This is a particularly bad subject for a first blog on this… blog… but part of what I want out of this blog is a place to put less thought-out and less overtly political feelings, and this is something that I can’t get off my chest otherwise, so we’re starting here.
I think I’m largely abandoning social media as a place to be social. I am a weird guy with weird interests. I don’t enjoy going to sports games and shit like that all that much, I don’t like making sure I keep up with all the latest movies, I don’t like reading must-read books, and I don’t like listening to must-hear shows. Those things are simply not interesting to me. Because of that, I’ve always seen being online as a way to connect with people who do things I’m interested in and think in ways I appreciate.
What’s become clear to me, however, is that I haven’t gotten anything out of this.
That seems like a particularly mercenary thing to say and I am a mercenary in the way that good guys in video games are mercenaries, but I don’t mean this in a purely transactional way (though that will come up later). It’s not that I think everyone needs to be my friend, or that everyone I reach out to has to respond. It’s that, over more than ten years on social media, no one is my friend.
There are people who I have been friendly with, sure, but there is no one that I have been comfortable with. The main reason is that I consistently get rejected. I’ve reached out because someone was acting suicidal and was essentially told to mind my own business. I tried to defend someone I thought I was close with against being directly insulted and was told to butt out. When I try to commiserate with people or extend a hand, it simply isn’t welcome. So it’s difficult to become friendly with people when I can expect only rejection from them.
It’s not only rejection, it’s also that no one reaches out. I remember there was someone who I did a podcast with for a while. I was going through it emotionally at one point and he was like hey you can talk to me. And I did. And it was horrible for me. What I remember is feeling such intense disinterest even through the screen. Short answers. No follow-up on things I said. This is a big contrast to a chat I just had with one of my oldest friends, just barely touching on this feeling of social isolation, which felt so much warmer than anything I’ve ever felt from someone I met on social media.
(“gasp! He has friends!?” Fuck you.)
I’ve had lots of breakdowns where one of the things I’ve asked for is for anybody to reach out, to offer some advice, anything. No one does. There have been times when I’ve directly asked people if I can change things about what I’m doing, if I’m putting people off, etc. People just say oh yeah don’t worry man things will work out. These are not the reactions of friends. These are the reactions of acquaintances who are not particularly interested in being more than that.
What it made me realize is that though people put up an ideal of non-transactional relationships, most relationships are transactional. People who know you do not just take an interest in you because they know you and something bad is happening. They must be invested in you somehow. I find a lot of people’s whining (let’s call it what it is) distasteful about how their particular minority group has to appeal to the larger public in order to get things done. “Why don’t you just care about Black people for their own sake, why does it have to be about how it helps white people?” Well, do you care about other people just because? I’ve never seen it. Not for myself, not for anybody.
In general, I see altruism being performed for major causes or for people who have already proven some value to the one doing altruism. If you are suicidal, it’s not enough for someone to simply know you for them to try and stop it from happening, you must have already been their friend. You have to have already established that tight-knit relationship by doing something that they really like. If you haven’t done that, and if it’s not going to get them anything, people generally do not care.
I am not saying that “genuine altruism” does not exist. What I’m saying is that I approached this like I’m walking through a garden and able to pick any of the available plants, but in reality, if I want to find a plant that will bloom, I have to dig my hands through gravel and keep focused or I will miss the little flower bud.
I find solidarity based on deeds to be absolutely fake. This is one reason why I scrupulously did not attempt to gain friends by doing things. I look at people who are successes and who have found their friends all after gaining success. Those friends are very often not real. They are attracted to the success itself.
I am not a success now and I’m not saying that I will be a success, but the idea that I can’t do anything impressive is simply false. I’ve written things that have won awards (not large-scale, but they are wins), when I produce videos people like them, I’ve gotten a job offer off of a joke, I’ve written for sites. But what I wanted was for someone who I liked and respected to help give me a leg up. I wanted to find friends who would support me as I am now, who I could remain friends with as I got to wherever I was going. That has not happened and no one has ever helped me understand why.
When I bring problems like this to the internet rather than directly to my friends, it’s because my friends aren’t on the internet and wouldn’t understand. I keep hoping to find friends among the people that I do hang out with but no one ever takes the next step to even reach out and be there for a second. And that’s what I need to know someone is my friend. I never thought it was a big thing to ask and I don’t think it is. What I think is that I haven’t paid the toll. And if that’s the case, I would never believe you were my friend in the first place.
For a long time I’ve used “I’ve never been cool” as a tagline, and I didn’t mean it with a huge amount of seriousness. It was just like, yeah, I know I’m a bit of a weird guy. It was like, if you’re not cool too, maybe we’ll get along. But now I have a full statement.
Solidarity is for the cool and I’ve never been cool.
This isn’t going to change who I am. I still believe the things I believe. I still hope for a better world and I will write towards that, and if there is any other work that I can do, I will try to do that as well. But hope is the word. Not trust. I don’t think I trust people will do what they say anymore. Moreover, I can’t hang around people who have done nothing but let me down over ten years. Insanity is continuing to do the same thing and all that. And if I can’t be my authentic self and find someone who, for what I’ve done or because of their own altruism, is interested in seeing me do well, then I’m not going to be on social media anymore.
I don’t dislike social media, but people have shown me that it’s not for me. They’ve shown me that if I was about to die, they wouldn’t give anything to help prevent that. The people who I’ve donated money to would not give me a dime to help me eat even if they’d won the lottery, and no one else would, either. I’m not going to apologize or accept that I’ve done something if no one has asked me for an apology. It’s just over.