Is it my turn to talk yet?

Thursday 11/20/25

It's impossible to underestimate how much people now want to hear themselves talk, to go and go and go as long as they can manage to go before someone else stops them or walks away, like they are some expert as they say the most basic, mundane things.

They always have time for this. If they can talk straight for fifteen minutes in such a fashion, they will. By "talk," I also mean online commentary. The idea that we are so busy is one of the great lies of our age. We've never been less busy, because we have no standards for ourselves and nothing occupies our minds.

We do the bare minimum in every instance in our lives, and we extend the time it takes to do the bare minimum in order to fill up the hours of the day before we go to sleep again, for what we want to be as long a period of time as possible. It's as though no one has a chance to talk anywhere else in their lives, to feel like they're being seen or heard. Part of that is because they are not worth being seen or heard on account of some interesting quotient, or a quotient of what they have to offer with their words.

Most people's words offer nothing. They are indistinguishable for most everyone else's words. They are all surface, comprised of the same handful of words and phrases, the same reductive leitmotifs of language. Parrot babble. And like the parrot, people say their words without any consideration or understanding typically of their meaning. They are just the sounds that people know, or think they know, to make.

I'll see someone go on Reddit and ask the most brainless question, which they aren't, obviously, seeking an answer to, because the question is so reductive that before asking anyone that question--instead of asking anyone that question--they'd search on Google.

In other words, you wouldn't even raise this question internally if you hadn't looked into the answer somewhat. You wouldn't go into a Beatles subreddit--where we can see that hardly anyone who claims to love the Beatles knows the most basic things about the Beatles (which didn't used to be the case, but more on that in a separate upcoming Beatles entry)--and see a post from someone asking how to spell the band's name.

Likewise, if you wanted to know where to start listening to the Grateful Dead, you wouldn't go to a Grateful Dead subreddit to ask that question. It's just a broken, lonely person who wants attention, to fill the void within, as though this would do it. And anyone who sees this question should know it's not sincere or necessary.

If the person wanted some information on that score, this isn't how to get it. It's not how someone would get it, were they sincere. Google is going to give them what they need with their question. Just by knowing the name Grateful Dead, they're basically going to have the answer to this question allowing that they've seen anything about the Dead. And if they haven't and they know the name? Then it's like they don't actually want to know anyway, so why are they asking these people?

What are people going to do? They're not even going to answer the question in good faith, most of them. They're going to compete for attention with each other. Recommend some idiosyncratic choice that they think no one else would say because, again, attention.

People want attention. That's mostly it. Attention and credit, and if they don't deserve the latter for the thing they're seeking it from/about, it doesn't matter. Of course it doesn't. They don't even think in terms of merit. Everything is about a bottom line of attention and credit.

But my oh my, when these people get that question? People who'll tell you how busy they are? Suddenly, they have all of the time in the world. Funny how that works. They go off, and off, and off, and off, and off. My turn to shine, baby!!!!! The floor is mine!!!!! All mine!!!!!! Here I go!!!!!!!

It's amazing to me. Like a person who's been stared being given as much food as they like. Or someone who has never talked and has been saving it up for the whole of their life and now they get official clearance.

This is part of the reason why no one listens to anyone. They hear someone else making sounds, but all they're thinking about is what they're going to say and when will it be their turn. And once it is, they want to hold that spot on the floor for as long as they can.

People aren't responding to someone else's words. They see other people as traffic lights. The light is red. It's not their turn to go off. The light is green, and here we fucking go, it's me time!!!!! Then the light goes red again, and it's like, "Fuck, no."

It's like being boxed in a corner at a party of humans in drip form. That individual wants to keep you from escaping, as they stroke themselves for themselves. Getting off on the idea that you're watching, and trying to delude themselves that you're super into it.

As we become stupider, it's harder for us to think up anything in the moment. We use a lot of pre-made, canned material. As someone else attempts to communicate with us, we're working on our opening sentence when it's our turn to talk, and then where we'll go from there. We're using that person.

The same way that some horny idiot guy uses a woman's body. He doesn't care if she's into it if she's there and he can do it. He'll tell himself whatever, he'll tell his buddy she was so turned on he made her squirt clear across the room, but for him, it's him, him, him. His needs. His wants. But it's better if he doesn't have to tend to them alone.

And that suggests all of these other things, which he can stretch. In this physical example, that he's good looking, irresistible, charming, compelling, what have you. In the conversational example, that the person is fascinating, articulate, insightful, edgy, witty, well read, etc.

Meanwhile, that other person--or people--are doing their version of what this first person is doing. And it's all happening simultaneously. Again: Babble, babble, babble. There's no real communication, and certainly no real connection.

Add in that no one really knows anything, isn't articulate, hasn't anything of substance to say, and you have echoes bouncing off of echoes, with human beings not so much human beings as echoes of human beings all waiting for their turn to try and garner attention and credit for the sake of attention and credit, sans any merit--or any point in and of itself--actuating the attention and credit, or have any relationship--any connection--with it at all.

So is it any wonder then, that he who is the loudest, the rudest, the most selfish, is he who goes "far" in our culture? The person without decorum, decency, compassion? The person who doesn't understand the value of listening? The person who doesn't actually want to help anyone but himself? The person who really has nothing of importance to say or contribute, and tries to overcome that with volume and by commandeering the floor and is willing to kick anyone in the teeth that he needs to in order to do so?