I see you as an undeniable force. Your words are potent and honest and bring me right into your world. No matter how different it might be from my own, you manage to make connection. 🤍
This was such a great, worthwhile read. I've struggled to get the words out myself for forever and I just felt a weight lift off my shoulders the more I read through. Brilliant!
Having been proclaimed a "chucklefuck leftist" for not immediately getting some theorycel child's brand of statistically flawed "left wing" "liberal" eugenycs/dysgenics that doesn't play out in my experiential world (However old you are son, it's not old enough. Your methods are flawed, your inductive reasoning is that of an engineer and you're dealing with capital P People, who are notoriously irrational and hard to pin down, and I've seen literal countries cease to exist in my time on the planet, which as far as modern nation states go, is an increasingly rare fuckin' occurrence. No, you're not going to be able to colonize Mars either. That's where David Bowie lives and there's spiders there, besides, there's the problem of radiation and the sands which we have yet to find a way from corroding basically every material we can create terrestrially, but sure, pop off fam. Needless to say I did not know Deep Left Analysis was kind of a big deal? Or for being so confusing in their optics, rhetoric, and statistics, that they would not realize a sardonic tone when spat back at them.)
That being said, I spent most of my day with my fiancee at an Urgent Care because she had to file a workman's comp claim about a shoulder injury. Fuckers. Watching the revolving miseries of the waiting room while knowing that I'm a non-impregnating plague rat for Covid while seeing various forms of discrimination in one of the wealthier suburbs of this shithole put me in a very deny, defend, defenestrate sort of mood.
Remember Ello? Remember Google Wave? Pepperidge Farms remembers. Remember Patreon? Boy, I was pulling good numbers but I managed to turn it into sixty hour a week job because the university in whose lab I worked as a lab rat managed to dome every single tech in the molecular biological engineering section in a way that we could NOT get that SWEET COVID UBI that kept the economy from collapsing entirely while we turned into alcoholics and decided we never wanted to go into an office again. (This is on top of the freelancing, petty side hustles, scams, and maybe pound of weed a week I was ouncing out through Covid. Thank God for California. "Ain't no such thing as halfway crooks" Mob Deep, The Shook Ones Pt. II, 1994)
I wish that all of indie publishing twitter would get their heads out of their asses and migrate somewhere that doesn't assault me every time I open the app. I have so many FB sock accounts I quite literally have lost track of them (9? 11? 13?)
You're quite right but I'd like to append and I contend that these spaces aren't inherently liminal. For most people they are liminoid at best. (Everyone who doesn't know who Victor Turner is go find out right now. Check out Lewis Hyde and for God sake if you don't know C Wright Mills please, go learn about the power elite and come back at a later date.)
It's strange to see the young bucks squabbling up like a debate with someone who goes by Deep Left Analysis would do anything but annoy someone like me, who has lived a life.
Commonalities I've found in some of his fans. White. Logically tech bro diet racist (so, racists) Something vague about religion being important to the fabric of a healthy society, and also tattoos and mental illness make you dysgenic and on and on and none of them seem to have ever had sex. The kids don't fucc.
So then I came home and juked Amazon out of 4 extra lbs of coffee on bag damage that had been out for delivery four times and ran a legitimate return that I'd skated and baited for 130 in their fun bucks back while keeping at least ONE copy of the working item.
My fiancee has to see an ortho and her work is spooked because as former management, well, she has the best employment and civil rights lawyer in the city on retainer.
I write fiction because the youth are so incredulous of the truth that when I speak things that have happened to me they go "wow, that sounds crazy" in that way that you know they don't believe a single fucking word that you've said.
Wait, I'm off the tracks playing out some personal recursive trolley problem in my head (fun fact, the human brain can literally only handle three levels of recursion before it short circuits us. I once tried to come up with a fully recursive story structure for a novel. Got some great lines from it but wow, that was a rabbit hole and a half.)
My point had something to do about assumptions made without full context, which we're all prone to sometimes, but damn, at scale they're insulting on a visceral level.
Thanks for writing. (I don't think Bluesky fuccs yet. It may, but right now it's one silo for another, I'll stay here in my bushes.)
I'm going to actually comment about this because we do come from two different worlds -- not the black and white obvious worlds people are too quick to throw around -- but more of a youth and age, generational thing. I'm not what you'd call techie as far as social media goes. I'm one of this world's old dinosaurs. I don't even have a cell phone. I've never been a big presence online until just recently. I got on Facebook to follow my daughter when her and her bestie went to Thailand after graduating from high school. They both had part time jobs and saved up for what was the trip of a life time. The only way of keeping in contact was through Facebook.
I was so new to the computer world then, I didn't understand what was possible. I didn't blog; I didn't even know what it was. I just wrote stories that were too long to send in to conventional publishers. I limited myself, and because of that, I never got on Instagram, or Tumbler, or Reddit; I didn't understand them and didn't see the purpose. I got on Twitter too late for it to matter. As for everything else, I didn't even know they existed. I stumbled across Substack, and having come here, well, simply don't plan on ever leaving. I have nothing to compare it to. I've read some complaints people have...the hate, the phobias, and just shake my head in disbelief. I don't care if they hate me, or don't read me, or think I'm an old stick in the mud fuck who is lost in time. That's not my issue, but theirs. If you don't like what you read, turn the page.
I believe you make what you will with what you have. I don't have a lot of anything when it comes to Social Media etiquette. All I know how to do is write. My own children don't even read me anymore. My daughter says I'm too Politically Incorrect because I'll write a story from a female point of view; or a gay person's outlook. She says I don't understand what cultural misappropriation is, and I tell her I didn't even know it was a thing. I wrote a story about a Black boxer, as seen through the eyes of his niece. It had nothing to do with colour, or culture. It was just a story.
I might not be everyone's cup of tea, but then again, I don't think anything I write is going to cause a cultural meltdown. It's not that I've seen too much, but I have seen a few things. I mean, I grew up watching the Vietnam War on TV and the Civil Rights demonstrations. A child of the 60's, I watched them land on the moon. Did I question it and think it was fake? Never even crossed my mind. I guess that makes me naive. But I like what I write and put it out without thinking I should be adding "trigger" warnings. I don't do that because I don't think anything I write is traumatizing to that degree. If I write about what I saw on TV as a child, how is it traumatizing?
So when I came to Substack, it was after having been on the one and only other platform I'd ever been on: Vocal.media, which was a bust because there was too much censorship. The fact you can write what you write here is a blessing as far as I'm concerned. The other site told me I was glorifying rape because I had a married couple in a story that were taking part in rôle playing sex games. Who needs that kind of shit? If I want to write a story about missionaries in Manchuria during the Japanese invasion, why can't I? Is that Cultural Misappropriation because I'm an old white guy writing about some time in history that no one reading it even understands in the first place? Substack offers me freedom, and that's something I'm not willing to give up.
I don't look at social media the same way others do, because I haven't been tainted by it. That might be my one saving grace as far as that goes. I don't read hate speech. I don't weigh in on the political ramifications and the contentious views others have. If I do say something about the situation down South across the border (I'm Canadian), I quite often hear from a Trumpster-diver who points out that whatever I say is untrue simply because it is fake news. I call him The Felon, and they get upset with me. But it's Substack and I can say what I want, right? I like to think...within reason. As far as I'm concerned, Substack is the answer to all our needs. I say, on my ABOUT page that it's all right if you don't like me. I also tell them if you subscribe to my PAID page and decide to leave, don't ask me for your money back because it doesn't work like that. I don't give refunds. The only reason is because I can't be bothered with that shit. That's why I like reading you. You don't take shit from anyone.
Always nice to take a break from my own head and a trip into yours. Social media is being used as a great way to promote shameless voyeurism and exploit our natural curiosity. Another attempt of capitalism to take our attention away from our own bodies and minds. I think we’ve spoken about this before, but how we utilise the tools of the digital age is separate from their value devoid of our interventions.
I’ve used social media as a great source of creative inspiration and also to numb and escape. Trick is to have a sense of personal responsibility, and as you’re already well aware, we haaate taking accountability for our own actions in this day and age 🥲
I see you as an undeniable force. Your words are potent and honest and bring me right into your world. No matter how different it might be from my own, you manage to make connection. 🤍
so wonderful, thank you very much 🫶🏾
This was such a great, worthwhile read. I've struggled to get the words out myself for forever and I just felt a weight lift off my shoulders the more I read through. Brilliant!
Having been proclaimed a "chucklefuck leftist" for not immediately getting some theorycel child's brand of statistically flawed "left wing" "liberal" eugenycs/dysgenics that doesn't play out in my experiential world (However old you are son, it's not old enough. Your methods are flawed, your inductive reasoning is that of an engineer and you're dealing with capital P People, who are notoriously irrational and hard to pin down, and I've seen literal countries cease to exist in my time on the planet, which as far as modern nation states go, is an increasingly rare fuckin' occurrence. No, you're not going to be able to colonize Mars either. That's where David Bowie lives and there's spiders there, besides, there's the problem of radiation and the sands which we have yet to find a way from corroding basically every material we can create terrestrially, but sure, pop off fam. Needless to say I did not know Deep Left Analysis was kind of a big deal? Or for being so confusing in their optics, rhetoric, and statistics, that they would not realize a sardonic tone when spat back at them.)
That being said, I spent most of my day with my fiancee at an Urgent Care because she had to file a workman's comp claim about a shoulder injury. Fuckers. Watching the revolving miseries of the waiting room while knowing that I'm a non-impregnating plague rat for Covid while seeing various forms of discrimination in one of the wealthier suburbs of this shithole put me in a very deny, defend, defenestrate sort of mood.
Remember Ello? Remember Google Wave? Pepperidge Farms remembers. Remember Patreon? Boy, I was pulling good numbers but I managed to turn it into sixty hour a week job because the university in whose lab I worked as a lab rat managed to dome every single tech in the molecular biological engineering section in a way that we could NOT get that SWEET COVID UBI that kept the economy from collapsing entirely while we turned into alcoholics and decided we never wanted to go into an office again. (This is on top of the freelancing, petty side hustles, scams, and maybe pound of weed a week I was ouncing out through Covid. Thank God for California. "Ain't no such thing as halfway crooks" Mob Deep, The Shook Ones Pt. II, 1994)
I wish that all of indie publishing twitter would get their heads out of their asses and migrate somewhere that doesn't assault me every time I open the app. I have so many FB sock accounts I quite literally have lost track of them (9? 11? 13?)
You're quite right but I'd like to append and I contend that these spaces aren't inherently liminal. For most people they are liminoid at best. (Everyone who doesn't know who Victor Turner is go find out right now. Check out Lewis Hyde and for God sake if you don't know C Wright Mills please, go learn about the power elite and come back at a later date.)
It's strange to see the young bucks squabbling up like a debate with someone who goes by Deep Left Analysis would do anything but annoy someone like me, who has lived a life.
Commonalities I've found in some of his fans. White. Logically tech bro diet racist (so, racists) Something vague about religion being important to the fabric of a healthy society, and also tattoos and mental illness make you dysgenic and on and on and none of them seem to have ever had sex. The kids don't fucc.
So then I came home and juked Amazon out of 4 extra lbs of coffee on bag damage that had been out for delivery four times and ran a legitimate return that I'd skated and baited for 130 in their fun bucks back while keeping at least ONE copy of the working item.
My fiancee has to see an ortho and her work is spooked because as former management, well, she has the best employment and civil rights lawyer in the city on retainer.
I write fiction because the youth are so incredulous of the truth that when I speak things that have happened to me they go "wow, that sounds crazy" in that way that you know they don't believe a single fucking word that you've said.
Wait, I'm off the tracks playing out some personal recursive trolley problem in my head (fun fact, the human brain can literally only handle three levels of recursion before it short circuits us. I once tried to come up with a fully recursive story structure for a novel. Got some great lines from it but wow, that was a rabbit hole and a half.)
My point had something to do about assumptions made without full context, which we're all prone to sometimes, but damn, at scale they're insulting on a visceral level.
Thanks for writing. (I don't think Bluesky fuccs yet. It may, but right now it's one silo for another, I'll stay here in my bushes.)
Please, keep writing.
Oh, wait, you had a note I meant to come back to. That was it.
I'm going to actually comment about this because we do come from two different worlds -- not the black and white obvious worlds people are too quick to throw around -- but more of a youth and age, generational thing. I'm not what you'd call techie as far as social media goes. I'm one of this world's old dinosaurs. I don't even have a cell phone. I've never been a big presence online until just recently. I got on Facebook to follow my daughter when her and her bestie went to Thailand after graduating from high school. They both had part time jobs and saved up for what was the trip of a life time. The only way of keeping in contact was through Facebook.
I was so new to the computer world then, I didn't understand what was possible. I didn't blog; I didn't even know what it was. I just wrote stories that were too long to send in to conventional publishers. I limited myself, and because of that, I never got on Instagram, or Tumbler, or Reddit; I didn't understand them and didn't see the purpose. I got on Twitter too late for it to matter. As for everything else, I didn't even know they existed. I stumbled across Substack, and having come here, well, simply don't plan on ever leaving. I have nothing to compare it to. I've read some complaints people have...the hate, the phobias, and just shake my head in disbelief. I don't care if they hate me, or don't read me, or think I'm an old stick in the mud fuck who is lost in time. That's not my issue, but theirs. If you don't like what you read, turn the page.
I believe you make what you will with what you have. I don't have a lot of anything when it comes to Social Media etiquette. All I know how to do is write. My own children don't even read me anymore. My daughter says I'm too Politically Incorrect because I'll write a story from a female point of view; or a gay person's outlook. She says I don't understand what cultural misappropriation is, and I tell her I didn't even know it was a thing. I wrote a story about a Black boxer, as seen through the eyes of his niece. It had nothing to do with colour, or culture. It was just a story.
I might not be everyone's cup of tea, but then again, I don't think anything I write is going to cause a cultural meltdown. It's not that I've seen too much, but I have seen a few things. I mean, I grew up watching the Vietnam War on TV and the Civil Rights demonstrations. A child of the 60's, I watched them land on the moon. Did I question it and think it was fake? Never even crossed my mind. I guess that makes me naive. But I like what I write and put it out without thinking I should be adding "trigger" warnings. I don't do that because I don't think anything I write is traumatizing to that degree. If I write about what I saw on TV as a child, how is it traumatizing?
So when I came to Substack, it was after having been on the one and only other platform I'd ever been on: Vocal.media, which was a bust because there was too much censorship. The fact you can write what you write here is a blessing as far as I'm concerned. The other site told me I was glorifying rape because I had a married couple in a story that were taking part in rôle playing sex games. Who needs that kind of shit? If I want to write a story about missionaries in Manchuria during the Japanese invasion, why can't I? Is that Cultural Misappropriation because I'm an old white guy writing about some time in history that no one reading it even understands in the first place? Substack offers me freedom, and that's something I'm not willing to give up.
I don't look at social media the same way others do, because I haven't been tainted by it. That might be my one saving grace as far as that goes. I don't read hate speech. I don't weigh in on the political ramifications and the contentious views others have. If I do say something about the situation down South across the border (I'm Canadian), I quite often hear from a Trumpster-diver who points out that whatever I say is untrue simply because it is fake news. I call him The Felon, and they get upset with me. But it's Substack and I can say what I want, right? I like to think...within reason. As far as I'm concerned, Substack is the answer to all our needs. I say, on my ABOUT page that it's all right if you don't like me. I also tell them if you subscribe to my PAID page and decide to leave, don't ask me for your money back because it doesn't work like that. I don't give refunds. The only reason is because I can't be bothered with that shit. That's why I like reading you. You don't take shit from anyone.
Always nice to take a break from my own head and a trip into yours. Social media is being used as a great way to promote shameless voyeurism and exploit our natural curiosity. Another attempt of capitalism to take our attention away from our own bodies and minds. I think we’ve spoken about this before, but how we utilise the tools of the digital age is separate from their value devoid of our interventions.
I’ve used social media as a great source of creative inspiration and also to numb and escape. Trick is to have a sense of personal responsibility, and as you’re already well aware, we haaate taking accountability for our own actions in this day and age 🥲
Ty for the brain food Inigo 🫶🏽