Tag: Culture Wars

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Aesthetics Internet Culture Startups

Day 213 and Kobayashi Maru

I don’t believe in the no-win scenario

Captain Kirk

If you cannot win by playing by the rules, then change the rules. If you are nice Iowa farmboy named James you will probably get away with it. Or a cartoon character named Calvin with a stuffed tiger named Hobbes. There is no cheating in Calvinball because the rules are constantly changing.

I’ve been thinking a lot about shitposting this past year as it becomes a kind of social sport in venture capital and startup Twitter. I’m a big fan of the shitpost as I think making elaborate “jokes but not quite jokes” can be an exercise in vulnerability and honesty.

But who gets to be honest and what rules will be broken if the wrong person says the true thing is quite telling. I have a medical procedure that is going to take a lot out of me this week so I’ve been resting at home in preparation. This has meant I’ve watched a lot of television. I’ve been binge watching Downton Abby the period drama about Edwardian Aristocrats coping with changing social standards as modernity bears down on them. It’s a drama about “manners” which please lots of agonizing over who and what is right and proper. The class structures are so codified they are literally written down. No seriously they kept books about peerages! Check out Burke’s. Fucking wild.

It all seems a bit ludicrous as an American but I’ve got to imagine social institutions I consider completely normal will look utterly baffling in a hundred years too. And much of the way those social mores change is when someone decides that playing by the rules is a no-win scenario. Sometimes the game is so codified that no one but people who have been trained and advantaged their entire life can be winners. When that happens the only way anyone else can win is to change the rules.

Or as Spock might have said to Kirk. “You cheated.” But is it cheating when it’s a no win-scenario? If by changing the parameters the game you open up entirely new possibilities maybe it’s a good thing. Sure, Star Trek does an excellent job of showing us the emotional and moral limits of never having to face failure and it’s consequences. But what if without rejecting the premise of the Kobayashi Maru you could have never known success or change?

I think shitposting might be a bit of social Calvinball or some social media variant of the the Star Fleet ethics test. People with some power use it to great effect. But a lot of people with some talent and an eye towards improving their social position leverage shitposting. They change the rules of what can be said. They make a game of truth telling and shift the rules of the game. This isn’t a finished theory by any means but as I’m determined to slowly think my way through a grand unified theory of shitposting you can expect a lot of notes and works in progress on the topic here.

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Internet Culture

Day 212 and Notes for A Unified Theory of Shitposting

Yesterday I was fucking around on Twitter, as I am prone to doing. I made a barely sit-com worthy joke about divorced guy energy.

You ever notice how women thrive in the aftermath of divorce but men implode? Why is that?

My husband Alex replied with a searing burn “don’t worry, I’ll be fine” response and we were off to the races with all our mutuals dunking. I was howling with laughter. The two of us were trading zingers and watching the DMs roll in from friends.

Obviously the undercurrent of any thread on social media got dark very fast. So quickly I ended up putting out resources for men who were struggling in the replies. The amount of pain on display was enough to make you want to donate to the first domestic abuse charity I could find.

So why is it that I can shitpost about a topic and come away unscathed, indeed it was a fun and entertaining night for both myself and Alex, but others melted down? I think it might be about class and social signaling. It takes a lot of social capital to shitpost. And those that shitpost on the most socially contentious topics are demonstrating their social capacity to discuss whatever they want without consequences. I can shitpost because I’ve got enough social capital to do so.

One theory I’ve got is that shitposting is a backlash to Ted Talks, super serious reverential coverage in glossy business magazines, and the proliferation of HBS style “business” books. We’ve had an saturation in performative professionalism.

Once it became unclear that every self seriousness biography or magazine puff piece was placed by professionals to make their clients look like geniuses (visible effort undermines certain kinds of status) the savvy social seeker knew they needed a more authentic way to telegraph in-group power. The next logical step was demonstrating that you were so smart, so powerful and so connected you didn’t even need to demonstrate it. Hence the shitpost.

The weirdest part of “shitposting” being an actual status symbol in venture capital is that a couple of billionaires are going to see me and Alex making jokes about divorced guy energy and this will only increase our status. Which is ludicrous on its face ans yet absolutely true.

This isn’t even a flex on my part (though it obviously is a flex) as it is now accepted that having a following for saying whatever you like gives you a leg up in startups. A friend likened it to “dressing down” or the practice of wearing causal clothing even in formal settings. It shows you are so powerful and wealthy you don’t need to give a fuck about manners. Shitposting on Twitter is like wearing ripped jeans at the country club.

I want to explore this topic in more depth so this post is just some sketch notes. But I wanted to get it down and organized so I hope it’s alright to have some half baked ideas. It’s my blog so I figure it’s fine b

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Biohacking Emotional Work

Day 211 and Laughter

I miss being able to enjoy time out in the world. You know that feeling when you’ve spent the last two hours at your favorite bar with your friends just talking about nothing? The ease that you feel being with your community and enjoying being together? The casual camaraderie and easy laughter that comes from no expectations time together has been lost to many of us. I miss it.

It doesn’t seem like those days are coming back for some of us in the near future. If I give too much thought to the impact of things like the pandemic I think I just spike my cortisol. That’s a stress hormone. The stress of reactivity is killing all of us. Constant panic over floods, heatwaves, outbreaks and all their downstream effects is overwhelming our capacity to live. And yes, granted a more globalized war with a changing climate is capable of killing us. But we don’t have to let futility do us in early. We can find our way into solutions. But only if we stay alive to do it.

I’ve been coping with apocalyptic nihilism by shitposting on Twitter. Yes I realize this is a popular upper class pundit class past time. I’ve got some self awareness. But it’s also the only thing that mimics being out socializing with your friends. And I think that’s worth a lot. Shitposting is good for the soul.

You don’t have to shitpost, but if you cannot find a way to lower your stress response, as we say in crypto, ngmi. Everything may be going to hell but you aren’t there yet. You’ve got a life to live, people to love and who love you, and a chance to be happy.

Fuck cortisol. It’s not good for you. That’s some metabolic poisoning eating away at you and you chose to let it kill you. There is no reason to give yourself unnecessary stress. Some stress is good. It makes you resilient. But stuff you opt into? Fuck that noise it’s only going to make you sick.

And despite whatever family trauma circuit you may be playing out in your head, YOU DO NOT DESERVE THAT SHIT. No I’m seriously disease and suffering aren’t a moral good. Everything might be rough but you need to find a laugh. It might just save your life.

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Chronic Disease

Day 207 and Doxycycline

I don’t have a thesis or a point in mind so I’m just going to get started and ramble. I’ve felt like shit for most of July. Must have picked up some kind of infection on top of my usual bullshit autoimmune nonsense. I finally caved and asked my doctor if I could just try good old fashioned doxycycline. Six hours later I felt like a million bucks.

Sometimes it’s the simple shit that makes a difference. I don’t know if that is an Occam’s razor thing but I’m a little pissed that just tossing an old faithful antibiotic at me did the trick. But then I could be throwing some cool bias at this problem and be equating a bunch of causality that just isn’t there. Humans are prone to that.

Like did you know Occam’s razor was actually a justification for miracles? No shit. Occam was a friar and so into simplicity that he figured God was the easiest explanation. It absolutely blows my mind that there are logicians out there who will stomp on complex answers and holler “Occam’s razor” on your ass when the dude was saying my bias says probably miracles because that’s easier.

I don’t have anything more useful to say than that but this meets my daily criteria to write something every single day. So I’m calling it. Maybe tomorrow will be better. Which it might be because doxycycline!

Categories
Chronic Disease Politics

Day 199 and Vaccination

I’m not vaccinated against covid-19. It’s not a political stance. I’d very much like to be vaccinated and have it work. But I’m in the small category of folks for whom vaccinations do not produce antibodies. And to make matters worse, the only way I could “potentially” produce the antibodies in response to a vaccine is so destabilizing my doctors don’t want me to pursue it right now. So before being super smug about how this is a pandemic among the unvaccinated and it’s a “choice” for a small portion of us it isn’t.

I take immunosuppressants because my immune system has gotten some dumb ideas about attacking my body. I have had anaphylaxis a dozen times and allergies aren’t even my primary medical issue. That would be swelling in my spinal column. It was bad enough at one point that I couldn’t walk.

I’ve tried a lot over 2 years since it was diagnosed to keep it controlled. I was on chemotherapy drugs for about six months (I don’t recommend methotrexate at all and not just because it’s mustard gas). I was on high dose steroids long enough to develop a chemical dependency on them that required supervised titration down. Plus it made me fat as fuck and that annoyed me. Eventually my doctors settled into the suppressant category known as IL, or interleukin, inhibitors.

These drugs fucking rock and gave me my life back. Thanks to them I can live basically like a normal person with the exception that I need to be careful as I’m more susceptible to infection. We are quite literally suppressing my capacity to develop immune responses. You kinda need immune responses for vaccines to work.

Immunosuppressants and vaccines don’t really mix. I had to go off them to get a flu vaccine and I relapsed so badly my doctor was like well I guess it’s going to be masking for you in the future during flu season. About 5 months later the pandemic hit. Fucking hilarious.

If I go off my IL inhibitors eventually I’ll relapse. It’s possible I can make myself less prone to inflammatory responses but it might all be bullshit. I go to a stupid amount of trouble and money and engage in a lot of woo to make the rest of my health as strong as possible so I am not as prone to inflammatory responses. Maybe it will work. But quite frankly I’m not interested in finding out right at this moment if I can live without the drugs that saved my life.

Why does all this matter? Because you need to be off of immunosuppressants in order to have a vaccine work. And I’m not fucking going off my suppressants. Nor is it recommend except in stable cases.

It takes three weeks to dose them out of my system, three weeks off them before a vaccine of any sort would have a chance of generating an antibody response, and then another 3-6 weeks of injections get back to a baseline of stability. (their effects tend to be cumulative). And that’s because I would only be able to get one stick J&J as I happen to be allergic to the PEGs that stabilize mRNA vaccines, so I have to do one and done. But that’s an aside.

Basically I’m looking at 3 months of intensive inflammation that will cripple me just to get a vaccine. Because of a host of other complicating factors my primary caregiver physician and rheumatologist have recommended against me getting the jab. It will be hugely destabilizing to me (which is its own risk) and even if I get it, we just don’t know if I’ll produce enough antibodies while I’m on the suppressants. It could be for nothing.

It’s basically lose lose for me. It won’t work if I’m on the drugs and if I’m off the drugs I’ll be so sick it’s a crap shoot if I need to be hospitalized for going off them. Which ironically would put me at even higher risk of covid exposure. My doctors do not love this.

With the Delta variant on the rise I don’t know if it’s actually worth destabilizing me or if it’s a risk worth taking. It’s a crap shoot. I isolate. I mask. We didn’t want to fuck me up. It feels damned if I do and damned if I don’t. And I feel super alone in this status as everyone is acting like it’s a choice. And yes it is my body and my choice. But what choice would you make? My doctors aren’t sure either.

Categories
Chronic Disease Emotional Work

Day 198 and Kindness from Strangers

I’ve written about how terribly I’ve felt physically for the past 6 straight days. The last positive day of writing I had was 8 days ago. People have noticed the emotional tone of this struggle.

Generally speaking a day or two of being down doesn’t get noticed on social media, but a continuous streak of being “off” tends to get noticed by your community. Your mutuals know who you are even from afar. Your mutuals see your struggles. Your mutuals may know more about you than you imagine. And I’ve found your mutuals may genuinely care about you.

I’ve never felt less alone than I have the past year under quarantine. Maybe it’s because the network of mutuals that shares their personality and life has spent more time on the give and take of commenting, posting, responding and messaging across social media. When we are forced to contend with our own inner emotional lives we can extend more empathy to others.

So while others may have seen politicization, partisanship and other externalized anger on social media, I’ve found mostly grace and kindness. People who I have never met in the flesh have shared their knowledge, their vulnerability and their network with me. When I have opened myself up I have been met with with compassion and understanding.

If you share a period of struggle and your desire to get out from under it you may not be far from help. The kindness of your community is within reach. Even, perhaps especially, your social media community. If you are hurting share that burden. I have and it is much lighter.

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Aesthetics Emotional Work

Day 197 and Status Anxiety

I’m becoming quite bored of feeling like shit as I go on maybe day 8 or 9 of a poor reaction to an anti-viral. It’s not fun when the cure is worse than the disease. I noticed something fascinating as more and more “days off” piled up. I’ve still got a lot of emotional shit when it comes to being sick.

My anxiety over being seen as weak, lazy or lacking in willpower started to compound the more days I’ve needed to recover. What will people think of me that just as I’m making a comeback to full time work that I let myself get waylaid by a virus? Every project and meeting that needed canceling felt like I should accompany it with an apology tour. I felt like I owed everyone my time and energy. I felt ashamed.

The social striving and status chasing that have gripped the aspirational class seems to have its claws firmly in my psyche. At least when it comes to work, I’m convinced I must always be working to be “better.” Where the fuck did this self limiting belief come from?

Who cares if I needed a week off to cope with health care needs when I’ve been on medical leave for nearly two years? What is another week. Why am I so anxious to show that I’m capable of going back to work? Who the fuck cares! It’s not as if I’m dependent on a salary to survive. I’m not chasing a resume or CV polish on LinkedIn. I can just not work.

Technically I’ve already made it out of the status social climbing games. I’ve got money. I’ve got traditional credentials. I have a well compensated skill set that is easily hired out for income without sacrificing much of my time. I should not be experiencing any class anxiety at all. I should happily go into the leisure class and not concern myself that my workaholism isn’t possible for health reasons. And yet I’m absolutely panicked that I’ll be see as lazy and unreliable every time I have a minor setback.

It’s abundantly clear that aspirational class signals, especially around meritocracy and knowledge work, are as bogus as Edwardian England’s aristocracy. Class division can be upended if you just stop giving a fuck. But I’m experiencing exactly this anxiety noted in The Hedgehog Review.

The aspirationals’ endless pursuit of better can produce psychic restlessness and doubts beneath the façade of confidence and accomplishment.

I’ve always thought of my habits as being high status. I read science fiction, make a hobby of macroeconomics, and pursue healthy biohacking experiments. Of course, that I think of these things as having status is precisely what makes me signaling it low status. The perception of me caring so fucking much is proof that I don’t think my status in life is secure. I’m no better than the middle class strivers in Downtown Abbey who miss manner cues. How embarrassing!

But if I can admit that I’m anxious about my place in the world maybe it’s a sign I’m not so beholden to class systems after all. I’ve just now admitted that I’m afraid of how I will be perceived if my climb back to health isn’t perfectly stage managed. I hope that is the first step in letting it go. Fixating on fear and anxiety isn’t great for physical health. So I’m putting it out there that I’m afraid of how I’ll be seen by others. And I’m letting it go.

Categories
Emotional Work Preparedness

Day 192 and Cherries in Air Conditioning

I found myself eating an entire pound of chilled organic bing cherries in bed while binging episodes of Downton Abbey this week. Watching the British aristocracy cope with modernity poorly seemed like an excellent balm for the climate anxiety that has been gripping me during the consecutive heatwaves inflaming the American West.

I’m a doomer and a prepper but recently I’ve felt completely defeated by the looming impacts of climate change. And I’ve been manifesting it is a kind of orgiastic panic of consumption. We had a windfall this year and it has soothes some of the panic I’ve had about having the resources to survive. Maybe it will be miserable but we might have enough wealth to avoid dying.

But I’ve been spending more on petty purchases of comfort. I’ve bought 2lbs of organic cherries, the large carton of organic blueberries, the $15 bags of dark roast coffee for espresso, and the $10 bar of 95% dark chocolate without a second thought. We’ve had sashimi for lunch and on Friday I ordered a lobster roll. We live thousands of miles away from the ocean in Colorado. We don’t grow or fish any of those crops here.

The excuse I’ve been using is that I’m concerned (nay convinced) none of these things will survive the next 25 years except as extreme luxury goods. If I can see the changes coming should I not enjoy the access I have to food that will no longer be available in my fifties? If I can see the end coming why conserve? I’m not Exxon or BP or some giant mining extraction concern in China. My forgoing small luxuries as an individual will do nothing to stop the catastrophe and I would like fond memories of the taste of a cool tart cherry in my twilight years. Burn me at the stake for it I guess.

Categories
Aesthetics

Day 175 and Paternalism

Taste is totalitarian. Movements seeking aesthetic dominance hold sway with a paternalistic sneering. Anytime you’ve felt excluded because of dress code or manners you’ve experienced a form of aesthetic exclusion. It can be worse than country club snobbery though. Imagine the indignity of preppy credentialism from supporters of Brett Kavanaugh. How dare you question the character of the graduates of our finest institutions.

It isn’t so different from the pearl clutching of “good taste” of outlets like Anna Wintour’s Vogue. Oh my you are wearing cargo shirts? Heavens! That very tight tube top just isn’t done. You must conform to the standards of good taste.

Divergence from the mean is bad form, the preferred insult of Peter Pan’s nemesis Captain Hook. Sure he was a pirate but the man has good manners and grubby children thumbing their noses at authority is a classic adult frustration.

I suspect that “bad form” underlies much of the criticism of post modernism. I came across an article in The New Statesmen about the paranoia around “pomophobia” amongst post modern academics. The thesis is that the critics are basic bitches missing the point that postmodernism is all aesthetics. It was never about politics. I happen to agree.

It’s entirely possible to recognize it’s critical theory ,and it’s cousin post modernism, are entirely aesthetic movements not a political or social one. And taste, being totalitarian, can and does overwhelm opposition. So the screeching panic mongers at Tucker Carlson may have a point. Just not the one they think. That’s why scandal and hand wringing are so interwoven into criticism of critical theory.

Taste is meant to be inscrutable. We cannot question it. If anyone can question “bad form” or good taste then why do we need our social betters? It would be absolute anarchy! But then again I thought punk was dead. Maybe not!

Categories
Chronic Disease Politics

Day 142 and Optimism

The pandemic has done more to improve my life than to it has hurt it. I have a little survivors guilt as I am not far from family and friends that have suffered but I was lucky. Part of my luck has been tied to my privileged place in society. I was able to enjoy housing flexibility and leave behind an expensive city apartment for a townhouse in my hometown. I was always able to work from home with little fear my income would be impacted by disease or even negative secondary effects. Nevertheless I haven’t felt much optimism until recently.

Part of my lack of optimism has been tied to my health challenges. It’s been two years of working to get a diagnosis, stabilize my spine, and get the secondary symptoms controlled. There were low points when drug regimens didn’t work. Or when it seemed like the fatigue or pain would keep my life away even when primary concerns were improving. I was genuinely terrified going into the pandemic as it did cut off my access to typical doctors visits and more hospital setting delivered care.

But I’ve found significant improvement over the past six months thanks to excellent remote care I was able to receive from functional medicine doctors. It’s almost as if with the operational and physical logistics of care removed the actual outcome of my care improved. I was able to get to the heart of a diagnosis and hone in on effective treatment protocols more quickly. Thanks to this improvement I’ve come to find my optimism again.

Not that I think the world is getting better. If anything I’m far more worried about the many axis of American failure. Our politics has become authoritarian. Our economy increasingly serves only the entrenched and already wealthy. Our interest in mitigating climate change remains low. It’s so bad the best we can do is chuckle at why millennials don’t have kids. It’s because they are selfish right? Nothing to do with how hard it is to trust that the system will ever work for you so why bother investing in the future?

But I am intrigued by the opportunities afforded by the chaos. There is money to be made adjusting us to new realities. Maybe by dint of accidental or unexpected changes we find innovations that change our world. Maybe those will be for the better. And maybe I can help nudge along the better outcomes. And for the first time in a while o believe my body will be up for the challenge. It’s nice to be optimistic.