Comparison is the thief of joy—or the key to understanding. Last week, I saw two TikToks that used metaphors and similes to help explain the U.S. involvement’s in the Iran conflict.

Matt Buechele starts: “America has officially become the guy that enters your subway cars from the doors between the cars.”

@soberchampagne takes the simile route as he “explains world news through Vanderpump Rules.”

In both of these examples, they pull from contexts you may already know to illustrate a point. Working memory—your brain's active sorting system—can only handle so much. When we’re learning about big, meaty concepts (see: international geopolitics), you hit that limit quickly. The brain is working overtime to understand the information and categorize it into boxes that make sense to us: what’s good, what’s bad, what’s important, what requires action, what I don’t need to know. People love boxes because they helps us process the overwhelm.

Comparison tools like metaphors and similes speed up this process because the brain is able to correlate it to something it has already processed. Your brain already has a framework for how to sort the information.

And your brain already has a framework for how you feel about that information. If you’ve ridden the subway or been in any space where you’ve needed to be slightly vigilant even though you are probably fine, you know the feeling in your body that Matt is describing. If you’ve seen Vanderpump Rules, you know how you felt when Tom and Tom started another bar without the input of their partners or supporters. It immediately gives you a sense for how the other countries might be feeling.

Comparison tools are not only a way for creators to help their audiences understand a concept—they are also an outlet for creativity and fun. It is far more engaging to learn about the U.S. and U.K. relationship re: Iran through Vanderpump Rules than through a 1,500 word essay. These tactics make complex content more accessible — that's not dumbing it down, that's the job. Topics like geopolitics, economics, and policy have typically died behind paywalls, but they don’t have to. Everyone can and should have the opportunity to understand what’s going on in the world, and we have the opportunity to bring it to them in authentic, brain-friendly ways.

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