I decided to take Lent as an opportunity to not participate in political twitter. Iâve been dramatically less aware of day-to-day developments but I havenât minded, mostly because holy shit is it much better for my brain.
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During Lent (or around it, Iâm not doing research, what is this, ContraPoints?) Lindsay Ellis posted a video on the history of transphobia in film, in collaboration/rivalry with Natalie Wynnâs excellent video on JK Rowlingâs recent TERFiness. I am sure it is also very informative. I have not watched it.
Something about the culture of the last decade has made me feel like it is Important to read and watch certain content. I think this is leftover from the days when social justice advocacy online was nowhere near as visible as it is today, when it still felt refreshing to post something you learned on tumblr to Facebook. There was definitely a culture of group education â of things you Need To Read and things being Said One More Time For Folks in the Back. While a lot of the âsociologyâ folks were âlearningâ was ⊠reduced from its original form, and while a lot of this has led to a much-critiqued style of social justice advocacy since, I think it fundamentally made and makes sense. Right thought leads to right action. I donât really know a lot about comparative philosophy but it feels like a lot of folks Iâve read would add here that this is especially sensible to someone raised with a Christian â and even more specifically, Protestant â mindset; that is to say, someone who has been raised to believe in orthodoxies rather than orthopraxies. I donât know if thatâs an especially enlightening thing to say, but I have come to feel that my politics have always had more than a touch of the puritan to them.
Anyways, this is all just to say that there remains a voice in my head which says that thereâs a hypothetical other voice which might say, âWhat, you havenât watched that? Why not? Do you have a problem with this conversation?âAnd yes, this is just me torturing myself. No one has told me to think this way.
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But itâs not really a huge leap from what I see every day, or rather try not to. Iâve been running a D&D-focused twitter account during my political hiatus. It is ridiculously difficult to separate out this content. It is ridiculous that Jack only lets me mute 200 terms at a time. â1619â, obviously. A list of celebrities/politicians. Every variation on American, capitalist, colonialism, and protest. Some more clever attempts â âapologyâ, âbroâ, âgrew as aâ, âso tiredâ. A cycling list of buzzwords out of an attempt at topical whack-a-mole â right now, âNFTâ, âcryptoartâ, and âenvironmentallyâ. Formerly âLimbaughâ, âill of the deadâ. Formerly âRBGâ, âas a blessingâ, â#restinpowerâ.
One of the things that got my goat the most was a sort of ideological pre-judgement of anyone not super interested in getting into the weeds with regards to all of this stuff when talking about table top role playing games. Again, I understand where the impulse comes from, and again, I think it is not irrational. âKeep your politics out of my gamesâ is a really convenient argument for someone who actually believes âMy games should be about my (facially bad) politics instead,â but doesnât want to say it. It just so happens that it is also approximately what you would expect someone to say if they really are just exhausted with politics, and they believe all the good things I promise, but they just want to unwind with some hobby craft and theyâre just really oversensitive to having their relaxation time interrupted by another argument about gender representation andyesiunderstandthisisanimportantconversation
Of course games, like any other art or story, are political, inescapably. And of course these conversations are important. But like, theyâre not *just* political (and in any case, when did political â by which I mean relating to the structure of society â come to mean partisan â by which I mean a binary discussion mostly good for group affiliation?). And just because these conversations are important does not mean they are the only conversation, or the most important conversation, or a conversation we need to be having all the time. ITâS OK TO WANT TO HAVE FUN.
And yes, again, I get it â Ben Shapiro said the same shit about football, a sport he definitely watches and cares a lot about and which he was definitely rendered incapable of enjoying thanks to spotting a dude kneeling. But Colin Kaepernick didnât break down my door to lecture me about my wrong takes on Castro when we made nachos for the game this year â and no one tried to one up him by questioning our right to make nachos. Because of the way twitter is structured â which is to say, to constantly suggest new content to you and to make you see the most engaged-with content most of all â it is nearly impossible to escape the same feeling there. Because of the culture of takes, if you try, youâll be looked at askance â what, do you have a problem with wanting a more racially diverse workforce at WotC? Whatâs the big deal about me trying to strip colonial undertones from my D&D game? Donât you think itâs important that people are so angry about combat wheelchairs? Not everyone gets to just have fun. This fight isnât over!
I know, I have heard all of these arguments, I have had them, I have formed the good boy opinions and received my gold star ally award, I vote straight-ticket Democrat and get involved in local politics. Right thought -> right action. Doxy orthoâd, praxis accomplished. Why do I still have to listen to everyone yelling all the time I just want to look at cool character art? Right, I said Democrat. Yes, I know about DSA. Look,
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Remember Facebook flag overlays?
Thinking about them gives me the same sort of throat-knotting feeling I got over the birthday notifications â when youâre a kid (ie, someone who got on facebook when everyone left myspace), you had few enough friends to wish everyone a happy birthday on their wall, in some cute and unique way. By college I didnât remember half of these people, and I didnât know at least a third. Do I need to wish Huntzberger a happy birthday because he was a friend of a close friend of mine? I donât know, but I know not wishing him one makes me feel like shit!
I donât honestly remember that much about flag overlays. Google informs me they were dropped pretty quick. What they make me remember, vaguely, is the general culture of feeling the need to have a flag overlay, or a mournful post, or some other gesture towards any given human atrocity â a culture of guilt (man am I bad for not caring about this?) and of pride (fuckinâ shows those normies, I care about shit!). If you look at the snark I made under the picture above, youâll see that I am still very much captured by this and-you-shall-know-them-by-their-posts mindset!
The last time I posted something like that, it was after the burning of Notre Dame. I was really upset that day, and spent much of it obsessing over social media coverage of the event in real time. I have never been to France. I semi-sort-of speak some French. I have not read Hunchback. Nonetheless, Notre Dame is a cultural symbol with a lot of weight for me â a white Christian-raised nerd into European history. Itâs a beautiful structure, and its loss â even in part, or even temporarily â is an actual tragedy, and deserves witness and mourning, I think.
Due to the cultural bubble I inhabit (blue boomers, communists elsewise), this was not the predominate form of mourn-posting. Or maybe it was, and my brain focused on the negative. Or maybe it was, and the algorithm focused on the negative. In any case, most of the stuff I remember was folks getting judgemental â how can you care about Notre Dame burning down, but not the Amazon rainforest? There were other like, random causes folks would dredge up. But because of the news cycle, the Amazon seemed to predominate. (See what I did there? I got in a good dig at those hypocrites â theyâre not better at caring than me, they just prioritize different symbols! Fuck it feels good to be holier than them). To be more charitable, the idea that something deserves witness and mourning had morphed into an obligation to witness and mourn to hold yourself â and, more visibly, other people â to. (and werenât they very wrong to let that wrong thought stop them from upholding their obligation to witness and mourn the loss of Notre Dame).
I stopped using Facebook to talk to people I knew around point. Eventually, I stopped really using it at all.
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I think one of the more perspective-inducing things Iâve read recently was that thereâs been a weird flattening of political roles in our culture lately. I donât remember who said it. But like, I remember learning â and I feel like this used to be understood â that different actors had different roles. Politicians got elected and passed things. Activists pushed the needle in terms of societal mood. Voters educated themselves and got involved if they could. These days everything is weirdly coalesced. Politicians need to be more like activists â everyone expects purity from them on every given issue. But voters are treated that way too, unless theyâre being treated like politicians â held accountable for saying the right things at the right time. You see a lot of this in conversations around healing the partisan divide. Itâs up to all of us to reach across the aisle and talk to Trump voters, or whatever. And like, the partisan response is to say âno itâs not, fuck themâ. But I think the sane response sort of is too? I certainly donât need anyone on the other side reaching out to me. When it comes to friendships, thatâs one thing. But like, A) a big issue behind polarization is geographical and subcultural sorting â I just straight up do not know any Trump voters to make amends with and B) why is this my responsibility, I thought this was the presidentâs job? Iâm not the one presiding over things!
But you also see it everywhere. The flag overlays, for one. Also the weirdly forced statuses you see posted regarding various atrocities, which the above meme references as well â very important that the country of ⊠Jordan? receives our vibes in these trying times. People policing each other for making bad arguments in favor of good policy proposals, or making bad policy proposals, or using bad slogans for ⊠like, why does it matter? No congress person is voting based on how Ken posts on facebook about racial justice.
Itâs as if, as weâve been punditizing politics, weâve also been imposing a responsibility to be good pundits on ourselves. As an aside, I also think this is responsible for the really weird inhuman way we take in election news â how everyoneâs constantly trying to look savvy and not be surprised or let down by anything.
I get why we do this. It is fun to follow politics. Itâs a great sport. But:
I think â and itâs really weird that this sounds to me like an irresponsible thing to say out loud â that people need to remember that having a take does not in and of itself actually change anything. I donât mean that in the sense of shaming you if you donât turn your takes into action. I mean that in the sense that like, none of us had a real say in whether COVID relief got passed after our local election. Being big mad on twitter about the $15 min wage getting dropped did not have any effect on the fact that it did, nor did being big mad at people who want a $15 min wage get it dropped.
All of this is punditry. Pundits are important. Weâre not all obligated to be one as a hobby. I am not sure that political hobbyism is outright destructive, but the way we engage in it definitely is. Things do not have the power to extort your verdict. Societal importance does not change this. Giving up on following this garbage over lent has drastically lightened my emotional load â and I still get my *googles* $1,400! Iâm gonna buy a new laptop this one sucks.
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When it comes to the online far left, itâs kinda obvious why aesthetics and art critique dominate. The big drivers of leftism right now are art and the humanities, followed by sociology. You donât really get your Marxes making big economic cases as often, or tinkering with how ideal governments might be structured. Even the leftists most predisposed to critique this stuff as radlib trash are really just invested in a different aesthetic more than anything else. Like, this is what happens when folks who graduated with film degrees lead discussions held by nerds. Thereâs nothing wrong with it, I just get testy over how itâs not all there is.
When I try to figure out why weâve gone so legitimately insane, my best guess is that basically the same thing is happening to our society. In other words, weâre becoming more educated, and weâre becoming a lot more media literate. Weâre a people who rightly value stories and art, and who are increasingly blessed with a population educated enough to get into analysis of these things and social structures accessible enough to all people to see them. So, when faced with huge intractable problems which demand Something Be Done, and we cast about for an obvious action, getting mad at the most recent Marvel movie is there for us.
(Like, part of the problem is also that weâre a big country, right? It is just legitimately insane the amount of change we expect to occur â almost as insane as how much has. There is no reason that a human being living in a bay on the Pacific should feel morally judged for their opinion about the specific policies voted on by one living off the Atlantic, excepting a generally universal belief in the fight for freedom and good health. Because of how big we are â and more importantly, because of how nationalized and globalized everything is getting in media â we stretch ourselves in these vast directions, and face quandaries over which of infinite issues we choose to prioritize. Itâs this parenthetical that links this stuff to my increasing localism, but thatâs another essay).
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The other day I peeped at a less-regulated twitter alt and saw both Dr Seuss and Mr Potatohead trending. I have unfortunately been appraised of the drama behind the good doctor (I have a book of his political work so luckily They canât stop me from looking at his bad caricatures of Asians). I still have no clue why the potato was trending. I think it was gender? Donât let me know. It was EXHILERATING not to know. I well and truly did not care! I saw a Republican elected post about these things, and guys â if you think that looks insane, you have no idea what it looks like to someone who is not plugged into the drama. This is the best feeling!!!!!
