Curation

There's this tendency, among people I follow on Twitter (not you, Fade!) and people I've known elsewhere, to take glory in how different we are from racists and bad people. I don't understand it. For my own peace of mind, I've gone dark around everything recently, because social media has a net negative impact on my life, serving to make me lonelier and more upset. But every now and then I try to check things, because Mara Wilson curates the funniest people on the internet, it's a great way to keep up with basketball news, and some of my friends online are good folks. But this... this shithead flagellation, this is something I don't understand. Like, I get that Ann Coulter is a goblin, but not one of those cool goblins in The Goblin Emperor. But why in the world do I need to see what she says, broken down and refuted and dissected, by multiple people, across multiple days? Why are we only boosting the negativity and the takedowns of that? Why is Twitter unusable? Is it because Twitter is a terrible website that boosts immediate reactions and profits off of harassment? I mean, probably? But why do we -- and this is a general "we" -- why do we want to dive into what terrible people are thinking and surface it for everyone else to see? There's a line between Megyn Kelly bringing Alex Jones onto her show so he can spout his bullshit for everyone to see and between @bringindaboomdrop_xx-420-xx_ reposting some sick burn video making fun of Alex Jones, but somewhere in there you're still making sure more people see Alex Jones. No one needs to see Alex Jones! My mother doesn't know who Alex Jones is, and she's a better person for it. 

The internet's really dumb and I'm happier the less I'm on it. That kind of sucks. Dreamwidth is safe! It's mostly books. I need to read more books. Tell me what you're reading and what you're writing! And what you're listening to. And what you're fighting and what you're resisting -- I'm not saying don't talk about those important things. But maybe don't go diving into the deep end of the shitposts to then rise up out of it in some elaborate musical number about how much better than them we are. We don't all need to see every racist screed to fight them.

Next time I'll say something interesting. Oh! Here's something interesting -- this seems like the raddest possible RPG and I'd love to play or run (probably run) it sometime. https://www.shutupandsitdown.com/rpg-review-blades-in-the-dark/