1/27/14

Explain Yourself, or Don't, Nobody Cares

Expostulatory blogging is kind of a dead thing. The overreaching narrative of the times is outrage and discord, with a healthy mix of disinterest and distraction thrown in. For good measure, sometimes there is added a aggrandized sense of injury or unopposed wrongs. In this environment blogging to do anything but maybe get a good line in is a waste of time – engaging the stories and constructively analyzing them is best left to 'the adults': paid journalists, high profile bloggers, and the generally execrable morons with weekly columns.

For anyone wanting to blog for anything but niche topics or absurdly obtuse generality (or 'comedy' options such as the way stale top 10/12/15/25 lists, or 'jokes') the field is intensely competitive. Aggregators have created a system in which maybe 10% of all internet users bother to go beyond the internet's collective front pages. Even linking seems quaint and mildly outdated. The only real blogging left is niche blogging about the outrages and abuses of modern society, or being political, or getting paid to blog to sell something.

It helps explain the rise of people who have absolutely zero self-awareness: people who never think past the snappy one-liners and one-dimensional politics of the internet. These kinds of people, even when well-intentioned, only serve to hurt their own causes. 'Misogyny' becomes a sort of mantra that progressive dudes bray mindlessly whenever simple OR complex issues regarding women emerge from the amoral fracas of the modern media environment. People on the fence see nothing but a faceless horde of shmucks wanting to prove their progressivism and decide, Hell, why not start trolling these point-seekers en masse? You can't blame them. Aggrieving the crowd is as righteous a battle for some as fighting for the oppressed is for others.

These sorts of things happen when one has a view of the world that fits in a Tweet, when one reads highly emotional blog posts big on outrage but skimping facts. To be fair, the jingoists often truly want to improve things, or fight wrongs – they fail instantly the second they forget the most important facts of the internet. The internet is full of people who can't see past their own biases, who never discovered their own perspectives, and for whom the internet is smorgasbord of easily digested identity and opinion. For them it's a feast of opinions to emulate, and they'll find all kinds of treasure in the cast-out refuse abandoned by realists.

The other problem is that most internet cliques are horribly paranoid and insular, and create these ghost-like perfect enemies which they fight with their lightning-sharp Tweets, brutal one-liners, mordant meme reposting, and hyper-philosophic blog posts, mainly preaching to their own kind, when the enemy doesn't bother reading Tumblr, and couldn't give a fuck about the internet in general. All the small shit reduces anyone's idea of the big picture because it's alarmist, idealist drek in the worst and least redemptive sense.

Arguably this trend will only worsen in the coming years. Younger generations face the challenge of becoming adult humans in the most facile and infantilizing environment yet, with few role models because generations of adults have been infantilized in much the same way. Eventually there will be nothing but sub-300 word opinions and the videos to back them up. Eventually all low-level philosophy will be summarized in YouTube clips of 14 minutes or less (posted by pretty, professional, and lively individuals), politicians will tweet their speeches, and the voting age will be lowered since everyone will be so dumb that the emotionally damned teenage voter will be as rightful a voter as the old lady on her smartphone, tweeting on a legacy 'first-gen' account. Not that politics today are well-off by any means, but you can almost see what might happen if the internet gets its snotty hands on general social consciousness.

It always comes back to the identity game. These days it is entirely premised on consumerism and outrage and fear and tribalism, and the fires are stoked by the obsessives in news media, whoever it is among the elite who gains the most from a distracted populace, and the partisan citizens who gripe about the things their oppressed, hard-working forbears would've scoffed. The burgeoning lack of meaningful identity will be a small, mostly overlooked factor because all identities will be ruled by their mantras, slogans, and celebrity sponsors. The internet will continue to be the main battleground, and the only victors will be the people who get the insane humor of the situation, safely beyond the sincere outrage that traps others in the cramped boxes and flash mobs of 'social movements' and 'awareness'. People found trying to exist outside of pre-constructed identities will likely be put to death.

As long as someone is around to laugh at the grand struggle of internet-battle, there is hope. As soon as those rather juvenile (and Juvenal) satirists abandon the fray, then it can safely be considered lost. It will be 'religious weirdo' against 'gay martyr', 'sexist' versus 'feminist-allied-30something man', and everyone will take it way too seriously and it will go on forever. Petty bickering, name calling, obstinacy, provocations. And the worst thing is, real issues in the world will continue to degrade with dwindling amount of non-internet people to prevent them, until the fatal spectacle of suffering in real life will accompany the Tumblr Marxists (or Facebook Anarchists) like a macabre duet of appearance vs. fact.

Do your part today, and stop taking the internet so goddamn seriously – if you really think you can end the oppression of women by the patriarchy by typing about it all day, you're as much an oppressor as the most paternalistic, whitest, oldest and most misogynist dude on the earth. You could in fact be that dude, pretending to be someone else on the internet, because concerned parents haven't yet managed to make being anonymous a felony – which everyone knows is the only way to be sure, the only way make the internet a safe place for everyone.

All of this could be prevented if the most outraged people attempted to explain themselves and their points, in simple non-alienating language, at length and without memes if necessary – and actually listened to alternative opinions instead of getting huffy and offended that someone doesn't see eye-to-eye with them. Right now the most political crowds on the internet are the least likely to do this, and as inspiring as their idealism is, it's no good for them or anyone else and far more likely to damage their causes. Look at Anonymous - they used to be a real force (like Lulzsec) but now are mostly enshrined in cultural memory as a large gang of internet literate, down-at-heels goofs who protest Scientology and basically anything they can assemble for – but you won't see crowds of them outside well-to-do Western countries.

What affronts me is the idea of a comfortable demagogue, of a luxury protestor, of a shut-in activist with no real experience or community, who somehow still thinks they're on the front lines. That idea is increasingly disgusting, for me, and I'm going to forget about it because I am too old to join the trolls and too young to be completely ignorant about it.

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