Saturday 6/5/21
Viewer Warning: The following contains various truths that may be shocking and do not reflect the preferred modes of communication of these times. Though they may be jocular in parts, the truths still exist. These attitudes do not necessarily reflect the views of the parent company. But they also totally do.
It must be joyous to be a moron. I don't think morons know how great they have it. Then again, they're morons. I envy the moron a great deal. There is nothing to stop you from fame, riches, a life of ease, if you are a moron. You need not be kind. You can be horrible. Lazy. You can be a bigot, a narcissist, cruel, selfish, delusional, evil, racist, sexist, but so long as you are a moron, you will have support and pretend friendship and pretend affection from other morons. Is it bad that it's pretend? Nah. Everything is pretend now, just about. There's no sincerity. There's pandering and poses, and these forms of pretend currency are the new societal currency, and they'll do for people. Especially the moron. The moron can leave their generous-sized home any day and immediately upon hitting the street--or driving to their suburban Starbucks--they are among their people. They are among people like who they are. Do you know what I wouldn't give for that? Would I give my soul? Well, a principle in me--I'd let my body burn while I was conscious before violating my ethics and what I know is the divide between conscious right and conscious wrong--would preclude that, but I'd think about it. Morons gripe about other people, but other people are just like they are. I dream of a world where I left a nice home and out on the street there were my people. There was Shakespeare. There was Keats. There was Thoreau. There was Orson Welles. John Lennon rolled by. And we all measured ourselves against each other, and competed in our fields to the best of our abilities, may the best person win. How could you complain about that? And that's what the moron has, at the level of the moron. Why, that's utopia. Plus, you get things you don't deserve, that you don't work towards, that take no special skill or dedication. You're not singled out, you're not discriminated against, you have plenty of people to at least pretend-like you, no matter how much you suck. No one envies you, fears you, treats you as someone who is envied and feared. It's like a simple, dumb, pointless heaven on earth. What resistance does the moron meet? What problems are there? "Oh, I'm so alone, I'm so different." No you're not! Look at all of your brothers and sisters! They're everywhere.
Here is my dating profile. It produces messages from people saying I'm brilliant, I should try being a writer. Sometimes it produces hate mail and death threats from the exact same kind of person: pseudo-educated rich white woman who have the requisite social justice filters in their profile photos, have no actual education, no clue about anything, plenty of venom, and even more insecurity. Which is to say, the publishing type. They will have gone to some fancy prep school, then Yale. They are consumed with hate and stupidity. They will sometimes tell me they hope I get rectal cancer and my death is a slow and painful one. Because of this profile. Others tell me how scary I am. Others, how funny. Others--and again, it's the same type; someone who is somewhat chubby, insecure, boasts about how simple she is--will say it sounds like I am looking for some model girlfriend who saves starving children in Africa. Because I am looking for someone who does not communicate by saying, "UR SO FUNY LOL." Right. Because there is no difference. Others will pitch me on how I should do a TED Talk--they don't know what my career is, or anything like that, save what they can deduce on their own. I've had a dozen notes like that. But most will be terrified of my profile, which I think is pretty damn basic. I ask for some functional literacy, not to talk like an unintelligent child, some purpose, passion, curiosity, and I lay out what interests me, what I'm passionate about, giving a sense of who I am, which one also gives by how the express themselves, how I tick, as they say. And all anyone wants is a moron. People do their "OMG" and all of that idiocy, say "LIVE LAUGH LUV" and look for others who do the same.
You cannot understand how stupid this country is until you see how people write. Because in person, that's overshadowed by a smile or a laugh or whatever else covers up the seams of personal interaction at the level of words. But when it's just words? You will go six months before you see a single clause that is not a cliche. You will go years before you see a profile with most of the words spelled correctly. You will never, in years, encounter a single original thought or sentence. I am not exaggerating. This is far from the worst of it. In truth, it's hard for me to do justice in replicating what people write. I screenshot a lot of it. Because you'd have to see it, and I don't think some of the people I know would believe me, so I have this grim, depressing anthropological project. We, humans, are an absolutely idiotic species. I used to think, "well, a human is smarter than a crayfish, and all of the other animals," but I don't buy that anymore. I don't think because one species is smarter than the others species means that the species is not a species of incredibly stupid beings. And I think crayfish are better at crayfishing than humans are better at humaning. Certainly we can't compare to beavers. I think a beaver is far more capable of ingenuity and creativity than the people I see on these sites. And I know, someone wants to say, "But it's a dating site!" as if these are the dregs. I have learned that these sites are not the dregs. It's a pretty representative cross section of what's out there.
I know at this point that it's highly unlikely I would ever meet someone I'd care to exchange ten words with, let alone build a life with, a bond, a unique connection, by me going to them. It's just not going to work. Someone will have to know who I am, what I do, what I'm about, through my work, through these pages, through fame when it comes, and reach out. Saying, "I know this, I read this, I was so moved by all of this, I need to know you."
People can also look at what I do and have no clue what it is. I spoke to someone yesterday who seemed to believe I do these little arts pieces and point people in the direction of cool things they don't know about, like I'm this go-between or taste guru steering people to "real artists," and I'm not quite a journalist, but also this in-between thing. Because that person doesn't want to say, "Holy fuck, you're the mega-genius of geniuses," which is exactly what I am, and have proven. I mean, it's pretty well definitively proven now, yes? But you need an open mind. And you need to read these pages. And read the work. And follow along. You need to see what the weeks look like. What is created during every last one of them. And you need to open your mind. You need to accept that here is a human completely unlike any human there has ever been or will be. And that can be a thing. That is a thing right now in this world. You can read along, and learn, and see how that human is facing a level of discrimination that is beyond the pale maybe even in terms of what we can comprehend. But look. It's all real. The work is real. These pages are real. The mind on display is real. It's proven, all of it, again and again and again. But many people will enter every situation in life with what I think of as these green glasses. With those glasses they can only see the color green. Any other color in front of their face, they can't see it. The glasses are built from their experiences. Their own limitations. The limited company they keep. The limited amount of ideas they've encountered. The limited amount of thinking they've done. Limited amount of reading they've done. The limited amount of striving they've had. The limited curiosity. The green of the glasses is reinforced in every life situation for them. Every relationship. They can read something right in front of their faces, and it could be the clearest language ever used, in the history of humankind, but if it's not in green, they're not going to understand it. They won't even see it. They'll see something else. And they will expect every thing they see to be one single thing. For instance, were you to have something that starts out very funny, and then at some point it becomes very sad, tragic, moving, people won't often understand that at all. Because they've seen the green of "oh this is funny." The new color will be lost on them. That's how life is. Green becomes blue in a blink. This is why in publishing you only see rote monochromatic works with none of the richness of life. Something has to be "all one thing." And barely a thing at that, and certainly a thing with no purpose. And that one thing is very topical, because these people don't deal in truth, depth of experience. One-level surface. A one-level surface. T.C. Boyle. It's just basic, rote crap that should insult you, that is garbage. Spelled out garbage. Nothing built into it, no levels. No fucking life. There is no fucking life in anything in publishing right now. The green glasses. So you could put a stack of the best art ever made, the best things a human has ever done, in front of these people, and they have the green glasses on. There's a lot more happening too, with the cronyism, and the racism, and the sexism, and the classism, and the envy, and the pettiness, and the cheap power trips, all of the subculture of broken freaks stuff. But you can't overstate those green fucking glasses. And here's a big problem: Hardly anyone can read and comprehend anything. What they can do, and need to do, is simply recognize words as words like their own that they would use. That's how the same Gifs and Memes you see a million times over have replaced language. That's why language is itself not a series of Gifs and Memes: "Checks Notes." "At the end of the day." "Not the hill to die on." "GOAT." Because people can only recognize that which they already know now. And what they use. That's also why there is no growth. No individuality. No one who ever seems different than hordes and hordes and hordes and hordes of people. That's why there's no originality, no critical thinking. This isn't complex. Don't confuse something being complex with something that just about no one else sees, or, if you prefer, expresses. But it's exactly what's fucking happening.
So, as a curio, here's that profile. Seems pretty "needs be as needs must" to me. But it's more like you've written a polemic of fiery death, or War and Peace, or auditioned for a TED talk, or a career as a writer, or shown how crack-addled you were like you believed you could walk down to the harbor, as I am about to do right now, and find a fucking mermaid there waiting for you who'd grant all your wishes and maybe also teach you how to breathe underwater because that would be fucking cool. But for me, I couldn't ask less of a person I'd consider doing anything with. This isn't amazing person stuff. This is like, "Don't completely fucking suck" stuff. This isn't "you better be brilliant, one of the smartest thinkers of your century." Do I even need to add the number of people who see what is below and write me, "I Breathe oxygen LOL"? I feel like I don't even have to add that. And they always capitalize random words, so I was being rather faithful there in the re-creation.
Story
Looking for someone well-rounded who puts an emphasis on growth. Better still with a dash of rascality. I'm in the arts, walk 3000 miles a year, and zip around me between the woods, the rink, the museum, the jazz bar, the symphony, but would love to find someone passionate, articulate, bounding with energy--a little salacity wouldn’t hurt either--to share that with.
I have a massive respect for open minds, energy, individuality. Dubious about this app after various experiences on others. Hoping to be surprised. It only takes one, as Orson Welles said. Where you are matters far less to me than who you are. True connection makes everything else bridgeable.
I should amend this already. My interest is in someone who communicates readily and well. And that’s in any capacity, be it someone I might spend my life with, a new friend, or even adventures in debauchery. If you have nothing to say, it just won’t work here, though it will at some point with someone else who also has nothing to say, that being the nature of these things.
Perfect Match
Stunning—though sadly predictable—how people turn this section into a screed/projection-fest about how perfection doesn’t exist. The prompt is simply to have one state some qualities they value, which then leads everyone to drool out cliches about “chill” and “laid back.” I’m not interested in you if you use these cliches. Nor if you communicate in acronyms.
I crave passion, purpose, excitement, narrative, connection, and all forms of exploration—emotional, intellectual, sexual, physical. I’m not interested in passivity, sameness, tedium, nor acronyms or people who don’t know what that word means, or anyone with their beyond lazy “How are you?” inquiries or declarations of how they love to laugh. How can you not realize how insipid that makes you sound? I like to be happy. I like to orgasm. Yes. Obviously. I realize this frightens insecure people who live—rather, exist—on autopilot parroting inanities, but I’m not looking for you, unless, I don’t know, we were going to have some twisted, maxed-out-carnality tryst, which has a time and place. Give me substance, otherwise.
Your age matters exponentially less to me than who you are.
Harmless rhetorical question: Can any of you create a profile sans the words “laid back?” At this point I’m expecting people to begin adding, “I breathe oxygen.”
And blank profile people: Do you really fail to realize that you’re essentially saying, “Judge me by how I look, and nothing more”? Like, hooray for objectification.
Ideal Date
Very few people, I’ve learned, have any actual interest in connecting, on any level. Most wish to pop out of their cave, collecting a few compliments that are usually insincere and platitudinous, and then retreat back into the darkness, isolation, and, often enough, self-medication, while lying about nonsense like how they’re living their best life.
But, first date! People speak of chemistry. I’ll know if it’s there—or has a chance of being there—before we meet. Because who you are—if you are someone for me—will radiate outward in everything you do and say, and how you say it. But I like to get a coffee and take a nice long walk, stop on a bench in a park, look at the ducks and sparrows, the swirl of humanity that’s all about, and talk. Actually talk and actually listen.
And things can go anywhere from there—stuff tends to move quickly in my world when something is right—or that will just be that. At least one gets some miles in. Fitness and all. A bit like the Thoreau approach to dating. And reading all of these profiles, I know what huge Thoreau buffs so many of you are. Kidding of course. This is a miasma of simplicity to the point that you can’t help but wonder about our general devolution. But one of you will prove the exception. Or that’s my fleeting hope, anyway.
Distance means nothing to me at first because I’m looking for a rare person.
Lastly: For all of you with your cliches about drama—life is inherently dramatic if you actually live it. Try that.
