Care

Sunday 12/12/21

Care is a lost commodity. This will sound mean-spirited, but I don't mean it that way. I think it's an inevitable question a person of care--any degree of care--asks themselves when they stare into the hell-pit of an online dating site, which is also really no different than what one encounters out in the world, I have found.

I ask myself if people are trying to be as ugly as possible. That sounds cruel, I know. Not my intention. It's a query that honestly comes to me and I can't see how it couldn't. I don't believe it reflects some inner nastiness. One asks one's self if some people--and it's so many--ever take any physical exercise or stop eating. Or if to look as they do they must essentially eat all day and never go outside. Then they put their face right up against the camera. They'll have six photos like that. You can jump back in your chair and even yelp. The screen will be 98% head. I have let out little screams of "what the fuck" and yelped when such an image pops up if I'm not on my guard. Did you just give up and, having given up, decided to wreck yourself entirely?

I know that people are not trying to be smart. They have no real interest in learning anything. But I don't know that they're trying to be stupid. I think they are stupid, and they don't do anything about it. Stupidity builds stupidity. The roll down the hill is unchecked, gathering in speed. You'll see these profiles that are less than ten words long. You've paid the money. It comes out of your pocket. And this is your effort? What's the thinking behind that? You're trash that sucks, and you're fine with trash that sucks? And lots of people are trash that sucks, so, eh, that's good enough.

What would it cost you, time-wise, or effort-wise, to say two clear things? Not more time or effort, and you might feel like less of a revolting, gag-inducing moron if you simply did it, and showed some care. A lot of times what you'll see--and it's all people will say about themselves, which says everything about them--is whether they are vaccinated or not, or if they are a democrat or republican. (Lots of super smart women writing "If you got the clot shot u can fuck off lol.") Imagine that being the first thing you want someone to know about you, and the only thing? It's that thing more than any other thing that says who you are, in your mind.

I find myself so often now asking another question: Why be alive? Seriously? What are you doing? Why even live? What is the point? You may have kids, and you're messing them up to be future trash, dooming any chances they have because they're around you for all of those formative years. You were born and it's like, whatever, I'm here, I'll wait until I die, and do nothing in the meanwhile. You're just waiting to die because someone had an orgasm in someone else and you happened to come out? I don't think I'm a human, in many ways. I don't believe I'm the same species as anyone in this world. I'm just so different from everyone I've ever known. Whatever they are, I'm not. No matter who they are. And in these profiles you'll see random words capitalized. Why are you doing that? Because it auto-filled? Fix it. You look like you're borderline illiterate. That's what you want? Why? Or it never entered your head? An earthworm is smarter, then. No one knows how to use a comma, but it's not just that. They'll put a comma five spaces after one word, three spaces after another. It looks like I typed it out with my dick. Every single profile, just about. And I'll tell you this: 90% of these women (I assume it's the same for the men, though I think they're less likely to use this word, but I don't see those profiles) believe that the word "liar" is spelled with an "e."

Care. You can't take the care to get that right? You're offering so little as it is. You can't just make something that someone can actually read? So there's no baseline at all? Why leave it that way? You paid $80 or whatever for the three month subscription. And having paid that, this is all you're going to do? Why bother? So that you'll meet trash? Why do you want trash? Why do you want to be trash? You can take no care whatsoever?

This is just how people are. They won't take care with anything, no matter how simple it is. How easy it is. I remember when I was a kid watching this program, and someone said studies had been done--which was probably bullshit, but still, it stuck with me--saying that if criminals tried as hard to go straight as they did at being criminals, they'd be these captains of industry, etc. Not that you can forecast something like that, but the gist was in trying to cut corners, they actually worked harder at that than other people do at not cutting those same corners. Being lawful, I mean.

What would it take to just make your mindless thirteen words at least not look like you're a monkey at the zoo who has had a cell phone fall into its cage? And it's everybody. Some rube who lives in a creek, and some wine-loving suburban divorcee with a grad school degree. Straight up trash. You'd think taking any care at all, having any pride, any common sense, was like mainlining cancer and scheduling seventeen straight hours of torture for later in the day.