life if he managed to drag himself to therapy. I didn't, though. Have a nice life waiting on the other side.

Since the speakers came from hallowed halls – academia, science, research, highbrow publishing – they got the sleek preemptive credibility your average actor / Oprah doctor would grasp at for decades before settling on dark psychic forces cause cervical cancer.

A few notable Talks materialized long after the speaker had a book out – their work was done, their kingdom could be solidified in presentation: Solomon released The Noonday Demon ten years before his time on the stage; when Elyn Saks' turn came, her memoir (The Center Cannot Hold) had been available for five years. Other people generated deals for themselves through sheer grit and brand association. And the fussy, scripted nature of it all was, again, by design – potential speakers were hardcore vetted and trained to make their presentation conform to arbitrary efficiency standards: get punchier, fuck nuance. Over and over. That's TED material for you. Keep it moving.

The mechanics of rehearsed confessions were familiar to me, as were the explanations as admission of failure I had stumbled over the years – on occasion I would spit it out, uhh-I-have-mental-problems, blink blink goes the hostage video stare, please help, I fucked up, again – and no matter how I hoped to get anything else, I had learned to expect plain befuddlement looking back at me, mirroring the hostage video stare.

Depression like how.

You're supposed to fix it.

True to form, there had been an increasing desperation vortex in trying to fix this. EMDR sessions got paused when I could not retrieve a happy memory to return to. Hospitalization couldn't happen without my informed consent. I ruled out this entirely on the grounds of being busy: “you don't check in a psych ward two months before a product launch.” That's a statement I still stand by – you can go to rehab after the movie bombs, come on – but I had high speed Internet at home. All the thrive content a girl could choke on.

Over time, TED embraced and validated the show business quality inherent to the thrive industry: growth, justice, and freedom are the ultimate triple dare against the limitations of the one body, the one life. All in all, a deep Evangelical model built on the wonder-working power of the stage and the perpetual altered conscience to be found under the cloak of “designing a better world.”

You might have heard about the specific threat of TikTok – according to a recent New York Times article (“Teens Turn to TikTok in Search of a Mental Health Diagnosis”), the app is the latest menace when it comes to hapless users hoovering up questionable “mental health” information with little to no context.

Now, TikTok gets rightfully yelled at because it has zeroed in on the compulsive video binge pattern – give me hope / give me acceptance / dope me up. Make me stop feeling whatever I'm feeling right now. With its bottomless flow of automated content, TikTok is a pure, smooth dope-them-up experience: the algorithm flood users with videos based on a couple early choices in the users' experience. A free, fully serviceable personality disorder factory in every home. The conveyor belt is sublime.

Ever since there have been online spaces, people have been flocking to unmoderated free-for-alls and poorly diagnosing themselves. Cyberchondria, as documented in 2001, was the sharp uptick in the number of citizens contacting local clinicians after the Internet suggested a sickness. Any mental health community somewhat active in 2022, be it a Reddit board or a derelict website, comes with one pinned post flashing white as a warning: the following is not meant to be taken as medical advice: no one there but fellow sickos.

There has always been a double hope-assumption at play: one, the Internet free-for-all could be corralled into a smaller consumer base; two, “talking about mental health” would create awareness and reach a wide, otherwise mute and petrified audience, thus breaking the stigma.

Mental health as identity

The original stigma has been replaced by an insidious type of learned helplessness. The name of the game is repeating a declaration – I have mental health problems – and consuming online content about the subject at large instead of making a plan, act to deal with it. If you watch enough, you will hit the devotion spot: if you get obsessed with your mental health, carefully disregarding worldwide events, reality will blur and bend over until your own custom reality becomes the law of the land. You will be delivered.

Demonically enough, the market now mirrors the Internet free-for-all. We can play in battle-born hunter-warrior mode, or, we can surrender to the over-acceptance of faults, playing in you're fine it's fine take it easy on yourself mode. My Instagram explore function serves me depression hacks on the grounds of having used the “mental health” hashtag in a couple posts I would love to withdraw from consideration when it's not telling me I am unique and valid via sloppy image macros: what I should do is, extend myself some grace. Jesus, you're on a phone, how much more grace do you need. Most current affairs podcasts I listen to feature ad breaks extolling the virtues and necessity of home security systems, multivitamin supplements, the odd precooked meal company, and a constellation of tele-health services. (One podcast still favors cigar stores. Wonder if they're locked in for the decade.) An informal chat with a therapist based on the West Coast confirms telehealth is at least in fashion amongst the urban crowd: the demand for professionals willing to conduct Zoom sessions has skyrocketed well after the pandemic.

People like it better, the therapist says, they don't have to worry about parking.

People, here, are being offered the chance to talk in the direction of someone without leaving the house, never again to experience the mild unease of a waiting room nor a trace of a clinical setting, no chairs no masters. You can do the work from home. Doom all you want, shut the door.

This is the market.

What I needed (shock) was a steady amount of personal interaction, eye-to-eye contact, saying hello please thank you and hearing it in return, plus, of course, all the abominable life chores no expert would even suggest from a position of firm clinical authority (commit to sleep time, commit to meal times), never mind back it up with the one language I would be receptive to: presentation disguised as data.

Notice how, the minute a broad self-help book could maybe get distilled down to “clean your room”, that one took the world by absolute storm. Because a Psychology professor said it. Yes, the professor from YouTube. That muppet.

Regardless of the notoriety Jordan Peterson had already achieved with his outbursts, the media push bestowed upon Twelve Rules for Life meant the book was heralded by digital-first celebrities with immense reach. And scores of creators did find something worthwhile in its advice. PewDiePie recommended the book; Ethan and Hila Klein gushed over the man himself on a since deleted episode of their show. This made me, on occasion, sympathetic to Peterson – he ached for attention, yet he appeared to be in a valley of material pain any other time his wish was granted.

God's sake, get off the stage.

When I did get better, it was out of determination and luck. A doctor was willing to see me after New Year's, and I was adamant there was going to be no hopping back on antipsychotic pills. So I went through a stretch of dull daily observation – a mood journal, long walks, limited vigilance – and a trial run on a much lighter medication presented as a possibility, not a magic bullet. If we're lucky, this is gonna work.

And the doctor did some further research. Turns out my old meds had been discredited in later clinical studies. They were not effective in “treating depression”; they would, however, get non-psychotic patients stoned to the point of slack oblivion. There was photographic evidence of it.

Why, I was trying to tell you all, I wanted to chime, but that particular clusterfuck we'd gotten to the bottom of, more or less – the future was mine to ruin.

Would you be happier with a quiet life in a smaller city? the doctor asked.

Yes, I said.

What's stopping you?

Huh.

I had another project coming out. I needed to promote it.

Please take a break after that.

Consider it done.

In the end, what fixed me, nothing. What helped, some exercise (to quote the good doctor here, “we don't really know why, but physical activity kind of works”) and being treated not as a song in the key of Lord what does the third generation movie star want now, but as a patient who shall be spoken to and listened to, monitored like a regular adult within the boundaries of a regular office.

Here's hoping your Christmas will be smoother than the one I just walked you through. Remember there is pleasure to be found in quiet times and hard limits. Last month as I wrestled with a cold house, waved to the neighbors, worked the gas heater, adjusted to smoking outdoors and the howling of feral dogs at dawn, I made sure to take the smallness in. The sky still blue, the light of day. Take it in. Beats the TED Talk.