Irony Poisoning and the Death of Sincerity
Something that I noticed a year or two ago was that I was becoming progressively more resistant to taking both things and people seriously. I don’t recall exactly what it was that made me come to the realization, but I’m pretty sure I was watching some on twitter and it was either something where a bunch of people died, or some incredibly stupid & horrendous policy decision that would have fucked over thousands of people, and my only response was “Damn that’s crazy B” or something along those lines. I sat back for a second an realized that having this blasé attitude towards everything probably isn’t good for me whatsoever.
Now obviously, I don’t thing I should be like the average histrionic lib that catastrophizes any and every issue, policy, etc. that doesn’t go their way, but being completely apathetic about everything is just bad. I think I developed that attitude because of rightward political shift and excessive twitter usage. I became politically right-wing some time in 2018 and gradually delved deeper into RW twitter more and more as time progressed. As a consequence of seeing how far society has fallen, how shit and fake the economy is, I (along with many other zoomers and younger millennials) adopted a cognitive policy of satirizing or memeing on all the retarted shit happening around us. I think to a degree, this is helpful as constantly being bombarded with the social, economic, and political malaise without any sort of humor or optimism is a recipe for insanity. However, I think there is a point where levity turns into apathy and I think I passed that point.
I have been actively working on trying to get my sense of sincerity back and the first major step for me in doing this was deleting twitter. I have used it actively since 2016/2017 and while I did take seasonal breaks from at it as I got a little older, I would always come back after a few months. At the end of the last summer, I decided to take an extended break and thankfully have not used it since August (I did download it again for election day to see the tweets, but I deleted it that same night) nor have I felt the desire to go back to it. Up to my decision to leave, I was feeling more and more that twitter, at the very least my twitter, was just a polemical interaction baiter. Aside from the excess amounts of time I spent using the app, I found a lot my brainpower was being dedicated to memes, retorts, indignation, and other useless garbage that could be much better allocated on something, ANYTHING, more productive.
After about a month and half to two months in I started noticing positive changes. I had more mental clarity, I was thinking less about irrelevant matters and more deeply about topics I was concerned with. My attention span got better which made reading (actual books) easier. I stopped reflexively pulling out my phone to do something when I was occupied with a tedious/boring but necessary task or when I had a moment to myself to think. I was less agitated and more grounded because an algorithm was no longer feeding me post after post explicitly designed to either upset me or make me feel morally superior.
Around this same time is when I downloaded substack, as I needed a way to get my news and it allowed me to learn, discover peoples viewpoints, and engage with others in a less sycophantic or antagonistic manner. I stated in my first post, that three people on here inspired me to start writing, Neoliberal Feudalism, WBE, and Unlambed Zoomer. The inspiration came from their writings helping me rediscover my sense of sincerity and what sincerity entails.
To be sincere requires passion and honesty, and while I like to think of myself of being fairly honest person, I know that I could be moreso and I know for a fact that I am extremely lacking in passion. Part of that is because I honestly don’t know what exactly I am passionate about yet, but the other larger part is that to be passionate about something or someone is both risky and scary. I have always been an introverted, shy, & tepid individual and much to my chagrin, I do very much care what people think about me. To be passionate and dedicated to something means you have to open yourself up to the idea that others may not agree with you, or find what you are doing to be weird. It means people may associate with you less or stop altogether, some may even start to harbor animosity towards you and you have to be comfortable, or at the very least, you have to accept that. To be passionate about a goal means that have to truly put in effort towards accomplishing it, and that you might fail. To be passionate towards a hobby means that you have to constantly work at it every day to get better, and potentially accepting that you may not be all that good at it. To be passionate about these things is an almost herculean task for me as I don’t have much to offer the world or others in terms of looks, prowess, charisma, what have you, so I am deathly afraid of discovering that I’m not particularly gifted with competence/intelligence.
One of the few things I do know about myself for certain is that I do want a wife and I do want a big family. Not only do I want a wife, I want to truly love her from the bottom of my heart. I know that I’m not a man currently worthy of a wife or even a girlfriend for that matter, but I have given a lot of thought to the day when I am, and I know the type of love I want is utterly impossible if I remain as cowardly as I am now. To love someone requires that you care for them at least just as much as yourself, and to reach that state, you have to be honest with one another, and show how passionate you are for each other. I can be honest with myself, but I can’t be honest with others yet. I am not happy with myself so I assume anybody that truly knew me wouldn’t be either. I know this is a rather silly notion to have as anybody that’s not delusional or narcissistic understands that nobody is perfect and every has their own faults, but as of now I can’t escape the belief that I have too many faults to be truly accepted. I want to be as close as to perfect as can before I open myself to someone, but even then, I still know that this is a cope. No matter how “good” you are, no matter how much you have to offer, there will be some people out there that will still reject you. And if you only open up at your peak, what happens if you stumble? Will the friends I’ve made, the girlfriend/wife I have suddenly me disenchanted?
Regardless of the amount of work you put in, the amount of hours, days, years you have dedicated to something, there is a chance that it can fail. No matter how petrifying that fear of failure is, I have to work past it if I want to truly receive and give love. I want to buy my future wife a beautiful diamond ring that she can brag to her friends about, I want us to have cute, stupid nicknames for each other, I want to go out to field somewhere and pick her favorite flowers and surprise her with a bouquet of them, I want to feel butterflies in my stomach every time I look at her, I want to go on a long walk in the rain at night and talk about any and everything for hours. Some people will find that gut-churningly cringe, some will find it adorable and romantic. I have to accept the fact that who I am as a person, everything that makes me me, may be rejected by a woman I am fond of, perhaps even ruthlessly. Not only may I be made to feel a fool, but I maybe completely and utterly embarrassed, perhaps in front of other, most likely multiple times over. It sucks, it truly fucking sucks and it’s going to be incredibly hard, but nothing worth doing is easy.
When I started writing I thought I would write about both socio-political and personal matters, but after writing this I am heavily leaning towards just the personal. I’m not well read enough nor is my writing really good enough to warrant dedicated political writings, plus there are simply far better, more in-depth publications and authors who offer those types of materials. I think I may have been using to politics as an escape from my personal shortcomings, so I think I’ll be using this publication more as a journal as I introspect more.
Thank you to anyone who read this
I hope you have a marvelous day