These are troubled times. Americans seem to have a lot of built-up resentment and I wouldn’t be surprised if we end up in a second civil war very soon. I used to worry about a coup leading to a regime change, with my concentrated concern of losing women’s rights. But since that’s already happened and been forgotten, there’s really nowhere else to go from here.
I have lost a lot of family and friends in the past ten years, most of them due to the massive orange stain in the Oval Office. But also because I refuse to indulge willful ignorance.. we all know the right thing to do.
I will take my share of the responsibility though. I’m a rebel at heart, with a strong attraction to troublemakers. But at some point, we all have to commit to a philosophy and I won’t hesitate to abandon someone attempting to explain why their flavor of hate is okay because: God. Hate is hate, no matter how much you shroud it in religion.
A lot of this I blame on the Internet, which is completely out of character for me. I made a thirty year career developing websites and brands on the Internet. I met my husband on the Internet in 1999, and anytime I hear the squeaks and squonks of vintage dial-up, I look at him with eyelashes aflutter and announce, “They’re playing our song!”.
But as much as I have enjoyed getting to know complete strangers in binary code while in my jammies, it really had nowhere to go but to shit. No one needs to know every thought rolling around in everyone’s brain, that’s how cults are born. One guy thinks he has an idea, another says “YEAH!” and off they go through the wall, Kool-aid in hand.
I started my trip around the World Wide Web in bulletin board chatrooms in 1993 and was a full blown Internet troll by 1997, punting people off AOL just because I could. My swan song was in the Beatles chat room, where everyone was posting lyrics to their favorite Beatles song when someone posted a line from “Octopuses Garden”.
“I hate that song!”, I typed as I loaded my punter software to launch rapid fire instant messages until their machine froze and avatar dropped off my screen. That user would spend the next thirty minutes trying to reconnect by dialup to get back online, and I would spend the rest of my life giggling at the memory.
“I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t help you.”
I eventually burned out, because boredom fades and you realize the blips on your screen representing people, just really aren’t that interesting. I diverted my attention to real life, developing websites until 2007, as MySpace was in its death rattle – then once more found my crowd in random forums.
It’s a real jolt of dopamine and oxytocin to find your bee-people.. those more intelligent blips who keep you interested in what they will type after you type this thing or that. It becomes a family, often more important than your actual relatives.. also known as a cult.
It took about a year for me to get enough, but I did and like all endings, the screen goes black. Before it did though, factions were formed and players rewarded, with importance based on a few cleverly worded stupid things they should never have said.
Eventually too much is said by everyone.. fade to black
I also blame a lot of this on the boredom of Boomers in retirement. They spent the bulk of their life creating their identity at work, and in the dawn of the Internet, they had little time or patience for dialup.. or their kids who were becoming web proficient.
Now they have nothing to do all day, and assume everyone wants to know what they think. We don’t.
For fuck’s sake, sit on your hands and stop arguing solely for the sake of arguing before you get us all killed. Take up a hobby or try to get your story straight on all those secret affairs and babies you had. All the bodies will be exposed soon by Ancestry.com anyway.
And why on earth do you suddenly care about the philosophy of your kids and grandkids? You never did before. I was a latchkey kid in the 1970’s.. no one knew what I was up to all day.. or my brothers after me. Face it, you’re doing well to remember your grandkids’ birthdays.
I chose my philosophy ten years ago and put my activism out into the real world, until Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022. My granddaughters snugly stripped of their reproductive rights, I realized my best efforts weren’t working and I was killing myself in the process. If unlike me, you still have rights, you better fight for them because I am taking a much-deserved break from all people and their bullshit.
I know this lunacy will run its course, just like all of the more bizarre tragedies in History (Reformation, Witch Trials, Cold War). And when it does, I will be proud of where I stood and people will understand why I did.
Can you say the same? Are you going to be one of those fools who died waving a flag with differing shapes and colors, destroying everything you ever made for some rich blip?
Do you honestly believe that typing from your recliner in your jammies is going to do anything? This frothy post, surely won’t! I know many of you, and you’ve never said anything that made a real difference to anyone before.. get over yourself! You just aren’t that important.
You are losing the thing that as a species you were designed to protect.
Now, I understand there are lots of people who added to the population, who should have planned ahead and learned what to do with a child when it got here.. and just didn’t. For whatever reason you have excused yourself with, it was all a bust. Just something to ignore while you worked, or fucked your boss, or bitched incessantly to your sisters about your kids you hate.
Snakes immediately slither away from the babies they squirt out, to live their best reptilian existence free from concern of their progeny. At least they don’t return decades later to try and pound in their failed advice, insisting it be followed.
But we’ll carry on – or whoever/whatever is left after this shit show is over will. Long before religious cults started running everything, Ancient Greece confronted the tragic nature of existence without flinching. They knew suffering was an inescapable core of the human condition. That we live, suffer and die.. but it’s worth it. Although, they didn’t have to live with you assholes.
