Director's Notes – Episode 137 – The Mudstone Abyss Part 3

(NOTE: As always, Director's Notes contain spoilers)

We've taken language off the gold standard. 

In 2018, words and information are no longer backed my any meaningful value. They are only worth what we, as a society, believe them to be worth. But inflation is a beast. There are more words than needed. Supply is higher than demand, so we have to use our surplus to craft new things, new stories, new lies, new sounds. The value of words said and written feels in decline as their abundance soars. 

Eventually we will reach a point where it doesn't matter what words are said on a national or global scale, we can't trust their worth. Here I'm thinking of Brett Kavanaugh's "i like beer" speech and everything that comes out of Sarah Huckabee Sanders' mouth. 

In the marketplace of words, we're no longer on a federally-backed banknote. There exist dozens (if not thousands) of smaller markets where words mean such different things. For instance, how do I use a meme with someone not on social media? Or have a conversation about the new Haunting of Hill House adaptation to someone who steadfastly avoids horror? Or, to use a more pressing example, explain racism to someone who sees nothing wrong with a confederate flag? 

They will reject your words the way an Irish shopkeeper would reject a Canadian quarter. That money is no good here. Go back to your home and spend it where people can use it. 

The world never did build a Tower of Babel out of bricks or steel. We built it out of the internet and cable television. There're plenty of words to go around and it's impossible to know what to do with all of them. 

In this 3-part Desert Bluffs arc, I started with that idea, that our hubris is not just in our need to build, to expand, but in our belief that we can talk or write our way out of anything. That if we just found the right words, we could effect change. But the problem comes when we cannot agree as a society on the exact value (meaning) of those words. 

Of course in Welcome to Night Vale, language can literally stop working because of strange, shadowy souls lurking about. But like our reality, the characters in Desert Bluffs can each clearly hear exactly what they want to say, yet still no fathom that it makes zero sense to the listener. 

How to fix this in our current reality? I don't know. I find myself asking people during arguments to explain their feelings rather than their beliefs, and I ask them to do the same for me. "Oooh, does that work?" Not really, but it's more likely to keep us from getting mad about opinions and whatever facts are these days.

It's much easier to fix this problem in Night Vale. I can just write my way out.

- Jeffrey Cranor
November 1, 2018