Functions of Extreme Worry and Anxiety in Modern Society

These days most anybody is or knows someone who is very on edge, suffers from Professionally Identified Anxiety Disorder, or suffers from bouts of Extreme Worry (a disorder which includes subsets like '90's style extreme' and 'extremely incapacitating'). I see this more and more often. While I am fortunate enough to simply be extremely paralyzed by it, I realize looking around in my life that plenty of people seem to function nominally well under such pressures. A minority of acquaintances have more serious issues and the effects aren't always immediately apparent, but when I stop and think about it I can see hints of avoidant behavior and other quirks. I used to always write them off as high-strung but I've come to a number of realizations in the past year especially.

I mean I've gone long stretches without worrying too much, or with only minor worries blown out of proportion. Every now and then something relatively important will fill me with a sense of dread that cannot be banished. I refer to those most often as moments of clarity. I had a few such moments when I lost the ability to write effectively for this blog, and killed it, and knew that I blew it, and didn't have the energy or drive to replace it with a better one. I've had such moments about about personal relationships, and they've have kept me from the blessed realm of sleep. I regularly get the sensation of growing dread when I think of my life. I'm fairly certain I'm not the only one, and I've seen people with much less fucked-up lives than mine worry outrageously.

I've seen lots of unhappy faces on the streets. I assume most of them are facing some kind of anxiety. I can't blame them. There seem to be about a million things to worry about. There are always hundreds of things going on. You're missing out. You're probably sick with something. There are new illnesses every day. The planet is not dying. The world is under attack by fanatics who think the planet is dying and want to ruin your standard of living because they're hippies. People are out to get you. Lies and murder rule the streets, maybe even the world. You're going to lose your job. You're unemployed already and nobody will ever hire you. You'll never be in love again. The love you're in is falling apart. You're not in love, of course, you're far too rational for that. You're over-thinking things. You're not living your dream. Someone somewhere is stealing your dreams from you. You're insufficient for your dreams. Your dreams are killing you.

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.

Thanks Internet: Wierd Groups You Fixate On

They were somehow innocent, immune to shame, and their positivity was as naive as it was indestructible. The world was laughing at them. I was a jaded person, I had wasted my innocence, and the part of my life where I would see them as acceptable was over. In other ways, perhaps, but for me there would be no great passion in a harmless, consumer-oriented fandom. If I had ever been close, it had been just before the Star Wars reboot, but that fizzled out for me. So I considered the modern scene amusing at first, and then detestable, and then settled into an indifferent apathy. It was the hands-in-pockets crowd and their best friends from the internet, how could it ever pay off?

The whole internet was like a moth to flame regarding these people: they were like furries and straight-edge kids combined, not such a 'thing' yet that people over 35 had any idea about their existence. Hot property. It was a movement for people who didn't want to grow up. They had managed to get a lot of attention from the indulgent denizens of the internet, who loved to mock and worry about them. It was a movement beyond mockery, in many ways, because it was earnest (if twisted in 50%+ of cases) and simple. It was a worst case scenario for New Sincerity, which is where the blame squarely lay. Some participants were actual children, not just mentally child-like; it was bizarre, and impossible not to get bad vibes from. It was cringe-worthy.

In the course of their mockery I was introduced and re-introduced to the movement. The base users of the internet were enthralled, I think, with the possibility of a group more pathetic than themselves. It was hilarity potentiated by an odd sense of pathos. Lots of good laughs were had at the expense of these stupidly earnest, mentally-ill, immature individuals, but also good money was being made on them. Not that I was a capitalist, and if anything it was their collective identity as consumers that made them beneath scorn. They were, in a word, jokes. Unnervingly awkward, questionable jokes.

Everyone wanted identity and belonging, though. That was the less funny part. The existence of this group was evidence of pathological issues in modern society. It was a symptom of a sick world. Even so, they were having fun, believed in something or everything, and they cared – all of which was drily amusing of course. They were not the ones engaging and propagating the sick society which was eating away human potential and leaving us with manic-depressives, borderlines, and headcases of all sorts. They were harmless eccentrics, 'nice guys', outcasts, and all truly bizarre. To me it was borderline unacceptable, but I didn't want to throw stones and laugh spitefully: that's too close to caring.

Some of them were undoubtedly sick. There was no other explanation. It was bizarre: a combination of tweens, teenagers, twenty-somethings, all the way up to the usual extreme cases: sad and lonely men in their forties and fifties. Not that they were exceptional among modern movements and identity groups, or even particularly embarrassing in that field. The internet was full enough of shit to ruin anyone's mind, victims were plentiful. Their position was defensible in that way and many others, even though it was tone-deaf and ignorant and, essentially, very creepy in a way which does not misuse the word.

They preached fun, acceptance, peace, caring. They were clad in various baggy ill-fitting garments, liked gaudy colours, and especially products which broadcast their love of the entertainment product which they consumed in togetherness. They could be any group of youth, really. I suppose I hated them most for their consumerism, because their cry for identity was not particularly remarkable, nor their lack of critical perspective. In the modern era of disposable society vs. unbending self-righteous fundamentalism there wasn't a single place to stand. It made one nihilistic, which made funny groups attractive to mockers and adherents alike. The rise of the dubstep generation. Heh.

It was all insane. It was best to just laugh and not question any of it, but not questioning it seemed wrong. Same as it ever was, too. Maybe they were historically unique for record levels of meek nebbishism, little else. They would grow, was the problem, and create and kinds of morbid counter-mentalities. Shit like that was going to ruin everything, contribute to ongoing lost generations, influence the future... which made it less funny to watch a mawkish convention mentality spastically going its way in an oblivious, unforgiving world. Less funny; deeper humor, and darker. So if you want to know if there are worse things: of course there are worse things – the rest are all warning signs.

Twitter Strategies for Journalists: An Existential User Comment Rodeo

CJR posted a great bit about getting Twitter followers that almost makes me want to dust off my twitter account and make it live. I used to try to follow twitter. Now I mostly blog lackadaisically in order to tell myself I am doing productive writing. I see people tweeting and they repost their tweets to facebook and I think, "Goddamn that's insane." but on the other hand they sometimes get 100 or so impressions. Which is generally still pretty insane. They are engaging with the imaginary yet somehow relevant aimless messaging system. Some people who have encouraged me to join actually have audiences and purposes for tweeting – which, in a fast-moving, egalitarian telegraph machine, are the most difficult things to achieve and understand.

I might be biased. I see every twitter account as the equivalent of a Minecraft video on YouTube. It does not inspire me. I see tweets in various news media and have to restrain myself. Jimmy Fallon uses twitter in cool ways, though, and the service has been used for all kinds of mischief so it can't be all bad. But on the other hand, the volume of tweets alone is a barrier to entry. The slavishness of hashtag culture, the ruthless advertising. Twitter has as much of a mercenary heart as facebook. But who cares what I have to think or say. I still have to think or say it if it's not broadcast.

Still, I do my best, despite having posted legitimately cringe-worthy abominations, to say interesting or informative things in a neutral language which does not rest on lazy assumptions, fallacies, or promote negative patterns of thinking. I try to do my best, on the internet or at least this blog, at least sometimes but it can be so hopeless and tiring. The internet, used anonymously, has a tendency to communicate the worst aspects of individuals and their cultures. There are heartbreaking stories about these kinds of problems and what their fallout is. Unless you're not paying attention, you have probably heard one.

Probably you came here to add followers to facebook and increase your clout score or whatever. I already linked to it at the top.  The specifics of the linked article are great and all, but there was one user comment that was essentially critical of Twitter, but also probably uncomfortably accurate:

The flood of user-generated everything, from literature to the internet to economics, is an incredible problem that is both happening and waiting-to-happen. An unthinkable volume of information is kind of awesome, but also kind of terrifying. This brave new world is, after all, the kind of world that spawned the hollow 'expert culture' – an institution that is essentially quackery in all but name. The fact that the article shows at least one case of people forced to contribute to twitter against their will is equal parts hilarious and sad.

User Comment Rodeo: Canada's C-10 Bill

I miss Jack Layton more than ever lately. Politics have not changed at all from the bland regressive mess they've been, the Canadian populace is still a comatose rabble with vaguely confusedly libertarian/socially-fiscally-liberal/rationally-ideologically-conservative opinions that lead nowhere. The world's premiere first world country, hamstrung with voter apathy, political landslides, corruption, fraud, authoritarianism, paternalism, and every kind of stupid fucked up downright dangerous problem.

Oh but on paper, according to the UN, and if you're from anywhere else it looks like a fantastic country. The countryside is clean (hah!), there is hope and work around each corner (for therapists, social workers, and morticians), the economy is booming (incentives and make-work, stat! and don't worry about any funding cuts), and the political system is sound, popular, and fair. Voters are engaged, and everyone has a place at the table, and access to whatever information they need.

Phone lines are buzzing. There are even allegations that America has been making a rather large number of methodical calls to certain individuals, etc... But what's hearsay, anyway?

And recently the country was certified as the safest place on earth, filled with the happiest, most drug-free, productive and intelligent human beings in history. From the happy, well-integrated ethnic stereotypes; to the happy, well-integrated aboriginal stereotypes; to the happy, well-integrated generic stereotypes, it's a country on the rise. You might as well refer to it as the planet's 'chilly, under-appreciated paradise'.

It's also rife with potential for political skullduggery. You should see the sort of discourse an omnibus crime bill generates. Therefore I am reviving the User Comment Rodeo from hibernation, and the effects of the omnibus crime bill will be on display. Today it seems to suggest that posting the best possible user comment first would be advantageous, so here it is, the winner, the king:

Moderates are really the best, especially those with sharp analytical skill. The rating has been downvoted by, probably, the massive crowd of idiots that generally constitute the internet. Marijuana, or pot, enthusiasts also clicked the old thumbs-down button. The 15 votes in favor could have come from any side of the argument. It's truly the crown jewel of the show: gateway drug analysis, great line spacing, impeccable writing... and the youth-stoner shout out at the end is masterful. This seemed, to me, like the rationale of... a prescription drug fiend. Or an abstinence fiend, or any kind of fiend. But at least a fiend, and somewhat independent-minded, and not an ideologue.

Slurring Verses

One early morning I was looking up advice about noise pollution. From insulation, all the way to polite confrontation, went the advice I found. I found a page that I should've bookmarked which talked about gift baskets. Elsewhere I was advised to defuse the situation with some baked breads – which is disturbing if you have a perverse mind and even if you accept the words literally. Try solving anything beyond hunger with a home baked bread.

Baskets of gifts are pretty ostentatious, insulation is expense, and confrontation is the Achilles' heel of the misanthrope. I always think I'll figure out some devious cure to problems I may just be exaggerating. At least, that's what I think I do, but the truth is probably a bit more convoluted. In any case, I went wrong by seeking advice on the internet, and that's really the extent of the issue.

I am definitely not against the internet, but I can't imagine all the things it might've been if it wasn't immediately harnessed by nonsense. Things the inter-ignorant don't know much about, such as trolls, are actually becoming more common. Drastically more common, as a quick look at any forum or comment section (itself the curse of our stunningly obsessive and pathological habits) will prove.

But 'troll' has been a metaphor always, and not a bad one at that. I guess at one point a person could point at a nonsensically aggravating individual and say,

"Fuck off, you churl!"

 I write that academically, of course. I guess what I'm looking for, accurately, is advice for living with the daily trolls of the universe. I need a solution that works for any troll situation.

At the same time I have myself been guilty of being a troll in the past, and part of me looks at troll-problems as a function of karma - perhaps the ultimate expression of foot in one's mouth. If that's the case I need to be able to accurately measure karma, or else I'll never know when I should become its agent. Agent of Karma (good movie title +/- concept).

And noise pollution is itself kind of an interesting concept. Even good enough that someone could make a movie about it, but I suppose it is still rather misunderstood. It really exists, though, and you have to believe this. The best example is careless placement of wind chimes; maybe purposeful muffler alteration.

Wind chimes are not offensive in theory, but in practice, or windy areas, can get ridiculous. This is because they do not rest, and instead go on chiming at all hours. And chimes generate sharp noise, so the sound can travel a fair distance. Furthermore, if someone stands at a fair distance, and wishes to hear the night's elemental silence-music, they are forced to include the ostentatious music of chimes chiming in the breeze.

Muffler alteration for the sake of, say, noise, is probably the ultimate type of pollution. I'd say it borders on noise crime. I even know of a direct example of the power of even a small combustion engine.

Anyhow, trolls see noise-pollution as favorable because it allows them to broadcast themselves and trouble others. It's like interpersonal agitprop, or perhaps sonic graffiti, because it is deliberately noticeable and serves no noticeable purpose. I see it as a form of offensive excess, often used indiscriminately – why else the echo-mufflers of the world, the deafening car audio, F-1 racing?

It's always some more of that old noise pollution. Thunder isn't noise pollution because it is part of an inescapable process.  Television and radio are (or can be, if you're conservative), because few people speak judiciously. Marching in sufficient force is kind of a noise pollution. And I almost forgot about noise cannons and sonic weaponry, which is paralleled only by microwave weaponry in terms of odiousness.

That's all just energy pollution but with a target. And, ultimately, aren't bullets pollution as well? Couldn't we as a planet come to some sort of awakened conversation about pollution? We are submerged in pollution, and the green team has monopolized it in the name of ecological commonsense, but other very real types of pollution exist.

Perhaps, reader, and I am sorry to bring this up, but perhaps you are ignorant and you laugh. You think to yourself, "That untypical gentleman is throwing words together about things that he either invented or read about in an anonymous internet article written by, no doubt, a bunch of kooks and quacks." Maybe you don't even know or care about the multitude of disasters that have always existed, even that special class of disaster which is anthropogenic. If you do not care, you may be a troll.

Pollution, depending on how one defines it, is always the source of grief and stress in organisms.  Therefore it can be communicated as a bad thing, a negative. So when one repays pollution with more pollution, one has two bad things, and is sure to come to grief by both of them. If one merely accepts the initial pollution, one still deals with grief, and if one ignores it, the pollution still goes on existing. One can try to portray pollution as a good thing, and maybe even believe the delusion, but that does not change what exists.

So there's a thing called Troll Pollution, and, to the average person, it's more of a big deal than climate change or the pole shift or the greasy atmosphere. I've been thinking about it, and suppose it's simply just a negative aura that self-perpetuates, and if you look closely at a lot of the human world and its alleged history, you can apply the concept of troll pollution to explain such diverse topics as:

• Fights ending in death
• Theft
• Injustice – casual or severe
• Contention
• Fraud
• Noise pollution
• Jackasses
• Discrimination, hate crimes
• Psychologically damaging circumstances
• Fights ending in serious and/or life-threatening injury
• Consumerism, Postmodernism
• Authoritarianism, Feudalism, Anarchism
• 'Anarchism'
• Statism, Legalism, Recidivism, elitism
• Depression, Indigestion, Castration, Defenestration
• Charlatanism
• Entropy
• This blog post.