Let me show you how the world works

Tuesday 9/29/26

This is something I posted on Threads:

I had a wonderful English teacher in tenth grade. An act of a Shakespeare play would be assigned as reading homework. If a student said something nuts during the discussion in class—could be they invented a character who wasn’t in the thing—this teacher would go, “Whoa! Someone’s copy had some extra pages!” It was funny. You felt like you could say anything, and that really opened people up. The lesson has always stuck with me.

300 people saw that. Not a lot, obviously. But of those 300 people, one of them hit the like button for it. That person was a teacher. In these instances, people are often in effect "liking" themselves. That's how this works. If that same person wasn't a teacher, they wouldn't have hit the like button. They could be the same person on the inside. But it's like wearing your team's jersey and saying "we" instead of "them."

Doesn't take long to read, does it? If you saw that post, you pretty much read it. To see it is to read it. So you had 299 people who saw that and decided nope, I won't show that I like that.

Now let's say I was an evil person. A hypocrite. And a moron. Someone panhandling for attention. A woman who called herself "feral" in her social media bio and all the rest of the normal stuff. And let's say I posted, "OMG I would never let my kid apply to Cornell!!!!!!!" then that would be met with 37,000 likes and many shares, correct?

That entry from Sunday on here about Cornell and the institutional nature of rape is something that should be read by every person in this country. It is far and away the best thing that has been written or will be written on that subject. And by subject, I don't even mean just Cornell in this instance. It is something written by someone who is a leader of people. Who should be leading people. It is a historical piece of writing. There is nothing like it in history. It shows an understanding for how this world works, too, that no one else possesses.

I don't normally talk about the entries in this journal because this journal, though it is a unique work of art, and a masterpiece, isn't what I treat as my work. My work is "Fitty," it's "Friendship Bracelet," "What the Mouse Knew," "Dead Thomas" and so on. But I'm not going to pretend or refuse to say what that entry is. It's a landmark piece of writing. That very few will see.

People don't read and can't comprehend what they read anyway. An industry has made certain, insofar as it can help it--and that's a lot--that no one will hear about me. And even when you've been heard about, people will only read if the words by that person are celebrated, hyped by a large group of people.

Plus, someone can read something and think nothing of it, because people don't read with these open minds. But if they come to that thing thinking it's great and important, they'll in effect allow themselves to see/experience that (if the thing is actually great and important; the rest of the time, they're just saying what they think they're supposed to say without having had those thoughts/experience).

Let's go back to the English teacher post. How do you not like that? Well, you don't like that this guy is smarter than you are. You don't like that he's kinder. You don't like that he's more genuine. You are resentful of learning. Your own ignorance and lack of education makes you fearful. You possess a degree of self-loathing because of it, and this is how you act project that self-loathing so as to feel less of its brunt, which, of course, doesn't work and only leads to more self-loathing, which leads to more projection, and over and over.

This example here--this one example--is indicative of how the world works. It is how success works. You become successful by being fake, cheap, stupid, simple, insincere, hypocritical. You don't achieve success by being more talented, smarter, a better person. These awards? Every award? They go to people in Camp Number 1 above. This is how everything works.

How can you fail to see this? I get how you--the general "you"--can fail to see it on your own, but how can you fail to see it after its been spelled out here? After all this evidence? We equate number of followers with how interesting someone is. How stupid can you be? How stupid is everyone? It's the opposite of that. People follow dumb people because they are dumb. They are looking for people like them. Thus, anyone who is special and stands out isn't going to be someone they like. Never mind support. Never mind make better known. Never mind make wealthy.

Have you seen a post like that about the teaching profession? When do you ever see anything in our society that isn't like a billion other things in it? Honestly: when was the last time you ever saw something at all different? Said at all differently? Can you even remember?

Not hitting the like button for that is an attempt to "get" someone. To "cut them down." To have your "revenge" on them for being these things you're not. Things that are evinced even in a short comment. It's "I'll show you" and this what's at hand to do that here--not giving out that like. This isn't about social media. It's about us. Our make-up. Our psychology now.

If you are great, there will be one person out of a million who is okay with that and shows any support, no matter how low-level it is. The hitting of the like button. It won't go further with that one person. They're not going to read your books, or partake of whatever it is you make, follow what you say, unless that's an activity that the masses are doing. But the masses won't be doing it for the reasons I just said. No one is going to be into something, read someone, unless others are doing it. And they know others are doing it. They know what others are saying.

Let's say the Beatles never existed, and then they existed now. And no one talked about about them, said they were "literally the best ever," blah blah blah. They could put all that music that they made out right now in 2026. "We wrote and recorded all this this year." Let's say they're just artists. They're not connected. They don't have industry friends. They don't jerk people off throughout the day on social media. They have convictions, morals, individuality as people. There's no agent, there's no marketing, there isn't this huge outlay of cash trying to make them big.

No one in this world is going to listen to that music and say, "Wow, it's amazing!" Even if they hear all of it, they won't think that. They won't note it as anything special. They can hear it without knowing they're hearing it or remember that they did.

But: if the official, widespread, numbers-backed stance is that "OMG the Beatles are great!" then they will hear that music and think well of it. I'm not saying they'd be lying. Some would. Others would think it was really good. Same people who wouldn't have thought it was good at all when they listened to it without people saying this.

The numbers--the official stance of the room--has massive, massive, massive sway. It's almost like a key that opens a door. You are now "permitted" to realize things. If there's a band that no one has ever heard of, that no one praises, and let's say they're the best band ever, there isn't going to be someone who studies their music and for whom this is a major part of their life. No one has that confidence in their own judgment.

It's virtually impossible for anyone--well, anyone who isn't me--to act that way. I know. I know with confidence what something is. I don't need anyone to tell me, because I am me and I'm telling me. There is no greater authority. And I'm not pretending otherwise about that either. Nor would anyone who reads these pages think, "He's full of it."

If I was to say, "This is a truly great book," no one who knows me--including people who hate me--would think, "There's a chance it sucks." If I strongly recommend a version of "Dark Star," then you know, if you know me and my work, my words, my mind, that it's a special rendition, regardless if anyone else talks about it or that it's never been singled out.

I posted a link to that entry in this record about Cornell and the institutional nature of rape. That is timely and timeless writing. Did it as an experiment, knowing what the result would be. Not one person hit that like button. Honestly, do you really not get how this world works? No one even came here to read it. Because it's reading. Because it's this person. Because it's not stupid. But I can watch someone post, "i dont know what this cornel thing is but i bet if i did id be angry lol" and see that get 10k likes. And if you think this is about "likes," I'm not even going to dignify that by trying to determine whether you're that obtuse or hell bent on being that disingenuous because of your Wendy Lesser-like hatred for me.

The insincerity of people. "What can I get attention for now?" No stakes for them. Lives "lived" in endless posturing, faking. Fake caring. Fake "doing something about it." Then on to the next with the turnover of the news cycle. Empty words. Recycled words. No conviction. Keyboard warrior-ing. Would never put so much as a hair of their arms on the line. Cliches. Grandstanding. White knighting.

"I'm going extra hard at this one for him."

You're not doing fuck all, brother, save trying to whore yourself some attention with this thing you're going to forget about in ten seconds. Then, the people like this person, who conduct themselves in this fashion, eat it up because it's a form of self-recognition and self-complimenting because they could say this exact same hackneyed thing in this same bullshit language and they probably just did. But it's akin to eating air. Which is what people prefer to consume. Nothingness. Absolute nothingness. No substance, ever.

The self-aggrandizing consumption of this nothingness empowers, or accredits, their own nothingness, both in terms of what they put out there and have to say, and in who and what they are, as if it were something special and not nothingness. They are using everything else to secondhand compliment themselves.

That is the driver of all markets now. Not quality. Not importance. Not entertainment. Not ideas. Not anything that improves or enriches your life. Their value is very low. Such people offer next to nothing. So anything of value that offers something more than what they offer and are, isn't going to serve their purpose of self-complimenting. Rather, it's going to be critical of them. It has and does what they don't do and lack. It's like a passed judgment from a higher vantage point; that is, it is seen as looking down on them.

This is why we praise horrible fucking people and insincere fucking people and talentless fucking people.

Can I be any clearer?

Just to keep spelling this out: this isn't "just" a social media thing. It's a "how we are" thing. This is how it all works. And I'm not sure anyone else can see it. I think hardly anyone alive can see anything for what it is and why things are what they are.

Read the Cornell entry in this singular journal, a unique work of literature and life. Whether I'm talking to you in 2026 or you're somehow seeing this some day way off in the future. You need to read the entry. It's one of the only things in this world right now that anyone actually needs to read, see, hear, etc.