Found text: Regarding Roxane Gay's societal grift

Saturday 3/23/24

Encountered the following from someone online regarding Roxane Gay and her ilk. By ilk, I do not mean the morbidly obese. I mean the societal grifter of checked boxes, outward appearance, and the selling of manufactured victimization in all of their lies and hypocrisy. The person of no ability, no integrity, who selfishly, dishonestly, soullessly exploits a broken society--and wants to make it more broken still--that positions itself to be feasted upon by such an "individual."

Okay, as a communications professional, let me try my hand at the infuriating style of this shit essay-ing:

Western Body Positivity Movement Made Me Realize That We Need Another Great Flood

There's this disconnection and unreality I feel when I venture into the not-so-green pastures of the internet. Nothing seems quite right, as if the world distorts through the digital, Matrix-like lens of our obsession with self. The sticky film of Instagram posts and insatiable hunger for acknowledgment gnaws at our collective unconcious. A black mirror indeed, and the longer we look into it, the more it stares back at us with emptiness. A void of purpose.

Remember when living was about creating? Remember when in order to be noticed and admired, a person - a woman, and let's leave this re-branded version of feminism aside - needed to actually boast a tangible achievement? Nope, not even Pepperidge Farm remembers, but I do. There was this fantastical and utopian era when self-worth hinged on objective markers. How well your career or family life went. How actualized you were in your chosen field of arts or sciences or craftsmanship.

But the era exhibitionism turned all of it on its head. Everyone got a chance to step into the limelight, but due to the fact that not everyone deserves it (while our politically correct society insists that each and every IS a special snowflake), we dropped the standard for 15 minutes of fame lower than the Mariana Trench.

The Body Positivity movement is just another metastatic cyst on the cancerous growth that is the Millenial Validation Syndrome. We're all infected by a mass-hysteric narcissistic dysfunction as millions yell into the writhing digital abyss that they need and deserve to be loved - and instead are met with the echoing, deafening roar of the same sentiment from their peers. Everyone demands it, but no-one is ready to dish the love out. That would require some movement, but we're ready only for the bowel ones.

If you are totally unremarkable, just one of the billion of the two-legged beasts that roam the planet, a dim spark of existence ready to be snuffed out without leaving its lasting mark on history - well, at least you have your body. At least you have your fat. At least you have shit to complain about and belittle others on the inter webs.

And, of course, at least you have a defining characteristic on which you can build a marketable, profitable and communicable victim identity.

Back in the nascent days of the Internet, it was called attention whoring. Now it's called "making a stand" and "being brave", swelling not only with nutritious whole foods, but a much more satisfying self-righteousness.

But what does it tell about us as a society, when "being brave" is accepted as growing a huge gut and going to Walmart in a tiny tutu dress? What does it tell about us when we're ready to dish out Purple Hearts for writing blogs about how "it's okay to eat cake every day?"

It tells us that we're a navel-gazing, gluttonous Ouroboros. Fuck breaking through scientific barriers. Fuck going to the stars. Fuck digging into the pain of our lonely existence and ripping out time-defying pieces of art. No, we're going to devout our time and effort to "praising our bodies", "admiring our tummies", "reveling in every fat roll and imperfection", "loving our stretch-marks" and "nourishing our glorious selves". Self-perfection is racist, didn't you know. Let's embrace degradation and total lack of even ever trying.

Because being someone would require a leveled judgement, and we're all against judgement, especially of our own selves. Judgement is too patriarchial, too unsafe and evocative of rules and control and discipline. The modern sins, the shackles of hate and work-earned privilege. And the virtues?

Self-love, self-appreciation, self-care, self-pride, self-nurture, self-forgiveness, self-permission, self-freedom - the holy Self-Fold Path to a nirvana of total irresponsibility.

The atomization of man reached a critical mass (and I'm not even alluding to the obesity epidemic). No, no. It's just that we don't want and don't wish for anything outside of our tantamount personal experience. Nope, we zeroed on ourselves so much that our perception of the world's enormity shrunk to the end of a pin where the proverbial angels would dance.