[945] Jerkin' The 'Ol Hate Boner

I don’t understand “lazy” hatred. I don’t understand hating something just because you can. Put another way, the “reason” I didn’t like Miley Cyrus or Nickleback had nothing to do with how well I knew the words to Wrecking Ball or Photograph. I did it because I was young, and that was a “cool” cliché thing to do. Am I fan of “I’m like a cool rebel” pissing in the street or albums where I can’t really tell the difference between songs? Not particularly, but now at least we’re talking about slivers of what might be understood about a given artist.

Aren’t there so many things worth hating that you could be just as lazy about? Can’t you like hate fascism before you tell me what Trump did for Black colleges? Then, at least before we pretend you’re going straight to Politifact after saying so, we’ve at least picked an appropriately shared and coherent frame from which to discuss the nature of influence and power.

 

Can’t you just hate disease? My god, how quick we could have gotten through the pandemic if people just hated being sick! You want to pretend you’re not living among modern day miracles of technology and knowledge before you just lazily hate the idea of being sick? I hate being sick so much I chug Nyquil and sleep until I’m done coughing! You think I won’t get as many shots as I need to avoid losing lung capacity altogether?

 

Can’t you just hate evil? Can’t you hate it when the evilest thoughts creep into your mind about what you might do to yourself or other people? Can’t you hate that you have practically no control over what your mind is going to make you think in any given moment? Can’t the atrocity that is your potential, or wasted potential, and the evil it lends itself to be worth a million memes?

 

Or pick any major atrocity happening exactly right now that needs no “both sides” argument. Chinese internment camps spring to mind. Mandatory minimum sentencing. The environmental disregard of basically any major company. How do all of those slip between your fingers before Jordan Peterson?

 

How do you justify the energy, the shares, the likes, the smirks and “lols” for a position weaved together via meme? Is that not indication enough you might be a touch batshit? Like, you know, not like some difficult “know” like just what percentage of gay you might be. You know explicitly if you’ve read someone’s book or watched their lectures. And when you haven’t, that’s what will prompt you to chime in? You saw the comic? You have meme groups dedicated to your hatred?

 

This shit isn’t even hard, and you’re like getting worse at it as you get older. Here’s a few clues you have no idea what you’re talking about:

 

1. You’re completely unwilling or unable to quote from the people/thing/example you’re bitching about.

 

2. Your entire position rests on personal experience, support from a raucous peanut gallery, and memes.

 

3. You are perfectly unable to check the sources of your information, dare you share an article or two, against any actual fact-checking publication or publication that detracts.

 

We don’t need to go on all day, because most people are “arguing” via meme spam, silence, and unfriending well before we discover that mental health problems are also a growing concern as we age.

My theory, people hate themselves. They hate themselves so much, they do this hate performance so their lived reality more aligns with their basest conception of who they believe themselves to be.

 

They’re taken out of context all the time! So fuck everyone else, they don’t deserve a fair shake. Their good ideas are ignored or resented. Time to take idiot-proof truisms and turn them into “You’re a Nazi!” You have to obliterate meaning and respectable conversation when you don’t mean anything to yourself or respect what it means to be alive. You’ll teach your kids to do the same, passing trauma and lazy abusive cliches. It’s the circular-logic of life.

 

I’m particularly sensitive to this notion of hating for no reason because I think it underpins so much of the bullshit I catch or “friendships” I never really had. You know what I haven’t liked or “hated” about the people in my life? Stealing from me. Leaving me to clean up after them. Lying to me. You know, things, that happened, or cost me something or measure of distress that, in theory, weren’t just about their “personality.” I wasn’t made “uncomfortable” by exes or things people said. I couldn’t handle getting screamed at for no reason or the consequences of self-harm. You know, SHIT THAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED.

 

It’s never seemed to matter to onlookers my intent, version of events, or attempts to reconcile. I’m just the enemy. I hate that, have always hated that, and will continue to. I don’t think anyone deserves to be treated like that, not Nickleback, not the prisoners I’m going to be counseling regarding their addiction, and not you, wound up in whatever hateful narrative that grants you license to do it others. It’s a sickness, both in heart and head. I know my mom is sick like that. Do I hate her more than I respect what I’ve learned about that illness? Have I shared a million memes about my childhood? Like, I read a fuck of psychology and philosophy books, and keep my distance after delineating what about her illness I don’t want infecting me.

 

You owe it to yourself to carry on like more than a lazy fucking cunt and idiot. And if you don’t, I’ll be the first to recognize and point out how bad you're hiding what you're really saying under that cough.

[500] Allow Me To Reintroduce Myself

This is my 500^th blog over 12 years. I'll wait here while you sound the trumpets. If I'm evidence of even one thing before I die, it's that a lot can go through your mind, and probably most of it you shouldn't put online.

I wanted to write this because, in this moment, I'm not particularly moved by anything. I've also tied my blogger account to a ton of other social media outlets and want to come across even fleetingly normal, if you're a new reader, before you catch something that makes me look like a raving lunatic. I was building the idea of this blog up in my head, and decided to remove the stress by just writing so as to put it behind me. I wanted to provide something of a course overview of what you'd be studying in sifting through my blogs. I also wanted to talk about hate.

I wonder why we create. Lately, I've been thinking it comes from hatred. I think the harder you hate yourself, the more creative you can be. I phrase it as “hating yourself” because of a line I caught on a random blog that said “All hate is self-hate.” This, incidentally, is an idea I can agree with, and have written about in the past. Undoubtedly, the things I hate about life or other people are things I'm guilty of as well.

I find hate inspiring. In fact, most of what I write is a reflection on something I hate. “I” as a collection of hateful thoughts projected about the world, presumably because I think I would do it better or have some evidence in my own life as to the value of progressively differing. Once we move past the word itself you start to unpack the dozen tiny things about a conversation or excuse that bolsters the feeling. You dig up the history and cultural tide that has framed your discussion. With any luck, you start to engage with people who aren't going to blame you for the hatred you're feeling, and then will try to understand where you're coming from.

I started writing because I hated how a boy was treating a girl I liked. I continued writing because I hated what I was learning about religion and how people spoke to each other. I found mountains of hatred exploring how “loving” family and friends treated the offerings and people in their lives. As I get older I get to hate what I used to have and changes I can swear are making us worse off. I don't know if I'll ever stop hating silence and excuses, be it for hangouts and texts or how you treat something of greater consequence. I once described myself as always feeling “on.” It may be stated another way, that I'm always aware of what I hate.

That awareness begets need. I need to write. Whether I pat myself on the back for 216 followers on one profile, from hearing admissions that you like to get drunk and read my stuff at night, or from some other form of emotion or connection you've found in me, I'd still have to write. It's why I've always struggled to consider this “content” like I sat down and formulated some plan to keep you engaged. Like I wanted to perversely promote as much as genuinely share how fucked I was feeling. The utility I've found in putting it all “out there” to be scrutinized line by line verses being a ball of stress and confusion is incalculable. Detailing where you're coming from and hope to go, even when you can see how it can fail, isn't mindlessly stumbling through the dark needing to fear the unknown.

Any line can ring a bell. That's something I consistently overlook in my criticism of the amount of “content” coming in from self-promotion junkies. In a significant way, you are what you're beholden to. If you're controlled by deadlines and desperation, before I care about some product you're hocking, I see you selling the value of deadlines and desperation. I feel like I'd have to stop writing if that were me. Lying, if it's not to save my ass from something terrible, is torture to me. This is where the blowhard ironic bad boy goes, “Yeah fuck these shoes, but they're paying me, so buy them. It's part of my shtick to shit on things before I sell myself out, so they're cool with it.”

I'm after the right kind of attention. I don't want to Kim Kardashian my way through Twitter “impressions” and delicately staged Instagram photos for likes. Popularity is a dangerous tool we seem to lunge after without a second thought. Why achieve “celebrity” status when you actively attempt to reduce yourself to something wildly unworthy of being celebrated? How attached do we become to our “brand?” How hard are we fighting to keep the pleasantries up by tailoring ourselves to what we think people will like?

I'm different. I don't throw up my middle-finger and scream I don't give a fuck in a socially irresponsible way. I just know how I feel when I feel it and talk. And that, I wouldn't mind getting more popular. There's reality television and professions of “realness” abound. I stand in contrast. I invoke only the small lens from which I can see the world. My persistent ask is for other people to do the same.

Within this reintroduction, I hope to promote the idea of change. I hope to always change in significant, but not arbitrary, ways. I was a fairly picky eater, and loosened up. I've made countless statements with regard to my shallow nature, but am fairly acquainted with alcohol. I ridiculed Candy Crush and Miley Cyrus and eventually had to admit they were not the enemy. I used to believe in what I grew up with, be it about family or love, and I can honestly say I'm better for having reasoned through many terrible assumptions that I think we are still culturally strangled by. I think the human mind needs the idea of progress even when the universe suggests indifferent balance or eventual obliteration.

So hello to new people I'll be courting through a more active sharing, and hello again to old readers who never or rarely do or speak to anything I ask, and wonder why I've found a new rigor for self-promotion. I hate much about the world, therefore I must hate much about myself, and I need it to be talked about like I talk about it.