freaks on the internet

or, the wrong number of holes in the head

Before we get into it today, I just want to say that I finished The Ghosts of East Baltimore by David Simmons. For those paying attention to this space, he did the guest post earlier this week.

But, man, this book is among the wildest things I’ve read in a long time. Continually surprised me. It manages to be so many things. Political without being pedantic or polemic. Violent and gruesome without being gratuitous. Lovecraftian without being obsessive about the mythos. It even has some mech-warrior shit in it that sounds like it absolutely should not work, but it’s too fun to not throw your hands in the air and howl as the rollercoaster dives down.

So that’s it. Big recommendation for this book. Here’s that link again.

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As some of you know, one of my favorite things on the internet is when people are freaks in public and on purpose.

Yesterday, we had an excellent case of this.

I unironically love this. Someone showed me this and I just started cackling when I read her list of problematic authors and the reasons why.

I mean, this is just world class level trolling. Now, I know, someone’s going to come here and ruin the joke for me, tell me she sincerely means it¹, but I just can’t believe this isn’t some form of performance art² designed perfectly for what twitter has become.

But my favorite part of the way she lists things is that she puts some accusation without context or evidence, then, right next to it, puts their most famous book, almost like a recommendation.

Just wild shit.

I love it.

But the real goal here seems obvious. This is all for attention. Perfectly calibrated to go viral. All the big accounts retweeting it to spread it all over twitter so that they can make little jokes at her expense have made lots of us laugh, but they’ve also pumped up this person’s profile. She’s gaining followers rapidly.

And that’s all twitter is for. Millions of people desperately shouting for your attention. The most successful do it by making the right people angry because if that bigger account is talking about you, you’ve finally popped the little bubble you were in³.

Now people who don’t know you—who never would have known about you—are clicking through to your profile. Some amount of these people will come to your defense because no matter the profound stupidity you unleashed there are people out there who will think you’re smart or brave for saying it.

And everyone is so desperate to become internet famous that they begin to think of their personality as a brand and begin acting in ways to further define, defend, and consolidate that brand.

You could say I’m doing the same thing here, but, come on. No one’s listening to me. No one cares that I sit here and write my little essays and share my little thoughts.

Even you, dear reader, might not notice if I went silent for a week or a month or even a year.

There’s just too much stuff constantly coming at us for us to notice that the noise lowered ever so slightly. Even if it’s the noise you want, you may not notice when it’s gone because of all the static coursing through your life.

We live in the worst kind of cyberpunk reality I can imagine. Where capitalism is so entwined with our daily lives that we begin to think of our personalities as something to be commodified. And while we may bemoan that, most of us would just like for thousands or millions of people to care that we said something at all if only it meant we didn’t have to work in an office or behind a counter while wearing a nametag. And so we lean into the churning chaos of the chattering classes.

We want to be an internet personality. We want to be famous, even if only on a micro level. Because then we’d feel important.

In part, it’s why I’m here writing this now. It’s why I’ve written all these books and stories. It’s got to be, right? Why else spend so many hours and years doing something like this?

I want people to listen. Want them to care. I want people I’ve never met before to read my books and have them matter. I want someone I will never even know exists to talk about my books with someone else who I’ll never know exists.

But I also don’t want to do any of this other shit associated with getting there.

I don’t want to do interviews. I don’t want to tweet. I don’t even want to post anything on instagram besides pictures of my cats. I don’t want to do a photoshoot or have a headshot for publicity.

And, um, probably I won’t. I’m going to try some promotional efforts for these books I have coming, but I just don’t have the interest or patience or desire to try to gain a following through some kind of brand.

I write because I like to write. I’m dumb enough to think I have something to say that’s worth reading. I say it here because I don’t want to fit into 280 characters. I don’t write about current events, not because I have nothing to say or because I don’t care, but because I don’t want my life to revolve around my hottest takes of the latest thing that will be forgotten or ignored by the end of the month.

If you’ve never met me in real life but somehow found yourself here reading along, this is the me I choose to give you. It’s the one you can have. To the extent that it reflects the real me shouldn’t matter to you and it certainly doesn’t matter to me.

I give you my words. As many as you’ll read.

Now please go away.

1. She at least implies that depicting something in a book is a reflection of your beliefs, which is still making me laugh a day later

2. Some of my favorite aspects of the list are putting “mispronouncing names” right next to “racism” or “murderer” as if those should all be given the same weight. But the funniest one is that she says Celeste Ng is problematic because she tweeted that Asian men reminds her of her cousins. Which is probably just true, since she likely has cousins who are Asian men. And then my personal favorite is Harper Lee being included for being inherently racist (?) for using the N-word and white savior complex in MOST of her work.

Her career as a writer being one book about how racism is wrong.

3. Progressives on twitter reshare Tucker Carlson or Ben Shapiro way more often than any conservative people do, for example.