Hellsite

This morning, I had what I will call a bit of a dissociative moment.

I woke up at 6:00 AM even though my alarm was set for 6:30.

It wasn't from the patter of little feet thumping across the living room, nor the "Simba-esque" whisper of "Daaaad" that usually follows those footfalls.

It was from the kind of anxiety I tend to get in the early morning before a contentious court hearing—the kind where your brain thinks about how to elicit certain testimony or challenge evidence. The kind that you can't shut off even to seize the last 30 minutes of darkness.

Rubbing the sleep from my eyes, I picked up my phone and clicked the "X" icon—you know, the one that looks like a shortlink to a porno.

Gotta wake up somehow.

I began to scroll, of course greeted by a cocktail of digital narcotics: porn bot replies, thirst trap titty shots, news of war, outrage, useless argument threads, publicized drama, and clickbait fight videos.

The usual.

I don't know what did it—perhaps it was the folks dancing on the grave of an Antifa scumbag tragically murdered by the very person he naively sought to champion—

but I dissociated.

What is this. What the fuck is this? Why am I looking at it? I don't even like it. I don't even fucking care.

As a millennial, I was perhaps among the first generation of children to grow up with social media. I remember logging into MSN instant messenger frequently during middle school. Facebook hit my freshman year in high school.

I'm sickened to think of the thousands of hours I have spent scrolling through feeds or replying to instant messages. The poor moods it puts me in. Being short with the people I love because of some bad exchange with a stranger, or being down about engineered existential doom.

In particular, I've used bird app since at least 2012.

I quit in 2019—for 10 months after my first son was born. It was undoubtedly good for me.

But content's gotta content. And I like making content. When I can. And someone's gotta see it right?

So I came back. Gotta promote content somehow.

But it's a drug. That's what it is, and always has been. Even the content creation. That's why people make it.

Who are we without these platforms?

Twitter is a technocratic wet dream orders of magnitude beyond what Ray Bradbury imagined in Fahrenheit 451.

But I'll be there. I know I will be. And so will you.

And so will the porn bot replies, thirst trap titty shots, news of war, outrage, useless argument threads, publicized drama, and clickbait fight videos.

Some of you are there right now. Reading this.

It reminds me of a line from one of my favorite bands, Pig Destroyer.

Notes in the Margin

People generally like uplifting inspirational content. I got writer's block so bad I just had to say what's on my mind. Maybe this will be inspiration for a digital cleanse.

I keep planning a day to devote to finishing the Oppenheimer Part II script, but every day turns into some work emergency or another and then it's quitting time.

I'm hoping tomorrow will be the day.

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