Infinity, Love, Trust, Doubt

Buttload of true stuff in there. Not a single shred of it is any of your fucking business. No offense.

That's what I get for posting while sick. I don't do this kind of crap anymore when I'm drunk or Ambiened -- learned that lesson -- but who knew a fever shuts off your brain? So, look, here's the thing...

I don't understand blogging/tweeting/tumblring/facebooking every single shred of every single hour of any life. I don't understand the internet as counselor, lawyer, and best friend. Never will. You, Mr Internet, can have my stories and the parts of my histories that I want to give to you because I like you reading me. You can have the stuff that goes on in my imagination, my writing...the stuff that I'd bullshit with a relative stranger about over a beer. Sometimes stuff that's a little deeper because I'm trying something out, or I have a specific group that I'm writing to/for. In those cases, Mr Internet, you can have it because you just happened to be there when I was in the mood to write it. But I ALWAYS know who it's for.

I don't understand what validation/release/understanding is supposed to be had from voyeuristic strangers pawing through the scraps and blood and grease of our lives. If they all give me a big thumbs up when I tweet that I'm going for a ham sandwich, does that make me more right? If "fartwhiffer37" from Des Moines disagrees with me not taking a shower today because I'm a little rank, does that make some appreciable difference in my life? Does "lemontwat327" from Quebec's Heart/Star/SmilyFace for my posting that I'm driving down the road to pick up my grandkids vastly improve the value or quality of the experience? Is her life so sad that it's improved a whole Heart/Star/SmilyFace-worth by reading about some total stranger on the other side of the universe chauffeuring his sprogs? Is my day utterly DESTROYED because another 20 total strangers didn't FavStar me, also? Do I actually need 50 complete fucking strangers to get me comfortable with my new haircut? Do I actually believe that my "bros" on the internet, this crowd of laughing hyenas and defective human vultures fluffing the grey, echoing loneliness of THEIR lives by sucking the marrow from the bones of mine are actual human contacts and interactions that an entire community can be built on?

I'm sorry, but only the stupidest humans on earth (e.g., most of them) can possibly believe that "thorsdik65," whose only representation is a Hello Kitty thumbnail and a running stream of Norse penis jokes, ACTUALLY has their best interest at heart based on almost a month of exchanging 144 word texts and a couple of emails. And if he REALLY does, HE'S  too stupid to live.

And I don't associate with anyone that stupid. So, then, the question is, why do they do it? 

“Man shouldn’t be able to see his own face – there’s nothing more sinister. Nature gave him the gift of not being able to see it, and of not being able to stare into his own eyes.

Only in the water of rivers and ponds could he look at his face. And the very posture he had to assume was symbolic. He had to bend over, stoop down, to commit the ignominy of beholding himself.

The inventor of the mirror poisoned the human heart.”

— Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

Narcissism? Yeah, to a degree. But much of it's almost the exact OPPOSITE of narcissism -- the constant need to be validated by someone else. If you ask, they'll discuss some form of "pure honesty," "radical openness," or "performance art."

Bullshit. They're the school sluts, the wannabe class clowns, the kid who'll eat anything for a dollar, the circus geeks biting the heads off of chickens, the frantic arm-wavers in life who are muscling their way to attention so that for that fleeting split second, or day, or week, they can be with the popular crew, exist just like regular people who are noticed on their own. They are those who, due to life or circumstance, don't really believe they're of value, don't know how to even begin understanding they are if they're not flashing their tits on the street corner to make it happen, even when those who love them never waver for a single second in telling them truth, telling them differently.

They'll say the opposite, of course. They'll say that they are STRONGLY self-aware, and that their yammering "honesty" is evidence of that strength.

Wrong. They are the football team's towel boys and equipment managers, glorying in the self-delusion that they are one of the team when they do something so spectacularly bizarre that the faceless, anonymous crowd (their "friends") glances away from the real game for a split second to notice them.

Their self-worth hinges on whether they get 50 "likes" for each of their two days worth of pithy observations on the mundanity of their half-hourly-updated lives, whether they get a hundred "likes" or "you look so nice" postings of a sad-sack self-pic with the label "I really look pretty bad today." They are devastated when they put up a "nice" picture of themselves and the internet does NOT come to a screaming halt in order to allow the bandwidth for every single stranger on earth to simultaneously comment how pretty they are.

Hello? Internet? How About This? Do You Like Me Yet? Wanna Hang Out?

I was slowly seeping into that oversharing culture. And even then, I didn't understand it at all. It was "slop," overlap from a general movement toward becoming more open, more exposed. My comfort level with it (the generalized sharing) was near zero. But becoming more open was a necessary change for where my life was headed at that point, and the slop, distressingly, seemed to be unavoidable. I've done more ex-post-facto editing of blog entries lately than at any time in my history, knocking some of the more obvious corners off the blathering weirdness. I STILL never understood for even a single second how hypersharing is an even remotely appealing life.

Well it turns out that the experiment in the "openness" thing ain't working. Kind of an ass-beating, truth be known. Apparently, I'm just not any good at it. So, back to...I dunno. Something else where I'm not kidding myself, for starters. The first step of which was taking down the original, 100% accurate "sharing" here, which really did/does represent my "inner soul" and reminding you (and, vastly more importantly, ME) that it's none of your fucking business, because some things are just our own, or are for just true friends, lovers, and brothers and sisters, and "cockblock683 in Boise," "my bestest cuddle-buddy Tumbly," or #thewholefuckingtwitterverse aren't anywhere on that list.

So. Yay. Right?