December 2024 Navel-Gazing

 Fifi Dosch and Robin Tran have inspired me with their Skin Suit podcast, and a lot of what Robin talks about re: personal growth has really been hitting hard with me lately. Seriously, if you haven’t listened, you should.

I’ve been talking to my therapist about how after The Great Unfriending of 2024, I’m honestly kind of going down the list of people that I could reach out to to add back on The Failbooks, and...I don’t want to. Not because I think they’re garbage people, but because sincerely, I don’t think I am actively enhancing that many peoples’ lives, or really can, at one time. We’ve turned viewing each others’ stuff into what I consider to be really passive spectatorship on social media, and that makes me despondent in a lot of ways. I realized this with the aftermath of That One Online Magicky Group a few of us were in. First of all, I’m not sure I was tangibly improving a lot of those peoples’ lives very much; I don’t think I always prioritize talking about social issues on that specific platform anymore terribly much (which I think is fine, cause, yknow safety). I have the privilege of the ability to go live my life in the 3D world quite a bit, so I try to do my best with that. But like there are people whom I haven’t added back on FB cause as much as I absolutely love ‘em IRL, they’d always wow react to my posts like I was too much for them. I don’t want to just be the equivalent of a car accident to a bunch of people.

In contrast to the necessity of early panny, my world seems to be transitioning to a smaller, narrower and more local view. I honestly don’t know when or where I’ll ever be able to travel even out of state again and that makes me sad and isn’t necessarily the life I wanted, but it could be a reality.

I also realized that I never spent time learning about the country that my family happened to land in. I spent lots of time learning about lots of different cultures, maybe borrowing or even appropriating from some, but I never dug in to learn about the “U”S. The main things I was told growing up were that Americans are undereducated and that the US has no culture. Lol. So I learned about the things that were relevant to my friends, and a little bit about the very whitewashed history here, and that was it. But also, like, how much am I obligated to learn about rural people in the Bible Belt? I mean that sincerely and with compassionate curiosity. They have nothing to do with me or my daily decisions, but maybe they do more than I can see. Personally I think one of the reasons Chappell Roan is currently so giant is because she is one of the first queer icons who didn’t focus on the coasts and is truly from and proud of being from Middle America but is also unabashedly LGBTQ and has also been pretty open about mental health issues.

Lately, I am middle America soccer mom in relationship to my friends succeeding. I used to be a lot more sour about that. And I also used to have more of a moralistic attitude that if I saw someone whom I thought demonstrated poor ethics in the past, like I’d try to call them out or shit on them. Now I really just want to focus on cheering on the people I resonate with and care about, and I have big plans to ignore the rest to the best of my ability. But now also I’m even less afraid of clowning and making fun of even remotely powerful people whom I think suck as humans, and somehow that has become more dangerous and possibly more offensive to people. It's the thing when I do it that actually seems to hit hard and I sometimes get laterally policed for. And that perplexes me. Maybe using humor to outsiders has something of a power play or bullying quality to it? Except I don’t really think “little guys” with a smaller amount of relative power, can truly be bullies.

I think we're going to have to get a lot more comfortable mocking and clowning authority, again, over the next four years or likely longer. If you are somehow attached to the image of a public figure so deeply, I think it's better to ask yourself why. Sure, they have human aspects, and some make a greater effort to at least balance out harm, than others. But if you are so attached to power and authority in that regard, it's good to reflect on why. It's also why I personally have never robustly been comfortable with mainstream leadership situations, unless it was self-managed. Power is too easily abused.

I don't need the concern trolls otherwise. I will be fine.

If I were a cis man with money, I'd be a "disruptor." But I'm not, so I'm just an occasional asshole.