Discussion about this post

User's avatar
snav's avatar

Pedantry time: you actually are describing the Lacanian big Other. The "everyone else" is indeed the structuration of culture as perceived by the subject, however the subject of this piece disavows the Other, i.e. disavows castration, i.e. would be psychotic... if not for the fact that he DOES avow the Other, but in a negative form, placing him instead in the position of the (obsessional) neurotic.

"We strive to be unlike THEM."

"So you admit THEY have a way of being that you're living in (negative) accordance with?"

"Yes, but it's fake."

"So you're saying you're positioned yourself in opposition to something that doesn't exist?"

"No, by fake we mean immoral." (NB: the true psychotic would say "no, it really doesn't exist and we're not in opposition to it. Anyway I'm going to go take what's mine" *violently robs someone*.)

"So, you're condemning it? That's fine, insofar as it presupposes a recognition that it exists and is binding for others who you refuse to recognize as fellow men."

etc

Expand full comment
Harvey Bungus's avatar

I Got An Authentic Meeting with the Other and all I met was some guy:

There was a guy in school who was trans/something-word at the time idk, not important. 90% of the time, normal guy. 5% of time talking about some weird sex thing he saw online with the guys that everyone else was disgusted by, 5% of the time picking meaningless fights with girls about nothing. He worked hard, went to college, sorta-kinda started a bunch of small communities around the something-word. Wasn't fighting people on pronouns or anything like that, but was probably honestly much weirder than a media-portrayed trans guy. Fizzled out when he wasn't able to convert that to $$/clout, but made the news, embarrassed the group and destroyed it. In other words, he was an entrepreneur who mistimed the market.

I remember in school, trying to explain to him that it wasn't going to work. I didn't know he had visions of $$/clout but I remember telling him, listen, you're gonna run into problems if you keep weird-maxxing. Think about how much easier this would be if you stopped weird-maxxing.

Rn the news does like 500 op-eds about this guy, what we need to do to help him, and I think "I know this guy and you do not. He is not magical, he is not confused. He is just a guy who happens to be wrong about a few things and is trying to start a community to compensate." It's slightly weird how much time is spent reminding the world not to bash this guy, when no one really ever bashed him! What's weird is that, if you're friends with someone, you actually try to help them if you see them struggling, and Everyone Else tells you "No, that makes you a bad friend actually." The purpose of this, of course, is so that people only feel safe if advice comes wrapped in a package of "and no one can take this the wrong way because we will add This Needs Context and unperson your family if you correct our grammar", a bizzaro-world message that resonates with weird-maxxing folks even stranger than my friend.

Real friends help each other. If you're reading this, I hope you're life-maxxing bro.

Expand full comment
11 more comments...

No posts