i hate this dystopia we’re living in that superheroes in movies tend to b billionaires and the villains are the working people that got fucked over by them
i try to stay some amount of up to date, but this morning i realized that the major “read LW once + now has a substack and/or podcast” project on twitter is reviving rockefeller republicanism and i kinda want to delete all social media and move to montana and preach on street corners about the wrath of tengri
ah yes the two genders: has highly codified and documented processes towards appearing attractive vs. cannot menaningfully strive to be hot and must rely on indirect societal markers and make it look effortless
The concept of “spyware” has disappeared from the common internet lingo after it became the case that the word could now be used to describe nearly every major website and a huge percentage of the most commonly-used software.
You know, when I was a kid, I kind of assumed that “mental illness” meant “mental illness as diagnosed by a medical professional.”
Because that’s what the movie Freaks and Geeks was about. It was about a group of nerdy kids dealing with the repercussions of being socially awkward in a positive way, and how that positively impacted the wider world.
And I’m not trying to downplay the significance of that movie, or the damage it did. I was very young when I saw it, and the way it portrayed the world, I couldn’t have been safe in it. I was too old for that stuff to be just a metaphor for life, and I was too young to be in it myself.
But now that I’m an adult, I’m noticing that that’s not how the term “mental illness” is used anymore. It’s not just about a professional diagnosis. It’s also about “feeling like an abomination against God or nature” or “living in constant fear of dying from a disease that would have been cured in your younger years.”
And I don’t think that’s right. I think there is a real thing out there that deserves to be called “mental illness,” and that thing is trauma.
I don’t want to downplay the extent to which real mental illnesses, real traumas, exist. I know that I have some. But I also think that trauma is a much bigger part of the human experience than I realized when I was a kid.
I remember watching Jurassic Park with my dad, and realizing that I had never seen that kind of level of fear before. I had seen it in movies and on TV, but in a show about dinosaurs, it was totally novel and frightening.
I have never seen a story with the level of trauma that exists in most superhero comics, ever.
I don’t think that people who read about aliens, dragons, or superheroes should feel ashamed of themselves for not understanding how they work. I think they should, but I don’t think it’s a waste of time to learn.
People should be able to learn about the world without feeling like a bunch of freaks and creeps.
So I’m for the term “mental illness” as much as the next person, but I think a lot of people, including some people who know me, are still using it in a way that trivializes trauma.
(And that’s before we get into the whole “I was abused and I’m still abused” thing, which is a whole other kettle of fish.)
No | rather not | I dunno | I guess | Sure | Yes | FUCK yes | Oh god you don’t even know
Riiiight.
This is a story that starts in the company of your friends and ends with you back in the company of your friends, but it’s not a story the friends would ever tell, not even to one another, not even if they could, and not a story even the narrator would care to think about.
In the company of your friends you drink, you fuck, you fuck again, you shoot your mouth off in meetings, you sing dirges for the dead, you haggle over the price of a packet of matches, you hold court over the sub-Zero heifers, you lose close friends to each other and then lose close friends to death by sniper’s nest, you hide your face in an old man’s necktie, you get into fistfights with aging rock stars and you talk about the wars, you stub your toe and you tell the story of the cobra that you ritually tortured to extract its heartsickening essence, you talk about the hot dog that didn’t die in a hot dog bun, you talk about the priest that did, you drink scotch and you talk about the faith that was, you talk about the war that you know won’t be, and you talk about the war that you think will be, and maybe someday you’ll stop.
