Thursday 8/8/24
People now talk about "the algorithm" as people once talked of God. That's not me saying God or the concept of God ought to be talked about a certain way. What I'm saying is that the shadowy, mysterious concept/being of the algorithm is their overlord. Most have no idea what the word means. To them, it's this thing that shines either a favorable or a negative light upon them. It casts them aside or puts them on view to others. It is the wheel of chance that nonetheless plays favorites and has the power to banish, to take away that which most people crave more than anything else. More than connection, sanity, health, love, purpose, self. And that is attention.
The shadowy concept of the algorithm, whatever the algorithm actually is (the definite article providing overtones of deification), is the god of the broken, the lonely, the delusional, the lost and never to be found--because finding one's self takes far more from within than without. Note the reverential tones reserved for "the algorithm." "I guess the algorithm doesn't love me anymore."
As I said, most people want attention more than anything else. It does not matter that wanting attention as they do rots them from the inside out and renders them dead in all but an official capacity. There are ways to be more dead than actually dead, as in not breathing. This is a prime example. What people want just about as much as they want attention is for others to say, "I'm sorry that happened to you." When something they've shared--which is almost always something they've made up for attention--produces that response in others--and by response, I mean those exact words, or words that are very nearly those exact words--it's as if they think, "Mission accomplished."
People are so lost, and so bereft of an ability to cogitate and apply logic, on account that their lives are about being passive, being a victim, finding ways to be a victim, that they cannot process anything for what it is, and if emotions or feelings are involved, they become the least reliable of narrators. They are looking at whatever happened, whatever was said, through the shit storm of their brokenness, a brokenness they facilitate because that means they don't have to try, they don't have to locate purpose, they needn't risk, strive, pull from within, dare, grow, evolve, give, go for anything and perhaps learn that they weren't up to the mark and might have to start again, or with something else, and with all of the effort and energy and individual humanness that requires.
Here is an example I just saw on Threads:
I was just told by an editor that my manuscript was poorly written because it has an informal, spoken narrative. (Which is on purpose.) Anyway imma need to take a leave of absence to reflect (cry) reflect.
First of all, anyone who has ever written "imma" is incapable of writing well. It is not in you, it will never be in you. But leaving that aside, this thing did not happen. It's a lie. I'll tell you when the lie kicks in: With the word "because." No one said that to this woman. The "because" is her distortion, when the shift from reality to fantasy occurs. What she wants is attention, because she is weak, empty, broken, bad at this thing she says she does which she only does for validation and attention from people like her, and for people to say, "I'm so sorry that happened to you." Which they did, of course.
What the editor would have said was that what this woman wrote was poorly written, not that it was poorly written on account of having "an informal, spoken narrative," which is itself poorly written. "My book has a spoken narrative." See? What does that mean? I'll tell you what it actually means here: This woman can't write--and no one alive can write well right now--and so her "technique" to obscure this reality is to say that she writes like people talk. The terrible grammar, the ignorance regarding syntax, the lack of clarity, the confusion, it's all a stylistic choice rather than an authorial limitation.
And now she will cry. Think about that. Cry. How weak do you have to be--even if this was said to you--to cry over it? How far do you think you're getting with anything if that makes you cry? How far are you getting in your writing? In life? Not very far at all. Where you will get to is because you were carried there. Things were handed to you. Because you are incapable of going out and achieving on your own.
All of these millions of people talking about writing. You know what none of them ever talk about? The actual words. How writing works. Also, all of the things that have nothing to do with words that are necessary to creating great writing. All of the knowledge one must have. About all of the subjects. Humans. Human nature. How people are. That never comes up.
You know what else never comes up? Who the writing is for. What it is for. What its point is. Why it was done. What it can do for people. None of it can do anything for anyone and no one looks at their writing that way. They all look at it--save myself--solely in terms of what it can do for them. And that comes down to validation, ego, credit that makes them feel less empty inside, and insincere, cliched compliments. "Please please please please please please love me. Please please please please pretend to love me. Please please please please please pretend I'm special. Please please please please notice me. Please please please please help me to lie to myself about this thing I want to say I am so I can have something that is my thing, my identity source because I'm just nothing otherwise and this is the easiest thing to fake it with because nothing is real here in writing communities and publishing and there's nowhere else I can go without some vestige of reality getting in the way."
Therapy has become a form of attention-getting and fulfillment of that mission of being told, "I'm sorry that happened to you." I see it every day in what people post online. They went to their therapist, they shared some things, and their therapist, with tears in their eyes, says, "I'm so sorry that happened to you." Or, at least, that's what the person reported on social media. They got another one of those lines that no one means in their collection of them.
It's never about something a therapist suggested by way of insight, that prompted a new mode of thinking or just plain openness, that in turn led to realizations, that in turn led to different choices being made, activities undertaken, avenues explored. Epiphany and growth never come up. But teary-eyed recognition of honed victim status does.
"Sir" has become a staple of misandry. What do I mean by that? Women on social media will make up something that a man never did to them. They will be lying. They are playing to the girl power crowd, then getting wine drunk at night and fingering their six cats, while blaming men for all of their problems in life. It is the patriarchy's fault. Everything in their life is the fault of the patriarchy. This is also an excellent way to go in terms of crowdsourcing those "I'm so sorry that happened to you" responses. Then there will be always out of shape men who get into the comments and white knight in hopes of getting laid.
The way it works is like this: A woman invents something, portraying herself as victim. Things never add up in these accounts. The stories are riddled with gaps, implausibilities, extreme leaps in logic, stuff is clearly missing, things plainly didn't happen as they're being reported, but no one cares about any of that. Almost everyone automatically believes everything they see on the internet. Especially when it's what they want to believe. And especially when the person saying whatever is being said is essentially the same person that they are. The woman does her mini-story, then at the end of it says, "Sir,..." and scolds the man and/or men she's made up.
Here's an example:
I've been going to the same gym for years. I see the same crowd daily. Over the past 6 months I've lost 63 pounds and my body composition has changed so much.
Call me crazy but there is something triggering about the same men who didn't pay me any attention back then all of a sudden trying to get my attention now.
Sir, you didn't want me at my low.. you don't deserve my high. (Insert emoji of hands with thumbs and index fingers pressed together.)
Yes, you are crazy. That is true. This woman says she lost sixty-three pounds and now it is time for the naming of the villain. It's all of the men--not just one, but every last one of them--who didn't want to approach her romantically--at the gym--when she was sixty-three pounds heavier. Because they should have. (Keep in mind that if they did, they likely would have been villainized in a different post for sexualizing her; it does not matter how you get those "I'm so sorry that happened to you" responses, just that you get them, whatever it takes.)
She could be 150 pounds right now. Who knows? What I'm saying is, chances are strong that if you lost sixty-three pounds--which is impressive; good for someone who was able to do that--you were obese for starters. You likely weren't 150 pounds and then lost sixty-three pounds. You could have been. But you probably weren't.
What do you think happened in the comments? The trashing of men. The "You go, girl, men are awful" casual, ubiquitous misandry that one encounters everywhere now, but which is especially concentrated in the publishing world, writing communities, and in academia. Politically, it's a thing of the left much more than a thing of the right. I'm in nobody's camp or party. I am my own unique self. I process what I see. I am an individual. I belong to no group. I have no horse in any race, save the general health of the human race. But you have to choose to be blind in order not to see these things.
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