Nothing says privileged like toddler billionaires in a week-long Twitter war with also-privileged corporate DEI crybullies (who don’t actually do anything other than puff up themselves, you may have heard) and far right lunatics saying “DEI must DIE” (ooh witty) suddenly being deeply concerned with plagiarism at ‘elite’ institutions in the richest country (read: kleptocracy) in the world.

The institutions with oh so much status and merit, whose graduates are behind a disproportionate amount of evil in the world, between Wall Street, weapons manufacturers, tech bros, Hedge Funds and corporate lawyers… this is obviously the single most egregious thing anyone who came out of Harvard and MIT has ever done.

We get to watch as they all argue what to do with us serfs. How much or how little access we can have gifted to us based on our sex or race. But, only so far as to avoid talking to us, helping us, listening to us or sharing with us. Only enough to keep us quiet, and know our place, and remember that we are there for the rich to harvest and exploit: our stories, our data, our identities, our pain, our desperation.

They are very, deeply concerned with what to do with the riff-raff and the muckraking, so they are arguing over which bones to throw and which scraps to let us fight over.

I dunno, food? Living wages? Housing? Clean water? Not pulling the ladder up behind you after you’ve weaponised real social justice issues to help yourself and your own brand? Not using other people’s identities to subvert labour laws and weaponised at-will employment?

Nar, instead we’ll go to war over a missed comma in the footnotes in 1993. That’ll keep ’em distracted whilst corporations literally vacuum up the serfs’ data and art without attribution or compensation. I mean…

Have you seen the carry on? Absolute toddlers. Spoiled, narcissistic, crybully, pointless, entitled and tone deaf toddlers.

My hot take? All of those people should bite the big one, eat my poo, and do it as fast as possible, and everyone else should ignore them and focus on the housing crisis instead. And the genocide.

But that’s just me. What do I know about anything. I didn’t go to Harvard. I only care about real social change, where single mothers can have on-site daycare and everyone can go to ANY University. But, I’m not smart and didn’t come out of a merit-vag, and my Dad couldn’t afford to buy a wing at the library. I had to absorb $150k of debt and earn my way into a ‘non-elite’ university. I mean, I thought it was about knowledge.

But, I’ll admit I have been wrong about a lot of things lately. Like, merit, being a good person, and being authentic, honest and telling the truth was what mattered, and ‘hey, tell us about your day in this little box, we promise we won’t do anything bad*’ was a good idea.

Instead, I will defer to the geniuses at these institutions to figure out the most pressing issue of our time: figuring out whether nepo babies really deserve their degrees and positions.

I’m sure it goes without saying that it’s not the event itself, but rather, 22 years of the same ridiculous behaviour, where, blissfully unaware that that the rest of the world doesn’t care (and in many cases, or even realise there is a rest of the world at all) and, like clockwork, start losing their minds over memes and wrong-think (okay, more than usual).

9/11 is almost as annoying as when they wish us a Happy Thanksgiving. Almost.

It is extra funny this year, because right wingers in the US are going through a particularly batshit phase of their usual batshit (you guessed it… more than usual), and they are the very same people who are perfectly happy for their fellow citizens starve to death, die from poverty-related illnesses and lack of health care – at the rate of roughly one 9/11 every two weeks. Oh, that’s not including COVID deaths, children, and… drum roll… US foreign policy. That number is just from poverty.

See, I was on the Internet when it first happened. It is extremely difficult to explain just how …batshit it all was.

In retrospect, sharing my thoughts about United States foreign policy and how it wasn’t entirely inconceivable that this would happen at the time was probably a bit much. Especially in the September 2001 Babies Yahoo! Group, Téa. Geez. But even despite my tonedeaf trolling of American conservative women, the reaction was still way over the top.

Americans lost their fucking minds. And rightly so. Initially. As the months rolled by, it got bigger and bigger and bigger. I was there as Americans started selectively deifying soldiers and policing everyone else’s thoughts and jokes, cry-bullied, cancelled musicians and later… passed The Patriot Act in its name.

Which, in case you aren’t clear… wasn’t good. 9/11 was a major turning point for the Internet. The original sacred cow was cynically exploited in the form of the Patriot Act, resulting in the massive overreach, and the erosion of privacy and civil liberties we see today. Oh, and it also set the stage for the ‘cancellation’ playbook we see today, like, you know… manufacturing consent for war, mass surveillance, and cancelling and smearing anyone who objects and that whole War on Terror thing, that hijacked people’s lizard brains to get them to act as hall monitors, foot-soldiers, vigilantes and assassins on behalf of anyone who wants to ‘nudge a needle’.

9/11 is the Internet’s ground zero for the deplatformings and systematic dismantling of digital rights as we know it today. So yeah, I’m gunna take the piss. You know what? I’m still kind of mad at what they did to the Internet, that had so much optimism and hope for a better world. Instead, they wrecked it, put banner ads all over it and made it absolute fucking garbage. And, because Americans Online in their Eternal September tend to have zero situational awareness (okay, more than usual), nor bother to notice the emotional toll their never-ending trauma dumping and death cult infighting takes on the rest of us, some people need to use humour to make the internet… fucking bearable. Okay, more than usual.

So, here’s my favourite 9/11 meme, sent to me by my 14 year old. El oh El.

I also mentioned that I gave birth to my daughter that day. Folks, I kinda have my own stuff going on. It was traumatic in its own way, but also, over the years, has become more painful, as I reflect on the kind of mother I hoped I’d be, and the kind of mother I ended up being. Which is not a great one. I thought I could have it all. Much like the internet being democratising and a platform for freedom of expression, that was a lie too. And so I do what I do best: make dark jokes and try to suck the poison out and make the pain at least count for something, or result in something good.

Even if it’s a dumb joke that makes people laugh for a second and breaks tension when everyone is being annoying.

So, as if the Eternal September 11 carry-on irritation isn’t enough for me at this time of year, I also have to deal with it being my estranged daughter’s birthday.

This year, it has a particular sting to it, because I also logged on to see members of the gentrified US ‘left’ who all preach ‘kindness’ and ‘compassion’ and are constantly moaning about ‘stochastic terrorism’ when it suits them … cheering because Elon Musk is estranged from his child over the gender issue.

Look, I have my issues with Musk. But, truth is, those who think they are punching up, probably think this about me too. It must be great to be able to oversimplify every issue and live in a world of good guys and bad guys, where I am a bad person who deserves it. That seems like a far less healthy way to deal with pain than humour, but who am I to judge. Shit’s complicated and people gotta do what they gotta do. But, I also know that there are people who I consider friends and political allies who also think this about me, because they refuse to understand where I am coming from. I have accepted that.

Thankfully, for me, the political isn’t always personal and I have thick skin and, gasp, priorities that don’t change depending on what mentally unwell strangers on the Internet think of me. I’ve been at this game too long for that.

Righteous cruelty.

People have a tendency to show you who they are when something bad happens to someone they don’t like. And especially when they can wrap it in an ideology that gets them off the hook and turns their worst qualities into ‘analysis’. I speak not only from my own personal experience, but for many when I say this issue of sex vs gender has ripped families apart, a lot of it having gasoline poured on it by bad actors, and the mean-girl sociopaths of Twitter/X continually cry ‘stop hitting yourself’ not because they are about social justice, or policy, because they can’t see past their ridiculous and childish clapback politics. It turns them into playground bullies, who goad, and goad and then rub salt in the wounds of everyone who has had to navigate this problem… and then hide behind their distorted version of class politics because BOOMER BAD BILLIONAIRE BAD FASCIST BAD so let me, by proxy, bully ordinary people who have experienced some of the most painful shit anyone can go through: estrangement from your child/parent as a result of manipulation by outside forces.

Or simply paying for an edit button and long tweets.

Righteous cruelty is a helluva drug.

I haven’t seen my daughter in five years – partially (and I emphasise partially) because she’d been hanging out in various online communities that were telling her that fairly common mother-teenage daughter dynamics made her a victim of abuse. Without my knowledge, my flawed assumptions that it was normal teenage girl stuff and normal I-made-mistakes-or-misread-the-situation were constantly being spun on its axis and given the worst possible interpretation, and the most extreme solutions, because I was a ‘TERF’. Which is not even true.

I have to emphasise that I am not saying it is the only reason, because, you know, I’m me, but Tumblr ‘feminism’ and fandoms poured kerosene on my far-from-perfect parenting and everything else so we weren’t given an opportunity to work through our mother-daughter stuff. Let’s just say that if the mother-daughter stuff was a plant that was in need of some TLC, those communities were definitely the glycophosphate that killed it off for good.

Since then, I have done the painful inner work, see it as it is, and I am far more aware of what is going on. I can’t go back. I messed up. But there are also entire communities dedicated to giving people terrible advice, telling children to go no contact on their “toxic” families, as a first resort and as a conflict avoidance response, rather than a last resort. I promise, I am not crying victim. I totally get it. More than most. It is something which I am most definitely an advocate for, because I have done the same with my own family. So, I might not agree with it, but I definitely respect it.)

Top of funnel.

Social media was intended to be a place where we could share, interact and create. I truly believed that. I still believe it is possible if tech can get our priorities right and some of us old schoolers remember why we do what we do. Instead, through a series of blind spots and being over a barrel with VCs who lied to us about making the world a better place – and, well capitalism doing what it does best and worst – it has instead become a weapon of mass distraction, a tool for propaganda, and a never-ending maze of radicalisation funnels known as ‘political marketing’. They blame Trump and Russia and Biden the Communist or whatever other boogeyman they can (and they certainly don’t help), but it was actually the Obama campaign that made it what it is today.

Compare the Ladder of Engagement it to the ISIS radicalisation funnel. I dare you. Oh and it also looks like a standard marketing funnel too. I have been in marketing long enough to know that most marketers aren’t evil. They’re just too stupid and have too narrow focus on ‘nudging the needle’ – sorry – doing omnichannel data-driven campaigns to drive quarterly performance indicators – to understand that what they are doing is wrong.

Social Media is designed from the ground up to promote, incentivise and elevate sociopaths and psychopaths. It even makes good people have to pretend to be, or rationalise behaving like one to succeed. I won’t do that.

I must emphasise that my work has never been about the ‘gender wars’, even if part of my motivation was trying to understand what had happened between me and my kid and try to see it from her perspective. Everyone has a point, this is an unresolved political cleavage, and honestly, if I never had to think about this internet stupidity ever again, to be honest, it would be too soon.

But unfortunately, it is also the intersection of the worst problems that have plagued the internet: platform manipulation, all the wrong incentives, cults forming through fandoms, radicalisation funnels, dark money laundering through not-for-profit organisations, engagement pods, politicians being idiots about the internet, marketers being stupid about politics, abuse by state and non-state actors and every black hat marketing tactic known to man. And people aren’t okay. Kids aren’t okay. Families aren’t okay and are being torn apart because people refuse to understand this: Cults always hide behind something real. That’s how people get duped: because cults exploit real concerns, fears, and problems. The fact the far right have co-opted this certainly doesn’t help, but there are many, many people on the left who have been called fascists for so many years now you’ve basically diluted it, now that it is an actual threat.

So, I’m a TERF, apparently. Which isn’t true. I am just a feminist. Because I happened to agree that “ROGD”, especially in young autistic girls, needed more research (and saw those that tried be harassed out of it, which to me seemed suss) and I dunno, maybe women are allowed to set boundaries in our hard fought spaces and that was in conflict with trans rights in some areas and one side was being shouted down. All of this was well before the far right in the US glommed onto it, and I didn’t know what I know now, and anybody who claims otherwise is lying. It was wild. To this day, despite seeing many who came after me drift towards the clicks and the dollars and catch terminal brain worms, I still hold those perfectly reasonable points of view. Sorry, but being born female has different experiences and disadvantages than being born male. That is a fact. Grow up.

Thankfully, after COVID poured accelerant on a lot of these problems and melted everyone’s brains, with a little more time passing, the playbook overreaching and the cycle repeating itself often enough and enough people having their particular issue or innocent question make them the worst person on earth, everyone who has managed to keep their synapses intact for the last decade sees it for what it is: propaganda and radicalisation that hijacks people’s lizard brains causing a dystopian fusion of politics and marketing campaigns. We all know that little Idiocracy playbook by now – just repeat and omit information and sling mud often enough and do it long enough to make stuff true. And if you happen to be Rupert Murdoch or Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk or have a controlling share of a massive media conglomerate…. even better.

That tactic is called milieu control – an earmark of cults.

Also, basic Chomsky.

Or choice architecture.

Or… nudges.

They’re the same picture.

It’s never been about any one issue. The TERF Wars are ground zero for all of this. That is my only interest in it. Everyone who has dared to stick their neck out over it has been systematically harassed, enabled by dumb and unethical marketers, bad actors and unmanned algorithms.

It’s not a conspiracy, just powerful interests that favour this setup as it is, that catches good people in its net, because activists believe everything is about the one issue they happen to care about at the expense of all other issues. Single issue activist lizard brains, hijacked, as far as the eye and the infinite scroll can see… in order to disorient, distract and deflect. It’s a playbook that that makes Big Tobacco and Big Oil look positively amateur. Because Tobacco and Oil weren’t able to use the threat of suicide or ‘terrorism’ (sound familiar) as a threat. Pharma (who cynically refer to the ’emerging market of gender dysphoria’ in their financial documents – how’s that, socialists? Cat got your tongue? Doesn’t that make you a little suspicious? No? How do you not see the Oxy thing, and then Monsanto… how about now? How do you not see it? Good heavens.)

So, 9/11 memes.

I tried to make a point about how the original internet sacred cow that was 9/11, paved the way for the Patriot Act. The thing that was used by the US government to run roughshod over human rights, speech and privacy… much like the ‘hate speech’ laws are doing today. Any questions about these vaguely worded and heavily loopholed laws that rely on ‘trust us, bro’ when that trust has been so severely undermined in literally every previous case suddenly means you are ‘pro hate’ and ‘literal murder’.

If you object, you are a terrorist. For the love of God would you look up the Propaganda Model if you are a ‘leftist’. Please. For fuck’s sake.

So, yeah, I’m going to make fun of 9/11, to provoke the people who are currently screeching over speech, to – I dunno – not be a hypocrite, and maybe even get them remembering that time, where everyone got swept up into a cult frenzy and allowed for a lot of terrible laws in the form of the Patriot Act that actually came to bite them in the arse.

And I dunno, maybe look at your own behaviour and trauma and stop letting it be weaponised? If you oppose something, at least have your head and your facts straight and maybe cut people some fucking slack.

It’s really, really hard to hold a mirror to your own behaviour. Trust me, I know. Especially when you are in a situation where you could have done things differently and wish you could go back and can’t. I know better than anyone that facing that you might be wrong, or selfish, or not as great a parent as you thought you’d be and you can’t take any of it back. All the parenting books, brigades and deconstructionism in the world cannot help if you are unable to face your own demons and blind spots… and own it.

Own it.

Look at your behaviour when you are joining in a pile-on, or mobbing someone in their replies. Do you recognise yourself and who you wanted to be? Is this who you want to be right now? How did you get here? How did you end up a slave to dopamine, cortisol and adrenalin and just retweeting and re-blogging everything like it is a 2001 chain email whilst making everyone as miserable as you are? Going along with everything because it is easier than breaking rank or putting the work in to fully understand an issue and all its areas of grey – or worse – actually believing that your family are all domestic terrorists and rapists?

You don’t have to live that way. It’s hard to live honestly and face who you are with radical self-awareness, but it makes you bulletproof. The structural stuff can change, but it’s a slow ship to turn around. It takes generations of trial and error and setbacks and mistakes. It needs everyone who outnumbers the psychopaths and sociopaths to say ‘enough’ and work together and through our differences and cleavages and we can only do that if we know who we are, recognise our blind spots, and not let them get hijacked.

Failing a change of leadership, I tell you, we are stuck with this structural shit for a while, and for Gen X, probably for the remainder of our lives. But we can choose to not do this psychopath factory’s bidding. You can choose to not become your parents. You can choose to break the pattern and listen and learn and try harder. It won’t always work, but you can try. I am not saying you have to speak up, because of course, people have to survive, but you can choose to not be a shitty person or participate or believe the narratives that shitty people are pushing. You can not financially support certain behaviour. You can model to your 10, 100, 1000 people in your circle that you won’t treat people this way. You can not participate. You can, instead of doubling down, decide to be better from now on.

It’s okay to be a pacifist in the culture wars

You can break free of all of this stuff. You just have to see things as they are and know that there is more support than you think if you operate from a place of truth and good faith. You have to understand how your brain and its biases are used to manipulate you and get your rationalising behaviour. You can praise people when they get it right, and criticise them when they get it wrong, without turning into a fan or anti-fan.

Cults have rules for thee, not for me. So does out-grouping and scapegoating. And fascism. And polarising marketing campaigns and team sports. All of your rotten, abusive and cruel behaviour is fine, so long as it is righteous and for the right cause or team or brand. That person over there? They are a Suppressive Person (and yes, as someone who has closely studied Scientology tactics online, there are various bad actors and dark marketing agencies who use those in online communities and radicalise people, away from their families, by convincing them they are abused… parents… have a conversation about this with your kids.)

That ISIS & Al Qaeda playbook where they get vulnerable angry young people with a righteous cause to go do stuff for the sake of the cause?

That DNC and GOP engagement pod telling you to share what they tell you to share that kicks you out if you won’t?

That Not-for-Profit who has a Donor-Assisted Fund and campaigns against ‘hate’ who sends you emails saying that Elon Musk is coming to get you and your family because they included the use of the word ‘cunt’ to inflate their ‘hate speech’ numbers?

That Apple vs Samsung war?

That political cleavage between radical feminists and US neoliberal feminists?

Which has a higher body count? Oh, sorry. We’re not allowed to think about the numbers and the common enemies, lest we be securitised and branded a terrorist.

So yeah I’ll post a meme to release some of that pain and make people laugh at a 22 year old holiday where Americans act ridiculous. So what.

Be the change you want to see

And this is to the online left who still have some synapses remaining: if you’re going to lecture people about compassion, harassment and ‘hate’, I dunno, maybe model that behaviour rather than selectively Fair Game people because it is convenient to you? Maybe – just maybe – despite the painfully idiotic (and yes, fascistic) rhetoric of the right – there is also a – cult mindset in parts of the left too? Not trans people, eff off with that nonsense and start listening to each other.

Scientology says it’s about ‘self-improvement’ too – which doesn’t make everyone who supports self improvement a cult leader, and everyone who says ‘that’s a cult’ anti self-improvement or pro Psychiatry.

Consider if this is who you wanted to be. Look at yourself gloating over the suffering of others. Hiding behind an issue to justify being a bully and terrorising people online. If that’s who you wanted to be, then that’s fine, but then I want to ask why you consider yourself to be on the left? Because if there’s one thing we are supposed to do differently, it is to accommodate difference, show compassion, listen, and work with evidence. Not cool. Check yourselves, please.

You can hate on Musk all you want, but take the time to pause and understand why. “I don’t like the guy” is not a reason in a policy or discussion of an issue. I will defend where needed, and denounce where needed. I don’t live in a world of heroes and villains, black and white, and thought terminating clichés. And for the love of God, learn when someone is joking.

It’s no wonder Musk thinks he doesn’t need to pay rent, when he is so accustomed to living rent-free in everyone’s head. Personally, I am less concerned with the richest man on earth doing richest man on earth things and more concerned with you and why you are obsessed with him and using that to harass your neighbours, alienate your family and cancel your peers. What are you avoiding? Why do you want to wound others so much, especially on an issue that has cut so many, so deeply, on all sides. Yeah, sure, make it about the billionaire. But know that when you do, you are kicking people like me in the teeth too.

Maybe hurting someone like me is what you want? If that’s the case… well… what did I ever do to you?

Tweet? Disagree? Exist? Good heavens.

Did I tell some truth and suggest that you may be in a cult based on a lifetime of work and research, all the evidence and literature in this area around radicalisation funnels, internet geopolitics and policy, the history of Red Scare and anti-communism and where it leads? The ‘ladder of engagement’, Donor Assisted Funds and Political Action Committees and dark money and how corporations and the state spend tremendous resources on co-opting ‘the left’ in order to implode it from within?

Or, do I remind you of your own mother and therefore you feel like you can displace all that crap onto me? I dunno, maybe you need to work on that. Or at least, be more mindful of it and stop turning your trauma, intellectual blind spots and susceptibility to corporate messaging and authoritarianism everyone else’s problem and calling it activism. It ain’t. You’re a vessel for propaganda and your lizard brain has been hacked.

If only there were precedent for that.

Is this who you wanted to be?

Anyway, yeah so what I posted a meme. Oh no, I also pay for longer tweets and an edit button. I defended Elon Musk on a handful of issues. I, of course, deserve all of it, despite working on myself more than anyone I know. Despite simply trying to understand and analyse and help, and occasionally misreading a situation that is new and batshit. Anyone who is in the same place they were five years ago has not done enough work or is lying. I was there. They’re selling merch, not answers.

People who bully others online aren’t activists. They’re bullies who are rationalising their behaviour and calling it activism. Anonymous bullies. It’s easy to use any dumb little ad hominem attack you can find and not have to do the years of work that I have done and come out the other side a better person. It’s easy to distract, attack, insult and then keep moving the bar, all so you don’t have to face the fact that you’re behaving more like a Scientologist than an activist.

It’s hard to persuade people and change their mind.

But, if you do genuinely care about this problem I have been talking about for years, and I know there are some of you who do, maybe, at least consider that other people exist and have feelings too. Maybe consider that once in a while, you might be wrong. I am frequently wrong, self-correct, and try to get it right next time.

Fun fact: smart people actually fall into cults more because we are better at rationalising when dissonance hits. I have had to remain vigilant on that too, even being pretty much an expert in ‘online cults’. Ideology provides the perfect rationalisation for a lot of people on the left to escape themselves and their discomfort. I know. I’ve been working with annoying left-wing fucks my whole life and you get on my tits, frankly.

Beyond this… just don’t be a dick. You may not have a lot of freedoms right now, and may be feeling angry and resentful at the world and despairing at a system that is painfully, ruthlessly unfair, but you do have some agency, and sorry, but I am not letting you off the hook for being horrible to others because of some misguided anger. I’m not letting you off the hook when you say that Elon Musk’s autism or Kanye’s bipolar disorder is ‘irrelevant’ but then cry victim when it is you. I will not let you have morals of convenience without calling it out. Rules for thee, not for me. Huh.

Maybe you should do some self-improvement. Reflect. Is this who you are? Who you wanted to be? You are no different to the lunatics carrying on about 9/11 like it just happened and was the worst thing ever and justifying all sorts of terrible laws because you’re too lazy to think things through or face yourself. You are no better than Matt Walsh sending his followers to harass people for living their lives and having their own thoughts and telling us we are all broodmares.

Get it together.

I say this as someone who wishes they could go back and change things. I, for one, don’t want you to suffer. I don’t want families broken apart by politics. I don’t want misunderstandings to have gasoline poured on them because a corporation is telling you what to think. I want us to love each other, work together, and see things as they are. I want you to be consistent, based in reality and facts, and actually persuade. Not pitch a fit because you’re a little bit uncomfortable and can’t be bothered. There’s too much at stake.

And if that makes me the bad guy, so be it. We’ll see who ends up being correct.

Currently laughing at all the companies saying that mass layoffs will occur “due to AI”.

It’s the “due to COVID” of 2023.

Does anyone seriously believe this shit? Are we supposed to believe that economics is a law of nature and not ideological, and that these supposedly “good and kind” corporations just want to help? Are we expected to believe that they are forced to make impossible decisions and that being God is just so hard, you guys. And what about AI? Oh no, we’ll be forced to fire people. Alas! Alack! Give me a break.

Folks:

It’s a choice.

Stop buying the “difficult decision” shite. It wasn’t a difficult decision, it was a callous one, borne from self-interest, cowardice and a refusal to stand up for what’s right.

They’re cutting you for their shareholders, nothing else. Not a pandemic (in which most increased profits and used public funds on share buybacks), not on the supply chain (many have artificially limited supply to gouge people), AI (it is dog shit), a gust of wind, or a Twitter mob…

It’s a choice to put profits first, people second. Stop defending it.

Stop making excuses, and take some “personal responsibility”, which is what those who make the world so much worse than it needs to be tell us to do, daily.

Corporations choose to put prices up/gouge us, and fire people rather than absorb it, even though they can afford to. I’m not talking about SMEs, who feel if they remain quiet on this shit they might end up a billion dollar corporation (you won’t). I’m talking about corporations with billions of dollars in profit that was gained off the back of human suffering.

Companies who are all on board with United Colors of Bennetton billboards, but still keep people in bonded labour, sweat shop conditions and under surveillance. And they appoint the corporate cops, HR, to tell that YOU have a choice.

Well, so do they.

They choose to manipulate supply. They choose to cause inflation by putting up prices to keep their margins intact whilst you struggle to pay your bills, and small business’ overheads explode.

Then, because of a lifetime of propaganda that told you economics is a law of physics, you sit there, defending it, like it isn’t a choice.

Pay attention: the one time they need to do actual corporate social responsibility, and maybe not put their prices up, or keep staff on, or help people out: they don’t.

Remember this next time you see some HR asshole talking about sustainability, social justice or whatever. It’s a cloak that distracts you from the fact we are ruled by psychopaths.

They could absorb the costs. They don’t. The costs trickle down to you.

And they use whatever veneer they can to wriggle out of that fact.

Replacing people with AI is not a random act of nature that just happens out of the blue and is outside people’s control. There is not an invisible hand of a vengeful God, sending a flood of AI to drown all the sinners and their families, or a swarm of locusts to lobby politicians to cut their taxes, or a massive bush fire telling everyone there aren’t enough homes for everyone. The CEO is not trying to build an Ark to save you all from a vengeful God.

It is a choice. And they choose profit over people.

It really is that simple. Stop overcomplicating it. Stop defending it like it isn’t a conscious decision by individuals with agency. Stop pretending that corporations give a shit about you, the world, social causes or anything.

And worse, stop bloody defending it.

The only thing that trickles down is the suffering, the starvation, and the exploitation. And you keep making excuses for it.

It is not inevitable. It is man-made and you let them get away with it.

For crying out loud. Take some personal responsibility.

This is the first year I haven’t written anything* for #iwd, because, frankly, I am more concerned with the growing fascism/totalism coming out of America, and with all the nonsense spouted by Corporate HR and Marketing ladies on International Women’s Day becoming a big part of that, well, it makes me instantly suspicious.

For the first year in many years, I am not interested, nor wanting to participate in International Women’s Day. I am far more interested in everyone seeing the real threat right now: one that affects everyone and needs to be taken very seriously and with great urgency: the rise of totalitarianism in the United States.

Watching so many apparent-lefties run interference for all of this is deeply, deeply upsetting. Your ‘corporate partnerships’, your ESG buzzwords, your ‘synergy’ and jibber-jabbering on made-up, nothing-concepts that mean nothing and do even less. Surely you’re not actually falling for this? Where the fuck did you go? History is on repeat, and I am watching my supposedly-progressive peers drift into the banality of evil and tell everyone they disagree with to eat cake. This stuff is literally fascism. It’s plain as day. And it is bipartisan. Like, what the fuck.

Oh, that’s right, you’re out of that whole historical materialism thing now. That’s for poor people and teenagers. You’ve matured. You’re wise. You’ve carved a nice little gig for yourself disappearing so far up the arse of the Military-Industrial complex, I can only see your Manolos.

I mean who cares about Blackrock, Raytheon and Vanguard so long as they sponsor your morning tea, fund your ‘research’ and meet ESG targets? Nestlé, the company who said that water should not be a human right and those who think it is are ‘extremists’, has donated free bottled water for your #IWD goody bags. You’re alright, though. You won’t make a call to your mates who work there on behalf of those without clean water, because that might make things uncomfortable at your next brunch.

You definitely won’t conscientiously object yourself. You wouldn’t want to be negative or unprofessional.

Nespresso is B certified. You’ve done your bit. Successful campaign! A job well done.

I don’t know about you, but I could not be less concerned with the plight of the female half of the 1% right now and their sycophants. Especially those who see human suffering as a career opportunity and as fucking “content”.

Lean Out from #iwd. These women who post “what feminism means to me” do not care about you. I care about you. All of you. Even when you kick me in the teeth to make yourself feel better about your role in all of this. But I want you to know, ordinary person doing your best in this shitty system, will always be a mere supporting character in their Instagram Feed. You are a token to be pulled out whenever there is resistance to their egregious acts of exploitation, pollution, manipulation and corruption, so they can make ordinary people think they care about the plight of those icky bag ladies they step over on the street.

They pull you out, ordinary person who does their best, to lie to the younger impressionable women who haven’t figured it out yet. You are a woman whose stories they appropriate and shoulders they step on to further themselves, only to pull the ladder up behind them when they get there. Don’t be their billboard. Be honest with those young women about what truly awaits them. Do them the kindness of figuring it out earlier than you did.

Not sure if you know this, but this year, they are telling young impressionable women, much like they did displaced and confused young men a few years back, to “Learn to Code”. Back then, it was called a ‘linguistic dog whistle‘. Now, four years after #metoo and #timesup where those men were cast as misogynists and racists, they are saying it to the rest of us, whilst our lives and material conditions get exponentially worse.

They’re encouraging young women to go into cybersecurity, where those young women will be taught that they are fighting terrorism and disinformation. Not that they are being used as mules to silence and securitize striking workers, target whistleblowers and journalists, and censor all dissidents and spy on all the everyday people who are just doing their best, lest they step out of line – both domestically and overseas.

I know you know what I am saying is correct, even if you don’t like the way I am saying it. You’re working more hours than ever, with nothing left, you can barely afford electricity or housing, and your kids are still traumatised from the last few years. You’re starting to wonder what the point is, and why you bothered listening to them at all.

You’re watching everyone barely keep it together and can’t tell what is true anymore, after years of gaslighting by a corrupt corporate media that does their bidding. You’re working too much, so you don’t have time to check if what they’re saying is true, and even if you tried, that information is wiped off the internet because of ‘disinformation’. You see all of it, it feels too big, so you switch off, and numb yourself with endless 10-second clips of rich kids dancing. I get it.

I know you know I am right, because I am one of you. A former-working class woman who turned her back on my people because I thought those rich ladies would by my allies if I Learned to Code. Now we can’t even afford the cake they tell us to eat. Learn to Code. Linguistic dogwhistle, indeed.

They will use empty slogans every year to make you think you have a shot and that things might change. I swallowed all that shit too. I ‘learned to code’ in the 90s. I have been ‘coding’ and ‘a woman in tech’ for three decades. At no point was I told that it was also conditional on me shutting up, and going along with their bullshit, until I found out the hard way. It is. I won’t.

Know, though, that they will dangle outliers (who sold their souls and 70% of their business) to tell you that you, too, can ‘have it all’. Many of them even genuinely believe it, because they’re just comfortable enough/not smart enough/compliant enough to not feel the full brunt of institutional power that will come down on any woman like a tonne of bricks for speaking out about real structural issues.

…yet.

To the young working class women who still buy all this crap, I want you to know they will use your goodwill, dreams, hope and kindness as a weapon, but also as a mechanism of control so that you comply just long enough to get to your 50s and see it is all a load of lies. They kick the can down the road until you either run out of fight, are old enough to be invisible, or have enough stuff to lose. Thankfully, for you I have some fight left, nothing to lose, and don’t give a fuck if I am invisible.

Please don’t get distracted by aesthetics. You know that’s what it is. You see it and live it every day. I know you do. Even if you can’t bring yourself to care about others, look at how it is for you, and then think about how hard it is for those who earn less, or don’t have a mortgage, or rely on gig work. Pay attention to the things you are told, and then compare it with what you see and feel.

Look at the poverty and abuse of power around you, whilst everyone pretends some imaginary intangible threat is to blame. Look at the wars, destruction and fear and who benefits. Ignore corporate pinkwashing, Wokewashing, Rainbow-washing and greenwashing. Tell ESG and DEI grifters to go fuck themselves and tell them to donate to (or volunteer at a Food Bank) …or pay their goddamn taxes… or pay a living wage and stop union-busting behind Inclusive veneers one one hand, and distracting everyone from that with anti-Woke outrage on the other.

It’s all lies. You know it.

The United States is descending into fascism. The same pattern as Italy (yes, I said Italy), and at minimum is totalistic. No big deal. People can’t afford a roof, can’t afford food, are dying from diseases of despair… and these same people are pushing us into World War 3. And, none of the #leanin ladies give a crap. If they cared, they’d tell their ESG mates at Blackrock to stop inflating the housing market. If they cared, they would feed people and get them clean water. If they cared, they would tell their mates at Raytheon to knock it off.

They don’t.

They don’t care, and HR are their cops on the beat.

But if you must get your IWD fix, you can read last year’s post. I have more important crap to focus on.

#paytheprice

*Oh look I did write something for #iwd2023. I meant in advance.

Twitter is full of stupid, loud, entitled, angry and entitled Millennials who are mad at Boomers. Facebook is full of stupid, loud, angry and entitled Boomers who are mad at Millennials. LinkedIn has both: stupid and angry Boomers and Millennials who, whilst yelling at each other on Twitter and Facebook, are also on LinkedIn, where they’re all forced to behave, because they have to co-exist in meat space. With sexy results.

Gen X, all but forgotten, just hang and laugh at the stupid, angry chaos, because we hate both Millennials and Boomers and see that they’re ultimately the same agents and defenders of the status quo and are only in a fight to the death to run it. (Gen Z are off doing fuck knows, but entertain Gen X with their zero fucks).

Where other social platforms have a slight glimmer of sympathy, and pay lip service to, the working class and the disadvantaged, LinkedIn’s mission is clear: you are capital’s bitch, and if you want to eat, you’ve gotta play along. It’s… refreshingly honest.

Every day on LinkedIn, you see a rich kid who is winning awards for their “achievements” for doing the bare minimum. Hustle-bros who scam people, live with their parents, and call it “merit”. Woke Billionaires telling us that they really do super care about inequality, because look at my beard and jeans, not my actions. And definitely don’t look under the hood of my business. Look over there.

Don’t forget that you, too, can make a difference like me, if you just slept a bit less and just decided to be less poor, more male, and went to an Ivy League University and stopped being so negative. Poor people are so negative all the time. Why are you complaining so much? Don’t you know I’m a Forbes 30 Under 30 winner and why haven’t you looked at my jeans?

LinkedIn is capitalism’s most brazen bullshit, in all its glory, on tap. I love it. Everyone mostly existing in a structure that none of us want, but all of us perpetuate, because it’s just …easier. Ironically, LinkedIn is more human than any other platform, and culminates in a fascinating phenomenon that I call “capitalist cope”: thinking you can capitalism your way out of problems that are caused by capitalism by simply ignoring it.

LinkedIn is like jumping out of a plane, face first and then asking gravity to maybe be a little less negative as it pulls you toward the ground at 100 miles an hour. It’s funny. And delusional.

LinkedIn is a 24/7 capitalist cope machine, mask off, for all to see, and Human Resources professionals, brand managers and venture capitalists are here to run interference on the off chance you might look at all of it, contrast with your ever-increasing cost of living, lack of power and sleep deprivation and say “yeah, what a load of shit”, and start demanding a slightly fairer deal. Duh, it’s a free market. Don’t you understand basic economics? Like… supply and demand?

Without getting too boring and engaging in dumb quibbles (and so we can just move on so I get to my actual point) “Capitalism” is simply an approach to a free market, not the free market. In both socialism and capitalism, you still have a market, but they function differently, and prioritise different things. You still exchange goods and services and have money and iPhones and food and colourful clothes that aren’t hessian sacks. Socialists (well, the ones who know what they’re talking about and aren’t annoying), simply use “capitalism” to describe laissez-faire economics.

Socialism simply suggests that maybe capitalists have a slightly (cough) utopian view of human nature and history, and unregulated markets have had a tendency to concentrate wealth in the hands of a few. And, perhaps people are more than just units of production on par with dirt, water and wood.

Under capitalism, society orients towards profit, and because it tends to accumulate, we ultimately end up serving the interests of those who accumulate the most capital (because we all have to survive). So, ultimately we design a society that encourages exploitation. Capitalism, *drum roll* prioritises capital over social. You know, people-are-human-beings-not-robots, and tend to have a breaking point and heads of the wealthy tend to spontaneously fall off every hundred years or so if you keep treating everyone like shit.

Capitalism and socialism are in direct conflict with each other, because each system prioritises one class’ interests over the other and those interests don’t align. So, ultimately we either function to serve the 1% or we function to serve everybody. Get it? Can we move on past first year Pol Sci? I’m bored.

Which is why I find it really odd when I see otherwise-good people who work in Human Resources, or Brand Marketing, or their adjacent peers, posting on LinkedIn how they “love what they do”. I understand that there is a widespread fundamental misunderstanding of what capitalism is, does, how it behaves and how it always ends badly when you look at historical trends. I know that people simply don’t think about it. Mostly because socialists tend to be really fucking annoying. But… think about it now for a sec. Go on.

What is the real role/function of what you do?

When you say you “love” what you do, what does that mean? Do you ever think about the bigger picture? I get it… the small wins are good in a shitty world. But what makes it shitty? You like hanging with people and helping them. So do I. So why not do that for everyone? I also completely understand that you’ve gotta eat and pay your bills somehow, and you’re just trying to get by. But an awful lot of people seem to “love” what they do, when their job’s very function is something they should at least feel a little shame over.

I get it. I worked in marketing and thought I could nibble at the edges of this stuff for two decades. I tolerated it. But I never loved it. I saw it as necessary to live, until eventually I could no longer reconcile that I was contributing to an industry that was doing harm. I never “loved” what I did. I was ashamed of it, and even today, any job that I may take, I see as a concession based on my need to survive.

I used to joke that if I were more attractive I’d choose sex work over marketing, because at least that is an honest transaction …and you get to charge more for being fucked in the arse.

But, moving on.

You are allowed to see jobs as necessary, without “loving what you do”, or lying to yourself and others. It’s okay to admit that you need a job for money and would rather have time to write or paint. Geez. At least charge more for anal.

What is your real function here?

Zoom out.

For example, HR’s entire premise is built on the idea that people are resources to be extracted for profit by corporations, and are a “problem” to be “managed” if they step out of line. HR’s job is to extract as much labour from that “resource” as possible. Human beings are no different to the ground, air and water, and we all know how much corporations respect natural resources.

Just think about your role in it and what your primary function is. For one second. You don’t have to don a Che Guevara t-shirt and wear a beret and write slam poetry. I promise. Just think for a sec.

You “love what you do”?! Why? How?

HR’s function is to facilitate an egregious imbalance of power, whilst providing the illusion that the “resource” has a say in it. Those who are especially good at it make an employee think their exploitation is their own idea. You know, win-win.

Try saying no, or challenge this in any way and see how friendly HR is then. Try telling them that the way people are treated when applying for jobs is disrespectful, dehumanising and not at all okay for anyone who claims to be in the people business. Try telling them that the fact they say they love what they do when they know this is the stuff they do to people, actually makes them a terrible human being.

Try telling Human Resources that they are a salve, and actually run interference for an abusive, exploitative and dehumanising system. Point out that they call people Human Fucking Resources.

Watch them scurry, or shift in their seat, or deflect and call people like me negative, for asking for just one second to consider that maybe their ‘brand values’ are a little bit bullshit. Try seeing through the Woke veneers or corporate jargon and ESG platitudes. Try saying no to RUOK? Day or Pride Month because your employer has no legal right to ask about your private life and they know it. They’re friendly. They’re family. They care. They just want to accommodate you.

It’s definitely not bonded labour, because that would be bad and only bad guys force people to do labour in exchange for little to no pay to pay their debts. You are free to leave at any time. It’s not as if you will starve if you say no to it or anything.

Free market. Choice. Team Player. RUOK?

Unfortunately, modern government’s function is to (ideally) protect people from the excesses of this, and mostly to ensure people don’t get angry and start doing the numbers or reading the fine print and start getting ideas about changing things. The government’s job is to mediate between the interests of the wealthy and the natural and human resources the wealthy totally earned through hard work, like the air, water, earth and people in it. They earned it. Why would they pay taxes? Taxes are for socialists who hate the free market and don’t understand basic economics like supply and demand, you see.

Of course, governments also end up stuck with their own HR Departments, because we are now in a situation where corporations have claimed everyone’s resources, and therefore governments are starved out from tax avoidance, corporate lawyers and privately-owned public goods.

Government staff also have rent to pay and fast fashion to buy, and we all know that austerity is the only acceptable way to run a society. So, don’t go getting ideas, like that if we made it so people didn’t starve for not signing a predatory contract where they rented themselves out in exchange for shelter, food and water that is owned by a handful of people (which is definitely not slavery, that would be bad), HR would have far less power over the “resources” and unable to extract as much labour. We can’t have that.

Marketing (and by extension Media)’s function is to make inelastic goods and services out of elastic ones, and emotionally manipulate us to sell things at a higher price and therefore a higher margin. If they’re really super extra good at this, they can put a B badge on it like Nespresso, or make suffragette M&Ms.

The Media’s job is to tell you it is all fine that we’re in a cycle of indentured servitude of being harvested for profit, treated not as human beings but as ingredients in a rainbow cake on RUOK Day. Ignore the wars. What are you, a Russian bot?

I suppose I can understand why people don’t think too deeply about it. It’s painful to think you might be hurting people, unless, of course, you’re a psychopath. And I know that most people are just trying to get by. But this is why I want you to at least consider before you say you “love what you do”. Do you really? Do you really love this? Why?

I don’t. I hate that I am stuck here. I hate that I am surrounded by people who are part of a system that benefits so few, and hurts so many, and they have to find a way to love it. I understand that it feels overwhelming, but as much as we try to quibble over economic theory, and semantics and engage in a massive capitalism cope, it really is as simple as “do you prioritise people over profit?”.

Thinking too deeply about why you do what you do and who we are serving, and owning it, requires us to take stock and look at ourselves honestly. That can be really difficult, especially when the system just feels so large and the solutions are inconvenient.

But, if there’s one thing I hope it’s that people can at least be more conscious about it, and not be deceived by a system that makes all of this seem like our own idea. And for those who reject what I am saying here, I want you to examine what your priorities truly are, and to stop saying that you love people, or that you are in the “people business”. The line between bonded labour and trafficking and how capitalism functions at its core is simply a matter of semantics and branding, at the end of the day. Some are just better at lying to themselves than others.

It’s easier to pretend, or theorise, or quibble, or rationalise with ideological semantics than it is to look at who, ultimately, we are serving, why we are serving them (and yes, survival is a valid reason, up to a point), what our real values are, and how we might change the system that has been built from the ground up to benefit those who can rationalise putting profit over people.

I actually love people, which is why I am saying this. And I put my money where my mouth is. Zoom out.

I gotta be honest, I’m a little over it all right now.

I’ve gotten to a point where I am just so fed up with this thing called “working hard”. Not because I have to work hard – I love that part – but because I keep bashing my head against this brick wall called “being ethical”, “working hard”, “doing the right thing”, and none of it making a lick of difference to anyone. The bar keeps moving upward, the goalposts keep shifting, every fly by night who just discovered algorithms exist are experts on the internet, and it often feels like everything is stacked in favour of those who do the wrong thing, or happen to have been born rich, TV ready or famous.

Well, I already knew that that was the case, but not to this extent.

We’re having to move house for the third time in three years, through no fault of our own and landlord greed. In 2018 we decided we’d do the right thing and move from our expensive rental, into a cheaper house, so we could save our deposit. We did that and almost got there. Now, in 2022, that deposit has now been completely eaten up with moving costs, bonds, and we are now back paying the same expensive rent for a shitty house, with no security and the constant threat of the lease not going longer than a year, because greedy landlords are simply not happy unless they’re gouging tenants for every last cent… and fuck the consequences.

And… we aren’t even poor. We are what most would consider pretty lucky. I think that’s why it doubly pisses me off, because I also feel guilty for being so angry and ungrateful, because the Lean In Ladies keep telling me to be grateful for what I have. But I’m not. I want a house. I earned it. I worked for it. And it keeps being taken away by people who work half as much and treat me like shit, even though I outrank them in all other metrics.

I’m not saying that it would be any better if we were poor – of course that isn’t the case – I feel guilty because I know there are so many who have it so much worse. But, I did what was asked of me. I went to University. I worked 3 jobs. I got married. I did all the things. I sacrificed my social life and health. I set up my business. I hustled. I missed out on time with my kids. I behaved ethically and got good at my craft. I constantly up skill, I work around the clock. I read a book a week. What more do you need? Tell me. I’ll do it.

Still… nothing. Full circle. Back where we started. Where’s my merit? All those people who work half the time, do shady shit, treat people poorly – they’re doing fine. They just used the bank of Mum & Dad, or were lucky enough to buy a house in the 90s. I have no parents. I work for everything. Everything I have, I have done off my own back. When rich kids were partying, I was studying or working. When everyone was having fun, I was studying or working. Yet, for some reason, the person who hustles every step of the way just to survive, and even overcome her start in life, and works her arse off is the one who can’t buy a house, save for a house, or even keep one for more than a fucking year without some privileged arsehole dangling your roof over head like a Medieval Lord.

So, we are being forced to move again, with all of our money eaten up by moving costs and increasing rent and bills. We are so desperate for some security that we’re considering Vendor Finance, which will 100% fuck us. But, to be honest, we’ve come to the conclusion that if we are going to be fucked, we’d rather be fucked in our own house and give money to a greedy fuck who is helping us over a greedy fuck who is fucking us and acting like air conditioning is a huge favour, working taps are a luxury, all whilst implying we should be grateful for the gift of a roof over our head.

Yeah, this is inspired by the vapid rich fuckholes on LinkedIn talking about #IWD.

And, being banned from Twitter and facing censorship just for writing about my craft, sharing what I know about and dedicated my life to, and went into all this debt for in the first place. And I do that only to be called an idiot by fuckheads. Whilst very much appreciating those that do support me on Patreon, everything else makes me feel like a loser because after all this “hard work” and “hustle” and a desire to do the right thing, suddenly I find myself begging for tips, which I could have done without all the other shit and better tits, simply because my industry is the most evil and sinister thing to ever fucking exist and nobody even gives a shit enough to fix it, so long as they can make a buck and do “cool shit” with data that was stolen from people without their informed consent. And for me seemingly being the only person in digital who won’t do anal, I’m now dependent on basically a less interesting version of OnlyFans.

And, even if after all that “hard work”, hustle, learning a craft and doing the right thing, I decide it is all untenable and retrain, uni always feels completely pointless and a waste of my energy and time.

Can’t think of a way to incorporate fuck all there, and it all feels like a waste, but it’s uni, so I’m guessing that’s implied, because we all know (but can’t say) that the dumb people have figured out a way to steal “smart” from everyone too, by making everything so goddamn tedious and the admin such a pain in the arse that you go “fuck that” and they get to talk to you like shit because you are unable to complete the Leaps of Bureaucratic Bullshit, Feats of Strength by Pretending There’s an Actual Meaningful Difference between APA 6 and 7 and the Great Checkbox and Other UX Hurdles: Gamified and Wearing a Bow Tie For Some Reason. 

You could say they identify as intelligent…

And, faced with the prospect of moving again, because this house is overpriced and crap and we made the fatal mistake of saying so, and are now on tenterhooks about retaliatory termination. Which, yes, is illegal, but tell that to the 100 people that line up for every house that isn’t a maggot-filled shit-stained crack den with dial-up speeds as part of our superfast Zoom-ready pandemic-quality internet.

I’m so fed up with all of this shit. I am a grown-ass adult, not a fucking student in a delapitated share house.

Like I said earlier, I want nothing except what I was promised as part of this whole “work hard and sacrifice, it doesn’t matter where you came from, you can earn it” load of bollocks. Nothing more, nothing less.

Fucking Vendor Finance. At least if you’re going to be gouged, you can be gouged in something where you have actual fucking agency. And no, at the current rent and health insurance, we will NEVER be able to save $50,000 in cash. We started saving, and greedy arseholes took it all at the start of the pandemic by kicking us out so they could jack up the rent, leaving us to be gouged by this fuckhead, and Bupa continuing to reduce benefits and surgeons increasing fees, simply for the crime of being sick in the 51st fucking state of John Howard’s America. 

So no, we will not “try harder”, work harder. Ever. So fuck off with your avocado toast horseshit.

Yeah I’m in a mood.

Fucking Vendor Finance for fuck’s sake.

Half a million dollars to build a shitty place with no room to move or even park our cars in a suburb nobody heard of, that, because of the $60,000 Bogan Appeasement Bonus rather than any help with established homes or cracking down on slumlords, house flippers, hoarders or negative gearing… everything is worth $100k more than anything we’d pay for it, making it so that even if you DO get a mortgage, you are living in something that is worth less than you paid for it. Get fucked.

So fuck it, add 2, 3, 5% to the interest, then. At least I will only have one greedy fuck to deal with rather than a yearly rotation of fuckheads and 21 year old dimwits who, because of the demand for rentals, suddenly think they’re Gary Fucking Vaynerchuck.

Yeah I’m in a mood.

lol its cathartic.

Fucking Vendor Finance.

Fuck my parents. Seriously fuck ’em. Couldn’t my Mum have smoked or drank a bit more so I was born less capable of hope, and not having to deal with the curse of expectations of merit?

Yeah I have essay due on Friday, which is why I am writing everywhere except that so much. heehee.

I’m pissed off, fed up, fine. It is what it is.

heh it’s cool.

I’m fine.

Just enjoying ranting and having words come out. 

*lights metaphorical cigarette*

*throws it*

*everything explodes and burns to the ground*

Heh

Gotta hand it to LinkedIn. It’s good for my writer’s block.

Originally posted on LinkedIn. Not talking to you. You’re great.

I’d like to point out that #iwd2022 is sponsored by John Deere, who recently had a stand-off for *months* with workers who wanted a living wage and went on strike.

That’s who these organisations do business with.

John Deere wants to be right with women after destroying working class families lives by starving them out for months over a few bucks during a pandemic.

This is who #iwd organisations do business with.

Anti-worker businesses.

Anti-worker businesses are anti-woman businesses. Women’s rights are worker’s rights.

Women (and particularly Indigenous women/women of colour) are the least job-secure, in the lowest paid industries, and retire with the least amount of Superannuation. Even in management positions we are expected to do more free labour, do more hours for less pay, and have fewer promotional opportunities, even if you are more experienced and educated.

Not to mention the bloody constant mansplaining and gaslighting about how none of this is true.

And yet #iwd2022 accept the money of Jon Deere so that John Deere can wipe this reality away. And you’re all dumb enough to fall for it with your dumb selfies, because it’s not like you actually care about the issues.

The feminist movement is, and always will be, inextricably tied with the labour movement. No matter how much you try to distance yourself from that icky working class.

If you don’t support one, STFU about the other and stop hijacking all the hard-earned street cred of actual feminists.

#cuttheshit

Oooh fellas, thanks for the #iwd card and flowers. I hope it wasn’t too much of a bother to stop at the roadside at the last minute.

I observe conduct over words. 364 days of conduct.

Here’s your cookie, sweetie. Ugh.

And women who fawn over them for it, all whilst ignoring/scolding the Horrible Women Like Me.

Women Like Me who say pound sand, risking our reputations, safety and livelihoods.

Women Like Me who do impolite, socially isolating and difficult work.

Women Like Me who do what *costs us* because it *matters*.

Women Like Me, who believe in the goodness of everyday men, have sons, and think that fawning praise for zero-effort veiled misogyny is an insult to men that are doing more than zero.

Women Like Me, who make shit awkward and lose friends, because we are committed to the noisy signals, not virtue-signalling noise, only to go without acknowledgement, make no money and get none of the respect, praise or “support” you supposedly reserve for “other women”.

To the Women Like Me who get scorn, gaslighting, punishment and condescension. And, increasingly, censorship and suppression on social media for merely getting *to the root*, all cause you’re trying to get one and the dudes harassing us can’t.

I thought we were fighting for the right to read, write, vote, be paid fairly, and participate FREELY in public life as equal citizens (yes, online too) without being harassed (and “no” often escalating to threats, violence and death).

My mistake. It’s LinkedIn. We’re fighting for the right for rich white ladies to complain about men sitting in a way that it doesn’t hurt their nuts.

So, on #iwd2022, I am not dedicating it to “all women, except actual women I don’t like but including men”.

I am dedicating this to the Impolite, the Rude, the Honest, the Brave Women Like Me.

The Invisible and Silent Women, who wish they could speak up, but push back in big and small ways, every day. The office managers who won’t take shit. The Women who say no without emoji. The Karens. The difficult. The rude. The vulgar. The crass. The hairy legged harpies and the Bull Dykes and the Whores and the Bar Hags and the Working Mums and the Stay at Home Mums and the Carers and yes, especially the young women who see all of this shit and feel that it is too much to bear and fuck the labels altogether.

Believe me, I *get* that.

To the Women who agree with me but are so afraid of harassment or being fired that they can’t say so publicly. I see you, I understand, and …don’t worry, I got this.

The Women who’ve earned stripes, and had enough.

And, to all the Women who gave up *their* lives to give us ours.

The Women who, every day, are silenced, lectured, threatened, attacked, wolf-whistled, flashed and receive unsolicited comment essays from dudes who can’t seem to comprehend that a women might be out, in public, doing her job, and not want you to bother her.

Here’s to the Women Like Me.

The Women with Balls.

So long as men can freely identify into womanhood, this signalling about #breakthebias is utter signalling horseshit.

It’s up there with “embrace your femininity” and #leanin and other overprivileged, trite, vapid platitudes that are nothing but another thing to check off in Trello for your cynical, manipulative content calendar, talking about issues you’ve got absolutely no freaking clue about, because despite generations of bare-knuckled fighting for the right of women and girls to be literate, vote and work – you don’t effing read or do anything remotely uncomfortable whilst you coast off the back of other women’s trauma and labour.

Reading is for nerds and Karens. #Girlpower and #gratitude is where its at. All the optics and clicks, none of the class consciousness, hard work, suffering or patriarchal pushback.

It’s like the running of the bullshit today.

Don’t #breakthebias.

#cuttheshit.

Corporate she/her: you don’t give two hoots about women. You care about getting yourself to the next rung up past the glass ceiling you unilaterally declared was broken, whilst laying a brick for every woman beneath you.

If you’d had the privilege of being ‘assigned male at birth’, you’d be first in line to shout down women, send them threats and dick pics, and condescendingly tell them how they just don’t understand what words mean and what books say and most definitely can’t understand the complexity of something like… power structures, cultural hegemony, imperialism, patriarchy, capital and how all of that colludes to turn narcissists and Machiavellians into a sanitised mouthpiece for corporate nothingburgers… whilst telling women like me to shut up because we’re making things a bit awkward at the morning tea.

If you cared about women, you’d listen, prioritise our needs and concerns about the safety, welfare and mental health of all women, especially our most vulnerable women, and not act as interference for patriarchal WASP domination, gaslighting, control, submission and coercion for your personal benefit.

If you cared about women, you’d elevate voices like mine, rather than congratulating the men who do fuck all except post a heart emoji once a year in-between all the eggplants. Instead, you call for *our* censorship, and removal of *our* ability to earn an income.

Because you care about women. You care about #iwd2022. You totes care about #breakthebias even though you’re the one who most needs to stop perpetuating institutional misogyny and wielding your economic and social status like a weapon against vulnerable women who need your help.

Just #cuttheshit.

Or at least say a quiet thank you to women like me, who want better for you even when you punch us in the face, turn your backs on us and constantly walk all over the bodies of women who suffer (but hey, they’re Manolos!) because of unfortunate and inconvenient chromosomes, whilst being told we can’t even claim that anymore.

#cuttheshit.

I #breakthebias every day. I #paytheprice.

—

Hey there, babes, sluts and bimbos!

As you know, being seen to support gender equality is important to the @cookie team. To celebrate International Women’s Day, I’m excited to let you know that I’m launching an exciting new initiative that I would love for you to support.

It’s called Women Supporting Men Who Pretend to Support Women Whilst Telling Actual Women to Stop Being So Negative and to Support Women Who Support Men Who Pretend To Support Women.

It’s either that, or WSMWPTSWWTAWTSBSNATSWWSMWPTSW!

I’m not really sure it’s snappy enough, and it is early days, so obviously as a data-driven company, the name is subject to change should we decide to pivot.

Acronyms always have an air of mystery, though, and makes it more portable for other days! Do let me know your thoughts on this (preferably before I upload the brief to Fiverr – COB Friday).

I do hope that you will buy tickets to our International Women’s Day Event to raise money for the local Men’s Legal Centre, who are currently fundraising to print stickers in opposition to domestic violence, which of course is a great and important cause.

Obviously, even though this really should go without saying, this is an inclusive women’s group for all women, people who identify as women, people who are Assigned Female at Birth but now identify as Men, people who support all people, as well as people who are looking to invest (and their allies).

Naturally, all members get a +1 to all events and spa days.

As a women-led association, we do not allow any conduct that will make our members feel uncomfortable, so please no negativity, Karens or TERFs. Also, no politics, because we think it important for there to be one day of the year where people aren’t talking about politics, and simply enjoy good company, remember what it means to be a woman in this male-dominated world, and enjoy fascinating talks from inspiring women and men and people who support women and men and investors and their allies and +1s.

Also, note that due to COVID (and it being at a bar), the venue cannot accommodate children.

It’d be really great if you would Subscribe to our Instagram and use #atcookie #iwd2022 on your accounts to promote the event to your friends and family (with the above exceptions, of course).

Can’t wait to see you all there!

Tallulah xx

—
Tallulah Smith (She/Her)
Head of Fawning
@Cookie

Do you accept all cookies?

Tallulah@atcookie.com

–

@Cookie is a cutting edge productivity suite for women who support men who pretend to support women online. We use AI to help women generate phrases to send to the guys in their life to use on social media.

We live to make the lives of women around the world easier.

Coming soon: Enterprise Cookies writes entire press releases for the professional Women Who Support Men Who Pretend to Support Women. Studies have shown a 600% decrease in Women Who Support Men Who Pretend to Support Women’s workload per week after using the app, giving them more time for Omnichannel Engagement Sourcing and Team Building Sessions.

—

I post this as I am on a 7 day ban from Twitter. Whilst the reason was fair (I called Tim Pool a retard… fact check please), it is 7 days because I have had repeated 12 hour bans for innocuous reasons and also have been put on abusive lists like “TERF Blocker”, that are used to target women. Twitter has this tendency to ban women for defending themselves when men go after them, whilst the men get to say whatever they like with impunity. Because of course they do. But don’t worry. Tallulah and her friends support other women. We’re good. Let’s have another morning tea.

“Are you okay?”

“Yes, fine, why?”

“I’ve not seen you on Twitter or YouTube for a while”.

“Because I need to start finding a way to make a living. Those things are a luxury unless they pay, and they don’t. Everyone thinks I’m crazy, or wants me to give easy answers to things, and I don’t know what the point of any of this is anymore.

It feels stitched up. I feel pretty alone. I can’t get traction. I’ve spent six months building a site that never seems to get done because I am stretched so thin. Every algorithm is against me. Honestly, I think I need to accept that I’m wrong. I’m fine though. Thanks for asking.”

“Okay, well, let me know if there’s anything I can do to help”.

“Are you okay?”

“Yes, fine, why?”

“You seem lost”

“I am, a bit, but that’s nothing new. I just exist in the fault lines and often get despondent because of it. I usually figure it out on my own and I always get back up.

Men think I’m stupid. Women think I’m mean or unwell. Academics think I’m uneducated. Business people think I am too academic. The bougies think I’m vulgar, the proles think I’m snobby. Americans and Brits dominate the internet and none of them will listen to an Australian accent.

But, yes, I am okay. I’m used to people thinking I’m crazy just for doing my job, which is (and always has been) to fight for advocate for users, encourage people to be independent and honest, and fight for the internet, and I am up against all the money and the power in the world whose interests lie in the opposite.”

<Person then explains how I am wrong and how we should work with Big Tech on the problem>

“You know I’m qualified and actually know things, and have always been ahead of Big Tech on this stuff, right?”

“How’s the Psychology degree going?

“Cool. Another thing to add that nobody will listen to me on.”

“Are you sure you’re okay? Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.”

January 2022

“Are you okay?”

“Yes, fine, why?”

“You’ve been writing a lot of Twitter threads.”

“Huh? I use Twitter to write and work through ideas out loud. Also, I believe that intervening right where people are being radicalised on social media is important. The research shows that a small intervention or pattern interrupt can have an impact on the spread of fake news, and pokes of dissonance can be effective against radicalisation.

And, because I don’t have any resources or support, I poke dissonance on Twitter to anyone who will listen. I obviously don’t use the reply function because replies are how you get banned, but I just do what I can, on any given day, to meet people where they are at and try to get them back on track. I mostly shout into the void, but I am on there in the hope that people might share or take in what I have to say.

I also try to reach and persuade influencers to think more about their role in this stuff, which is why I try to build influence even though I have no desire for any of it. I’m just doing what I think is most effective with what little resources I have. Also, now that organic reach is close to zero unless you have money, backing or established audiences from years go, you have to work 10x as hard as you used to, to even be seen.”

“So you’re just writing.”

“Yes. Something like that.”

Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help”.

“Like, Subscribe, share, become a Patron, introduce me to people who can give me more resources and support.”

“So long as you’re okay. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yes, fine, why?”

“You’re taking on this dark patterns project for the election and I don’t understand why, when Google has it handled and Facebook has the ad data public. Also, Cam Wilson at Crikey reports on ad spend, you know that, right?”

“Well, yes, I do know that, but I am not focused on ad spend. I am focused on the funnels and patterns that take people off-site and then radicalise people to win elections, with no consideration of the impacts on users and the public. I am only interested in the ethical aspects of this, and making sure people know that thy are being nudged and pulled, and that might be why they are feeling alienated, paranoid, and confused.

I have a unique mix of skills and experience that make me see a problem that others don’t see, which is that nobody – including government, Google and Facebook – is incentivised to fix the real problem, because they all benefit and want it as part of their persuasion toolkit when it suits them. Let me explain.”

<Constantly interrupted and talked over whilst I try to explain>

“Oh well, you need to do it in 100 words or nobody will listen”

“But it’s complicated…”

“Well, let me know if there’s anything I can do to help”.

“Like, Subscribe, share, become a Patron, introduce me to people who can give me more resources and support. Or, I don’t know… listen to me without interrupting?”

“Are you sure you’re okay? Cool. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.”

<At the same time>

“You need to get permission to do this project because your family’s income relies on you not making waves with your husband’s employer, who also happens to be one of the richest and most powerful men in Australia”.

“Hey, Téa, why do you abandon projects all the time?”

“Because every time I try, someone either makes me feel like shit, or like I’m crazy, or it becomes untenable because I need a roof over my head, maybe?”

“Are you sure you’re okay? Oh well, let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.”

September 2021

“Are you okay?”

“Yes, I’m fine, why?”

“This time you said you were going to be a comedian? This is why nobody listens to you anymore.”

“Yeah, well, what the fuck else am I supposed to do? Nobody is listening to me. I’m told I’m funny so maybe that’s an angle I can go for. Also, comedy is persuasive and it might be a vehicle for being on podcasts and people listening to me, finally, for once?”

“Ah, OK that makes sense. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.”

August 2021

<Sponsored Post>

“Are you okay? Do you need someone to talk to or to listen to you without judgement? BetterHelp is what you need.”

“I’m fine, programmatic marketing bot, I am just interested in the GameStop & crypto communities, and the power of Reddit for organising (and the moves being made by the powerful against these communities). 

Something really interesting is happening, and given that I have studied online communities for 27 years, and am excited about the internet’s possibilities for the first time in a decade, and see that a significant battle is being fought.

Also, I have been chasing this weird PsyOp thing for a few years now, and I think I have cracked the playbook and am deeply worried about the implications this has for democracy.”

“What’s Reddit? An internet thing? Oh, cute. Let me know if there is anything I can do to help.”

Try BetterHelp.com where you can speak to a qualified Psychologist, via an app. Just like Uber Eats for Psychology.

“How’s the Psych training going? Once you do that you’ll finally be treated with respect, just like those therapists on BetterHelp.”

June 2021

“Are you okay?”

“Yes, I’m fine, why?”

“You started your publishing company, and honestly I am concerned that you appear to drop everything after a few months.”

“Well, yes. I am more risk-averse than I used to be, and am better at spotting sunk cost fallacies in business, after years of experience in startups I know when the writing is on the wall earlier. I had a brief moment where I thought I had a shot, before remembering who I am.

But if you must know, I built the platform. I was excited. It was a great concept and I still think I can make it work. I got everything set up and was ready to launch. It was going to be great. I was going to publish important books, important magazines, and be the change I wanted to see.

No resources or support. But that’s okay. I’m used to that. I just work, methodically, to drive organic traffic on a shoestring. I will do what I’ve always done: just work harder. No problemo.

Until I was contacted by somebody who wanted to use my company to publish US propaganda, and when I said no, he became abusive. He said that if I wanted to be “taken seriously”, I would do what he wanted. I also watched men knowingly lie and manipulate their audiences, only to call me stupid when I corrected them.

I was reminded that I was a woman in tech, and a person with no money or power, with every algorithm against me and everyone thinking I am crazy.

Same shit. Over and over again. To continue would be the crazy thing. But, because everybody thinks I am crazy and I am okay with that, I decided to cut and run faster this time as soon as it became apparent that it was a fool’s errand.

“Well, let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.”

2020

“Are you okay?”

“Yes, fine, why?”

“You’re a Trump supporter and follow Andy Ngo.”

“What the fuck. Are you okay? You’ve known me for 15 years. FFS. Everyone has lost their damn minds.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yes, fine, why? I think I’m pretty much the only person who is okay, and I think we need to be paying attention to how precarious this all is, because I understand what’s happeni…”

“Right winger! TERF! Nazi! Feminazi! Woke idiot! Anti-vax! Authoritarian! Anti-masker! Deplorable! Don’t you care about the children? Don’t you care about the elderly? Don’t you hate Nazis? Don’t you that Critical Theory is Communism? You know it’s communism, right?! You hate Uyghurs! TERF! Tankie! Dum Dum Left! Corporatist! Shitlib! Transphobe! Racist! You think you’re so smart and better than everyone! Lefty idiot! Joe Rogan watcher! Well, actually…1/348 Vol 1.”

“No, like seriously, I am saying that there’s a problem here, and…”

“Right winger! TERF! Nazi! Feminazi! Woke idiot! Anti-vax! Authoritarian! Anti-masker! Deplorable! Don’t you care about the children? Don’t you care about the elderly? Don’t you hate Nazis? Don’t you that Critical Theory is Communism? You know it’s communism, right?! You hate Uyghurs! TERF! Tankie! Dum Dum Left! Corporatist! Shitlib! Transphobe! Racist! You think you’re so smart and better than everyone! Lefty idiot! Joe Rogan watcher! Well, actually…1/348 Vol 2.”

“Oh man. Am I the only sane person here? Or have I lost my mind?”

2019

“Are you okay?”

“Yes, fine, why?”

“The stuff you talk about on YouTube makes me uncomfortable.”

“It’s just me talking about various things in my area of expertise, and learning how to perform on a live stream and overcome a crippling fear of video. My fear of video is holding me back from opportunities, nobody reads long form anymore and want a 30 second pitch for everything, so I am conquering this fear so that I can maybe distill this stuff and get better at articulating ideas. This whole culture wars thing is crazy.

I’m wrong sometimes, I’m right sometimes, but I have no editorial team or producer or resources and I would like a little praise for what I have managed to overcome and how hard I work”.

“As long as you’re okay. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help”.

“Like, Subscribe, share, become a Patron, introduce me to people, watch my stuff.”

“Not my cup of tea, really. You really should have an editor. But I believe in you. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help”.

2018

“Are you okay?”

“Yes, fine, why?”

“You’re talking a lot about this trans thing. Why do you hate trans people so much?”

“First, I don’t. Stop that nonsense.

Second, this feels like the same “You’re crazy” gaslighting and male violence bullshit I have been subjected to my entire life. I don’t have strong positions on the issue because I’m not qualified, but I am supporting women’s right to speak their mind without rape threats or being fired.

Third, this is an issue that sits at the nexus of a much bigger problem. I’m not 100% sure on why, or how, or the exact mechanisms in which it is happening, but the fact that those who merely point out a conflict in rights are getting death threats and losing their livelihoods, and it works, is deeply concerning. Also, some really weird cult-like stuff is coming out of Tumblr and nobody is paying attention to these kids because they’re too distracted with culture wars shit and the radicalisation on the right. It seems like a pretty serious failure of many different things in many different areas. I need to figure this thing out. Something is seriously wrong here.”

“Okay, well, let me know if there’s anything I can do to help. Privately, of course. You know. I can’t get involved.”

“Like, Subscribe, share, become a Patron, introduce me to people who can give me more resources and support. I’d study Law, but Law isn’t for me because I live in Perth and won’t graduate till I’m 48 and people really don’t get what I am doing and I’ll end up in fucking Probate or something.”

“Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.”

2017

“Are you okay?”

“Yes, fine, why?”

“You started using Twitter again and have suddenly started talking about politics”

“Well, first up, I have a degree in Politics, Legal Studies, Economics and Communications, so I am not sure why you’re surprised. I am doing what I have always done: gone where I am needed. I feel my voice is needed. Also, politics is marketing. Same skillset. People seem confused about this, but I have some ideas on what might be happening and want to bring attention to it. 

There are going to be massive legal battles over the digital landscape in the next decade. We’ve got a serious failure in several places – including our duty of care to users, rights, and potential for real harm. This is caused by a siloing of skills and the blind optimism that comes with being a tech founder (which I pointed out a few years ago when I was speaking at a few conferences). This worship of engineers at the expense of other disciplines is bad. Really bad. 

I’m thinking I should study Law because I know these issues inside out and need people to take me seriously. But, till then, I am hanging out on Twitter and trying to make sense of everything that is happening. 

Also, I nearly died this year and realised I had lost myself in corporate life and business bullshit, and I need to get back to who I am: someone who really gives a shit about people on the internet.”

“I still don’t get why you’ve been in marketing and now suddenly talking about politics. Are you okay?”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake. I’m fine”.

“Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yes, fine, why?”

“You haven’t written for a while”

“Yeah, I know, because everyone keeps asking me if I am okay every time I write anything that isn’t copy. I have a business to run, and I don’t want to piss off any clients. I get enough heat talking truth about the corruption in the digital industry and ethics as it is.

Also, side point, there is some stuff I have discovered in post-Trump election that I think represents a major problem with the way we’ve designed internet products. This is bad. Also, piss funny. But, also some serious unintended consequences and blind spots that we need to address or it will get worse. Cambridge Analytica are scapegoats for this, but this is far worse than that.

I’m just working through all of this and it is a lot of work. I’m fine, just working through it. You could help connect me with others who might want to fund this research.”

“I don’t understand what you mean, but let me know if there’s anything I can do to help”.

2015

“Are you okay?”

“Yes, fine, why?”

“Well, you’ve been pretty angry lately”

“No, I’m just writing. I have been through a lot this year. You know me, I process out loud.

Also, by being contrarian in my industry I can attract like-minded clients and can filter out the ones who have a tendency to be difficult and unreasonable.”

“Well, let me know if there is anything I can do.”

2014

“Are you okay?”

“Yes, as fine as I can be, why?”

“You keep vaguebooking”

“Well, my abuser seemingly has an issue with my writing, thinks everything I write is about him, and I am isolated and missing my kids, but, yeah, I definitely could use some support. I thought I was hiding it better than I was, but I was hoping you’d notice that I am not doing so great and might need someone to help.

Also, everything I write is now spun as into evidence of there being something wrong with me, because my ex’s campaign to frame me as unstable and crazy has seemingly worked with a bunch of people on Twitter who didn’t like the media attention I was getting. 

So now, when I am going through an actual hard time, I can’t reach out online, because everything is being screenshotted for the family court if I ever try to take my kids back. I don’t really have any support system now that the one I had has been taken away.”

“Well your writing makes me uncomfortable”

“Meh, I’m fine”.

“Well, let me know if there’s anything I can do”.

2013

“Are you okay?”

“Yes, fine, why?”

“You seem to hate men.”

“I don’t hate men at all. I have just been through a divorce from a man who used my children as a weapon against me in the worst possible way, and used everything I wrote on the internet as a threat that if I tried to fight for them, I would never see them again. I’ve also been on online dating sites. It’s pretty hard not to feel like the deck is a bit stacked.”

“Well, what you say is pretty out there.”

“Not really. I actually self-censor a lot, and this is mostly a piece of writing. That said, I process out loud, and the internet is a good place to express myself and find connections with like-minded people. 

Also, whilst it might come from somewhere, like all writing does, I do it because I deliberately fight against a sanitised internet, and like to be the change I want to see. I want to inspire people to be more authentic and know that they can find their people, anywhere in the world, and don’t have to suffer for being different or being themselves. I make myself a crash test dummy so that others can feel empowered to do the same. 

Also, day in day out, in the shadow of an ex who is defaming me at every turn, a bunch of people who don’t understand what I do vilifying me for doing it, and even having my writing weaponised to try to get me to accept I am mentally ill… well… yeah… I’m going to say I often feel the weight of the patriarchy right now.

Also, as a woman in tech, I am told at least three times a day that I am stupid, don’t know what I am talking about, and am overlooked at every turn.”

“Sheryl Sandberg said to Lean In and maybe stop being so negative”.

“But that only works for one type of audience, and those people are not my audience”.

“I don’t get it.”

“I know.”

“Well, let me know if there is anything I can do to help”.

“Take a shot on me? Introduce me to people? Share my stuff? Defend me rather than leave me to fight on my own?”

“I meant let me know if you need a reference”

2012

“Are you okay?”

“Yes, fine, why?”

“I don’t understand why you’re pushing for more social scientists to be in product teams.”

“Because the way you are talking about people’s data is scaring me, and you’re not seeing the implications nor the future of what you’re doing”.

“What would you know. We have this handled. I have a PhD. You’re just a designer. When I need a logo designed, I’ll be in touch.”

2011 

(at a Business event of 200+ people where I was a panellist).

“I have a question for Téa”

“Yes, go ahead!”

“Why do you swear on Twitter? Especially the C word?”

“Good question. Well, first, as a feminist who loves Germaine Greer, there is no inherent problem with the word. Second, swearing, especially in business, polarises. Social media breaks the fourth wall in many respects, and I tend to have a more utopian view, that people can finally find their crew and make a living doing it. Have you heard of the 1000 True Fans principle by Kevin Kelly? Well, I believe that the internet enables that, and you can actually get away with 100 or even 10 if you position yourself correctly.

It’s just a matter of finding those people.

When you have a clear idea of what your brand is – and more importantly – what it is not – you can use that to build more loyal audiences. So, if an influencer shares something about you, there will always be a handful of hate-readers or hate-followers. This is an indirect form of marketing that is far more effective and reduces your spend on non-converting audiences.

So, I do the ‘vulgar prole’ persona on purpose, in order to find like-minded people, and to exclude specific corporate archetypes from my audience and therefore focus my marketing around those who are likely to buy, and screen out those who are likely to cause trouble once they become a client.”

“But do you have to put it on the internet?”

“I process out loud, and the internet is a good place to express myself and find connections with like-minded people. Also, everything I just said. I do a course on this, called Trolling for Fun and Profit.”

“I don’t get it.”

“I know. But two people here do and those are who I care about.”

<Narrator voice> 

She was never invited back.

Are you okay?

“Yes, fine, why?”

“You’re on the radio offering an iPad for a husband. Also, you were on Today Tonight and your shirt was inside out. Also, that Sam Mac guy snarked on Twitter about how you compared yourself to Ricky Gervais.”

“Well, I have been to hell and back, and humour gets me through. Also, journalists have started putting all sorts of dumb shit in the paper from Twitter, so I thought I would have some fun and test a little hypothesis that I had, to refine my formula for my trolling course.

Also, I didn’t compare myself to Ricky Gervais. We were making small talk and I said I had a more subversive sense of humour, like Ricky Gervais. If anything that tweet gave me an insight into how these people operate.”

“But you look stupid and crazy! It’s embarrassing!”

“Ah well. The wrong people will think that about me anyway, and the right people will get what I am about.”

“Oh well, let me know if there’s anything I can do”

“Well you can defend me and tell people I know more than they realise, or introduce me to people who have resources so that I can continue my work on making virality a formula. Or help fund my book on this.”

“I don’t get it“

“I know”

“Well let me know if there’s anything I can do to help”.

2010

Are you okay?

“Yes, sort of, as fine as I can be at the moment, why?”

“You’ve been making off colour jokes about cancer and your dying grandmother. I don’t like it.”

“Well, we are in hell right now, and humour gets us through.”

“But do you have to put it on the internet?”

“Actually, I am sitting here next to her, and she was marvelling at the iPad. I was showing her social media for the first time. She told me to write some funny stuff of hers to put on Facebook and Twitter so she’d be on the internet forever. Sorry if that makes you uncomfortable.

Also, I process out loud, and the internet is a good place to express myself and find connections with like-minded people. Also, others who have been through the same thing have actually thanked me for making them feel better and less alone.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yes, sort of, as fine as I can be at the moment, why?”

“You’re behind on our web project and haven’t responded to emails or calls today.”

“Sorry, I have been caring for my grandmother who has a few weeks to live. It’s really hard to juggle as I am her 24/7 hospice care until we find a night nurse. My husband is disabled and suicidal and my premmie baby is a lot more work than my other two kids. It is an unusually demanding time and I haven’t been able to check and deal with email till late evenings all week.

If you could be patient with me, you know that I always deliver and this is a difficult time.”

“I want my stuff. You promised to have it tomorrow”

“And I will. I just can’t get to my emails till later tonight.”

“That doesn’t work for me.”

“I think you’re right. I don’t think this is working out. I will send you work to date and reconcile everything and off-board you instead”.

“That is so unprofessional. Just because you’re going through stuff doesn’t mean you don’t have a contract. Also, your blog is unprofessional and you are being completely inappropriate on Twitter.”

“Okay. I’m sorry you feel that way.”

“I’m not paying my bill and suing you for my deposit.”

“Okay then.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yes, fine, why?”

“You’ve been doing tweet storms and seem pretty angry. I don’t think you should be subtweeting clients like that.”

“Well, I work on my own and it can be isolating, so Twitter is my water cooler. Other freelancers hang out there and we get to have fun with the dark parts of what we do. It’s fun to just brain-to-tweet and entertain people, show them where my brain goes. It is cathartic. It’s also not that big a deal because clients know I deliver and I fire the shitty ones so there’s no harm. 

Also, you don’t have to follow me if you don’t want to.”

“But why are you so negative?”

“I’m not. I just communicate in active voice and enjoy being a bit snarky. Also, I process out loud, and the internet is a good place to express myself and find connections with like-minded people. Also, others who have been through the same thing have actually thanked me for making them feel better and less alone.”

2005

“Are you okay?”

“Yes, fine, why?”

“Well I read your blog and you were writing about stuff and sounded angry”

“Well I have a degree in political science and love the internet, and am excited about what it can do for political apathy, which is the biggest problem to overcome in a large democracy. Are you familiar with Elite Theory? I want to help drive interest and conversations in politics and the internet is marvellous.

The whole world is on here, and the possibilities to make friends, connect with other fans, and persuade people is amazing. This is a campaigner’s dream, can lift poor and isolated people out of poverty without having to be enslaved to corporations, and people can truly be themselves, independent and free from the man. It’s extraordinary”

“I don’t get it, but let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.”

“I know. You could believe me, listen to me, and read my stuff. You could also introduce me to people who want to do great things on the internet”

“I meant let me know if you need a reference when you’re ready to get a real job”.

2001

“Are you okay?”

“Yes, fine, why?”

“I read your online diary where you talked about your mother, and how you’re pregnant and it makes you worry that you’ll be like her”.

“Yeah, I write on there for my internet friends. See, I have friends all over the world and they like my writing. One in particular really likes my writing because she’s adopted and she says I am good at talking about pain in a funny way. You’re the first person I know in real life that knows about it.”

“Well, so long as you’re okay. Let me know if there’s anything I can do.”

“Well, you could not read my online diary, boss.”

“Fair point”.

1998

“Are you okay?”

“Yes, fine, why?”

“You’re meeting strangers from the internet!”

“But they’re my friends. Also, they’re my age, and I have more in common with them than I do my friends from school.”

“That’s crazy. What’s wrong with you?”

1996

“Are you okay?”

“Yes, I’m fine, why?”

“Well you have been spending too much time on the internet, for a start. What is that thing anyway? I need the phone line.”

“I’m just learning loads of stuff, hanging out, forgetting about my shitty day.

This is the place where I can just be myself, create, write, learn anything I want, and make friends around the world. 

Also, check out this cool thing I made!”.

“Okay, I don’t get it. But as long as you’re okay.”

1994

“Are you okay?”

“Yes, I’m fine, why?”

“You hang out in the media room from 7am to 8pm every day. You keep missing classes.”

“Yeah but I’m handing everything in and getting As. 

What does it matter?

If you must know, I’m hiding from Kylie, Jessica and Sarah, who follow me home, and are threatening to beat me up because I said something they didn’t like in class and they’ve been harassing me now for two years. 

Also, I have access to a computer here and my Dad probably has a bunch of creepy people over drinking. So I am just sitting here and working on radio projects, music and writing and stuff until I can go home and go to sleep without being hassled”.

“As long as you’re okay. Let me know if there’s anything I can do.”

1986

“Are you okay?”

“Yes, I’m fine, why?”

“Well you don’t want to play with the other kids and only want to read and play music”

“The other kids are boring and the girls are bullying me because I was sent to hang out in the Library.”

“As long as you’re okay. Let me know if there’s anything I can do.”

“You could take me away and give me to a rich family who cares about me.”

“Haha you’re funny. You’re okay. Let me know if there’s anything I can do.”

1985

“Is Téa okay?”

“Yes, I think so, why?”

“She doesn’t really participate in class and just stares out the window, reads or plays music at recess and lunch and doesn’t really socialise”.

“I don’t see the problem. She’s bright. She’s been reading since she was three and loves just drawing and music and reading. She needs a challenge, and finds it difficult to relate to other kids.”

“Okay, well, she has to participate more. Should we put her in Grade 3? Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.”

“Well she could do with more resources and support. I don’t see how a a kid in Year One would benefit any more socially by being put in Year Three”.

“Oh, well, that’s all we can do. Let me know if there’s anything we can do to help”.

“I could use resources and support to help her.”

“Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.

1979

“Are you okay?”

“Yes, I’m a baby, why?”

“You’ve been crying”

“Well, I am covered in shit. Maybe fix that and I’ll stop”.

“Cool. Well. You should have thought of that before you relaxed your anus and soiled yourself. 

But, by all means, do let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.”

“But I’m a baby. I’m fine. I’m just covered in shit. Get rid of the shit and I’ll be fine.”

“Oh man, that sucks. But you really should have considered that before you were born. You need to get yourself out of it, ask for help, and work harder.”

“But I’m a baby. I didn’t do anything wrong. I’m doing everything you ask of me but I just need some help on this one thing and then I’ll stop crying”.

“Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.”

“I’m so going to write about you on the internet one day. 

I will be able to express myself and find connections with like-minded people. And others who have been through the same thing will thank me for making them feel better and less alone.”

“I don’t think anyone will let you do that.

But definitely let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.”

Keep looking down and mocking and insulting people who are responding to the trauma of the last few years differently to you.

You just keep on doing that.

Keep cheering on the censorship that, ten years ago, you would have at least given a token amount of lip service to fighting.

Keep policing people’s choice, brand and quality of mask – whether they can afford them or breathe in them or not. Keep giving sneers and eyeballs towards people whose story and reasoning you haven’t bothered to learn.

Keep doing that.

You’ll just keep sending them into the loving arms of right wing extremism far quicker, where, believe me, Clive Palmer is the least of your concerns, and people like me are constantly trying to reverse the damage you are doing to people on the ground.

Keep blocking, ignoring and not engaging vulnerable people who have legitimate upsets and fears but may have the wrong end of the stick about who the enemy is and where the threat lies.

Keep punching down on those who are looking to you to not only tell them but show through your actions that it’s going to be okay, destroying any faith they once had that we’d have their back.

Keep blaming workers and small business owners for being angry over abandonment by those that have pretended to care, after decades of empty platitudes, Instagram posts about #kindness and #gratitude, and a trail of broken promises of change and hope.

Keep doing that.

But never consider what you have become.

Keep ordering Uber Eats, who have the audacity to #thank us for our #support whilst taking pretty much all of the margins from small business destroyed by the pandemic… and …Uber Eats. But so long as the poor driver is socially distanced from you and your Mee Goreng, and none of them dare make eye contact or talk to you about conspiracy theories or you’ll get them fired. Nevermind that it is the only thing that maybe gives them the reassurance they need to justify bringing you your food for next to no money.

Because firing anti-vaxxers is what good people do. You’re a good person. Your Facebook friends said so.

Keep scolding the people who have the least power, who live outside of your seemingly beloved yet psychopathic institutions, processes, paperwork and impenetrable media and academic caste systems.

Keep making people feel like shit for being curious, or having the smallest understanding of history. Keep smirking at those with a healthy and absolutely justified mistrust of power on that basis. Especially yours.

Keep conveniently ignoring the fact that the left asked people to be suspicious of the conduct of Big Oil, Big Tobacco, Monsanto and the Military-Industrial complex led by the United States government, but now when they believe us; you punish and and abandon them because it is convenient, or costs you something, now that you have built nice careers out of talking about human suffering, whilst those people who suffer are left behind.

Keep believing that ones and zeroes are the only information that matters, whilst billionaires send unsolicited capitalist sky dick pics to our eyes and ears. Keep ignoring, conveniently, that the men who literally own all of the information in the world can’t even use it to read a goddamn room.

Keep being a cheerleader for the powerful, whilst punching down to impress them. Keep hoping that you might be invited into the club if you make the lives of the curious or skeptical a living hell. Just make sure you don a #rainbow flag as you do it, and maybe nobody will notice.

Keep being awful; because there are troll farms and Facebook groups and subreddits and email lists to greet them where you continually fail to show up and meet them where they are.

Keep doing that.

But never consider what you have become.

Keep punching down on the vulnerable (who outnumber you 100 to 1), because they’ll eventually find friends who care about them even less than you do, but will absolutely pretend they do, using the fact that you abandoned them as soon as you secured a nice life for yourself to convince them that you are their enemy and that the only solution is to be armed and dangerous and on the streets.

Which, honestly, I’m starting to wonder if that IS what you want, because you can scapegoat everyone else without ever having to confront that you’ve become complicit in the institutional bullying and abuse of power that you once said you cared about – right up until you became that institution’s bitch.

You’ll never have to ask how you became this person, never examine your politics and to avoid being judged by your actions, not your words or theoretical quibbling.

Keep assuming your way works, in an election year.

Keep losing and losing and losing and blaming the other guy so long as you never look at who you have become.

Keep writing the same empty slogans, to the same bubble of fellow sloganeers, with the same corporate backing, using the exact same institutional power and patronising tone that has subjected everyone but the very fortunate to the most egregious psychological, physical economic and emotional abuse on behalf of the state that will take an entire generation, maybe two, to win back public trust.

And this is regardless of how you feel about the fucking masks or vaccines or lockdowns, for crying out bloody loud.

This isn’t about the issue.

This is about you, what you keep doing and who you have become.

Keep on assuming that wealth, power, big fancy words and jargon equals correctness and keep thinking that being ethical means having received a High Distinction for an essay on Kant in 1999.

Keep writing impenetrably dull papers and think pieces about semantics and quibbles and definitions of words and about how that guy you don’t see as legitimate said a thing you don’t like when he is one of the few people they trust… because you are fixating on him for clicks and dollars when people are suffering right in front of your face.

Keep thinking your #selfiesforthepoor make you a good person.

Keep thinking the people that are hurting don’t know how much money you make off the back of their pain and trauma. Keep thinking they don’t see what you leave out and what you prioritise and how you never examine what you’ve become.

Keep assuming that if people are incorrect or don’t use the right fancy words, that they don’t have something insightful or important to say, or know something about their experience that the spreadsheets leave out.

Keep sitting idly by watching powerful and influential people sadistically humiliate and publicly torment those who are simply lashing out from pain, fear and trauma the only way they know how. Keep pretending that those who do this are not still sadistic bullies simply because you happen to agree with their position, and keep demonising people like me who come to their defence.

And be honest with yourself why you do.

Keep doing what you’re doing.

It’s worked a treat so far.

Or, the professional left could actually get out from behind our desks, from behind our broadsheets, and defend the vulnerable like we once claimed to do.

We could actually go to these communities, talk to people, get to know them – or take the time to look up from that human being you see as a fucking data point on a graph, brought to you by Dick Rockets and Soylent Green Incorporated.

Or, you know, you could keep sending them into the loving arms of fascism and subjecting the poor to abuse of the criminal justice system, just like the left have always done, all because you refuse to see that they are begging you for help and a little bit of compassion… and you keep kicking them in the face.

And so you can ignore what you have become.

Keep doing that. It’s not like that’s how fascism rises. You know what you’re doing, and you keep doing it without ever looking at who who have become. You know best, like the bureaucrats, socialists and academics who had it all handled the last time. I mean, if the conditions were set for a repeat of history, you’d absolutely know about it, and it definitely wouldn’t be you who enables it, because you sit at the desk, and you sign off the policy and you know everything. The spreadsheet didn’t say so. You have this under control because the Dick Rocket Guy and Lean In Lady said so and you just need to keep your head down and do your job, and control the flow of information and demonise and scapegoat groups of people, including socialists.

You have this under control.

It’s under control because you haven’t seen it… mostly because you’ve blocked them all and ignore everything you disagree with. But hey, you’d know if something was up. Fascists don’t wear suits. Fascism is an ideology and you bought a cupcake on RUOK Day and bought a Red Nose and cancelled your Spotify Subscription.

Jesus.

Get your shit together.

Stop blaming Joe Rogan and fucking microaggressions in workplaces most people would dream of working in and ask not why people trust Joe Rogan but how the hell you LOST their trust (and therefore, your credibility and your authority).

Stop blaming the poor and vulnerable and unwell and uneducated for YOUR failures. Stop blaming everyone else but yourselves and your refusal to see that you are now so out of touch; so detached from both your original politics and your humanity that you’ve likely become the very thing you seem to believe you’re fighting.

Keep doing what you’re doing, so long as you never, EVER, have to face what you’ve become.

So, I made the mistake of reading the comments on a Mark McGowan announcement on Facebook (For the overseas peeps: Mark McGowan is the Premier of Western Australia, who does announcements on COVID-19.).

And, for what seems like the hundredth time in what feels like a long decade of unrelenting crap since February 2020, I am, once again, going to just shake my head and say:

• I am aware that people are reading and watching and being sold a lot of bullshit.

• I am acutely aware that people’s political and scientific literacy is generally low.

• I am pretty critical of our education system, that caters to the average, and fails so many of us, leaving many with poor media literacy and critical thinking skills.

• I believe the QAnon brush is used to silence all dissent about authoritarian overreach – which is mostly just the same old United States fuckery. The Military-Industrial complex doing the same old nonsense they’ve always done in the form of MK Ultra:Internet Version. That’s obvious.

• I’m of the view that this ‘authoritarianism’ problem is largely not an issue in Western Australia, that our government has given us very few reasons not to trust them, but because we live in a global media ecosystem where people receive targeted and personalised bullshit that nudges them in directions we cannot fully contain, and that because the digital industry is full of people with absolutely no scruples nor ethics who will happily take anyone’s money… that it is inevitable that there will be a segment of the population that is vulnerable to radicalisation.

• I’m also across the literature, and know that this largely affects those who are already psychologically, economically or socially vulnerable – due to the psychological, economic and social incentives and punishments that spreading this bullshit gives them, and the psychological, economic and social punishments that have been built-in to the US Corporate weapon of mass distraction.

• I despise what US Corporate midwits and their Banality of Evil have done to the economy, politics, the environment, and the constant human suffering they cause, with seemingly no accountability, and it would be right to assume there is no bottom to the depths of evil they will stoop, and to not trust a word they say, is a good policy all-round.

• I know that people tend to retreat more into certainty, and black and white thinking, and lash out at those who are trying to help them, in times of fear and trauma. Which is what this is.

• I truly understand all of this stuff. I defend people when they are mocked, or called stupid, or whatever. I get annoyed when I see comedians making lazy jokes about COVID anti-vaxxers and QAnon folks from positions of power.

• I generally stay out of the arguments in the comments, unless I feel I can poke someone’s dissonance and I am concerned they’re headed down… that path. That is real. That is lost. That has actual victims and people who are really hurting and really vulnerable and need our care and attention, not our judgement.

• I (mostly) see people who say dumb shit on social media as victims of an existential threat that is so massive in scale and so complex that no single solution and no one person will ever fix it, and the solutions may have even more unintended consequences that are worse than the original problem.

With all of this in mind, and all of this compassion and understanding, I will STILL say:

Holy ever mother-loving shitball fuck are people dumb as a box of hammers, somehow managing to take a sharp 45 degree turn into even more stupid than that, and pour on some crazy to boot.

Good Lord.

I can’t wait to get back to normal.

Great.

I can’t wait to get back to normal. You know, where you rent people to keep them in subsistence, and profit from their labour. It’s not slavery; it’s rental. Completely morally different:

I can’t wait to go back to having to sit through tedious meetings, watching people (who shouldn’t be in charge of supervising the making of toast, let alone the lives of others) make the easiest decision, not the best one.

I can’t wait for some IT Manager to condescendingly explain basic concepts (that I played a part in developing) to me. After all, I am only 27 years into my career. I am hopeful that Year 28 is the year they finally stop doing that and give me my merit badge.

But, you know, you have to pay your dues, sweetie.

Merit.

I can’t wait to go back to a school and health system that doesn’t give a shit about my autistic son, and only care about him when there’s a form to be completed for the toast supervisors and telephone sanitisers.

I can’t wait to go back to being hounded by the tax office over a couple of grand, despite living with chronic illness and seeing the literal dicks of billionaires fly through the air, whilst their employees pee in jars, they pay no taxes and get their oodles of merit from the exploitation of others and the public purse.

I can’t wait to get back to normal, travelling in an airport where I could find myself on a list because of my Twitter account, or be subjected to an internal search, for making a joke or – worse – carrying a full bottle of shampoo, because the telephone sanitisers of the world decided that those who don’t even travel overseas needed to feel safe.

I can’t wait to get back to normal, where Human Resources get to gather a comprehensive social score with no accountability – nor our consent – with tools such as Brand Yourself, and where employees, are, at all times, a representative of their employer. And they can be fired at will because they hold an opinion that was completely acceptable five years ago, but because it became profitable to say the opposite, is now a fireable offence.

I can’t wait to get back to normal, where rents have more than doubled, home ownership is inaccessible, and inheritance of hundreds of thousands of dollars is the only way to not have to move once a year because a greedy landlord takes issue with your request for urgent repairs and you have no recourse.

I can’t wait to get back to normal.

Business as usual.

Oooh they’ll be excited about it on LinkedIn.

The networking groups and conferences will be back.

Great.

The breeding ground for the Gary Vee cult, the Youth Pastor of the Neoliberal Death Cult known as the United States.

I can’t wait.

We get to go back to normal, and again see rich people taking selfies in their mansions about social justice, and those in slightly smaller mansions complaining about the real issues such as diversity in reality TV and the Marvel Universe, whilst sharing photos of themselves giving their uneaten fries to a homeless person.

And, because we are so used to this vulgar and tasteless reality television nonsense – when they use the less fortunate as props for their “content” to “raise awareness”, rather than mentions full of “you’re a monster”, instead they get “Yass, Queen!”.

That’s content.

Anything of substance that disagrees is “disinformation” and lumped in with the Fox Propaganda machine (which is definitely a thing, but don’t mention that either, because you’ll get death threats from totally-not-radicalised audiences).

Don’t be negative.

R U OK?

I look forward to attending “business” events, where in order to maybe – just maybe – find someone I might want to bother with, I’m flung into a room of the most awful and most tedious people you could ever meet, trying to sell you the most pointless stuff you could ever imagine.

But hey, they’ll learn super interesting things, being taught by people inexplicably more dull, on elevator pitches and value propositions and “lead generation” by some dickhead who just figured out the internet is a thing, because God forbid you would actually show interest in someone for more than 30 seconds or have a product that isn’t wrapped in bullshit… and has actual utility.

If you’re lucky, you might get chatting to one or two of those people who are decent, but then they will ask for favours, lunches, and free shit, and then use the “friendship” as a weapon or coupon code when they get their bill.

I can’t wait to get back to business as usual. You know, business. Where it isn’t personal. Unless you set boundaries with the people who say “it’s just business and isn’t personal”.

Then it’s personal.

I look forward to meeting more bullshitters, scammers, rip-off artists and unethical digital agency owners, whose entire business model depends on them being dishonest.

I look forward to five emails asking me for coffee, even though my non-reply should be the hint.

Affirmative consent, bros.

Or, if after “just following up” email number four, I say “fuck off”, then I get “no need to be so rude” back.

I look forward to being expected to give hours of free consulting in exchange for fuck all.

Sorry, coffee.

Sorry, pitches.

Sorry… anything but fair and timely payment for services.

I look forward to having to pretend I am not intelligent lest those with the money and the signature for the money be made to feel stupid. Then people might start to question why I am doing the pointless work they have me doing to pay my bills, instead of running the place. It’s okay. I made my peace with it, because I am unwilling to sell my soul.

I can’t wait to get back to normal, and finally get me some of that merit. You know, that thing the middle class numpties use at a weapon to justify why they are there, because we all know, as do they, that they shouldn’t be. And, if they pause to reflect on that, and show a glimmer of conscience or self-awareness, they’ll call it impostor syndrome and raise awareness about this very serious condition in HuffPost and Forbes.

If you want to conceal this, definitely post some nothing statement about inclusion. We know you very much care about women, minorities and LGBT people, despite talking over every single one of us.

You screwed your nose at the word feminist five years ago.

But, when it became favourable and there was a buck in it (and you were able to finally get that board seat by #metooing the CFO) suddenly you’re all about #girlpower and getting girls to code, so they too can maybe get some mansplained merit after 28 years in the business.

But don’t ever mention healthcare or daycare or material issues.

Set up a morning tea.

Call anyone who asks for more “negative”.

Announce your pronouns that literally nobody asked for or cares about. Out the LGBT and disabled people with your awareness “forced disclosure” days, turn the plight of people of colour into a morning tea, and make a hostile work environment for everyone but the truly Woke like you.

Do minimum effort with no structural change whatsoever, with the added bonus of being able to get people who have the thing you want fired if they think it is stupid and superficial… and never have to face the fact that you might be a fraud and a sociopath.

It’ll get clicks, though.

Definitely add a selfie, and find some fries for the homeless.

I mean, they’re like seagulls, right?

Can’t wait to go back to normal.

Hey, at least whilst you’re all stuck online I can tell you off and get you to think about how “normal” was actually really crap for a lot of people. Those who conducted themselves ethically were punished, and those who exploit and bully others and are actually bad people are the only winners in this “normal” system.

Let’s change that.

I know you won’t.

You’ll call me negative for doing basic political science and analysis, because that makes you feel uncomfortable. You’ll ask me “R U OK”?

You’ll do anything to avoid the fact that going back to normal is actually pretty shit.

I know you won’t care.

But I’ll ask anyway.

How on earth are you okay with normal?

Please, let’s not go back there.

I know everyone is a bit (a lot?) anxious… but I am currently processing a lot of everything that is happening. It is totally wild seeing parallel narratives play out, but also good to know that all my research is not for nought, and that I largely saw what was going to happen. 

The bad news is, this is not going to be over for a while. CNN still posting the same gaslighting bullshit. Fox posting bullshit. The Cockwomble in Chief being… well… a colossal dickhead as per usual, whilst everyone screeches and carries on and loses their damn minds.

The good news is (for me, not so great for Americans), most of what I suspected might happen, happened. I definitely don’t like it. I generally don’t do predictions – and to predict this one was always going to be frought. But I am feeling a lot of mixed emotions as I have seen it all unfold like I thought it would. I have been wrong on a couple of things, which I am still analysing, but knowing that we are on the right track is one small upside.

More good news is, that I think I may be starting to find my comedic voice. Not sure how many ranty angry socialist female comics get stage time in this world, but I am so grateful to have you. So the rest is gravy. Because you lot are awesome. Especially those who have spent the last year waiting for me to be funny. heh. Thank you <3

Anyway, I know claiming that I was right is a bit stupid. Not doing that to gloat… but what it shows is that at least that we have started to correctly diagnose the problem. Only when you diagnose the problem can you work towards fixing it.

I am still hoping for a Biden win, with a 2 year window to let the Wokes go absolutely apeshit. I think that might be a blessing. Just so that the Colossal Dickhead in Chief will go back to just being a colossal dickhead that we can ignore. 

It looks like the Democrats still aren’t listening, and are retreating further into their bubble. If they do win they most certainly won’t learn. If they lose, oh Lord can we just make it stop.

Anyway, it’s going to get a bit mental for a while… but I have faith in people. The one weakness the Wokes have is their elitism, and their contempt, mistrust, and underestimation of ordinary people, and their contempt for the working class. 

I have faith in the goodness and intelligence of people, and know intimately just how annoying these people are to interact with and work with, so … let ’em sit on every committee, derail every meeting, run roughshod over everyone reasonable, and see how long people take it. See how long women who have worked for decades representing their districts will enjoy giving up their hard-fought positions to Clymer. heh. I’ve worked in these pressure cookers. Have faith in people.

It’ll be funny. Hopefully the Democrats can get in, everyone shuts the fuck up, and we collectively start paying attention to the REAL authoritarian threat, rather than the distraction that has taken a giant shit on the world’s politics for 4 years straight.

I also posted this on Facebook earlier:

Thinking of you all.

I really just want to make people laugh, and be free to riff and be silly, and have you learn a thing or two along the way.

I think all our adrenals are completely shot, and so… fuck it. Let the talking toothy corpse that literally made Black Lives not matter for 26 years take the reins. Not because he’s not terrible, but because… fuck it. There’s bigger fights right now, and Trump’s spectacle and the associated histrionics are… well… allowing worse things to happen in the background.

Love to you all, and here’s my stream from today, too.

I promise to try and be funnier and rant-funny, so long as the platforms allow me to.

Love you all. Stay safe, stay sane xx

T

I am a feminist.

I am a card carrying, flag-waving, “shrill”, “hysterical”, “loud”, “bossy”, “crazy” feminist. I am that ooga-booga feminist that infiltrates the nightmares of the men in Fedoras. I am that feminist that makes the balls of construction workers shrivel with a single look if they “compliment” me in the street. I am that feminist who calls o…

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Yes, I know. Another Charlotte Dawson post. Another social media person making commentary in order to get some Google Juice. Another person who has been the victim of online harassment speaking out. Another person sharing their story.

I know you’re fatigued with the discussion, because so much has been said already, but…

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I just want to say a few things about the ridiculous RUOK Campaign.

Despite the best of intentions, unless you are prepared for the following answer:

“No, actually, I am not OK. My life has fed me a shit sandwich since the day I was born and it continues to get worse. The only reaso…

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In o…

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