Apr 18, 2023·edited Apr 18, 2023Liked by Egg Report
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."
Excellent article. As a "writer" myself, that last bit I felt in the nether regions. At times, I have been infected with the EE and my writing suffered, more importantly, the meaning of what I was trying to convey suffered as well. I suppose to some degree I am still learning how to keep EE from crawling out of my subconscious into my words both spoken and written. Is is certainly a form of social disease, of course, it is conditioned into us.
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.
One of my friends described this as “carrying around a third-person camera in your head.” People make Marvel-tier quips and then mentally pose for the camera while smirking.
I remember when I used to watch tv. Tv right now feels like there are no characters that are genuinely interesting or enjoyable as characters. It’s all dark triad Machiavellian power struggles and I really like characters that are likeable people, good people who are interesting, like the characters in the Blue Sky era of tv shows.
I remember watching one of those shows, watching a scene of dialogue between two of those characters. They were discussing the evidence for a case or something, and what it might mean. It suddenly dawned upon me that, while these characters weren’t exactly breaking the fourth wall — they weren’t looking at the camera or speaking to the person on the other side of the camera — this particular dialogue would never take place in the real world. The fact that the dialogue was taking place only made sense if you took into account that people outside the show would be watching it. Had all this taken place in real life, the characters would have a phone call, or a text thread, or the conclusions drawn would be so obvious that they wouldn’t even need a conversation. The dialogue didn’t exist for the characters; they weren’t having a conversation to process the facts of the case, but rather *to keep the audience informed of the facts of the case*, to spoon-feed the conclusions to the audience. And the dialogue was so buttery smooth, so polished — all these characters knew exactly what to say, and when to say it, and I really envied them for that. And it’s all manufactured, all scripted — the writers had infinite time to figure out exactly how to couch their words.
When I realized that, I quit watching tv entirely. The illusion was shattered. The show has all these professionals who are very passionate about their work, and their work is very interesting, and it’s changing the world, and blah blah blah, and I bought into it for so long and idolized it for so much time, only to realize that it’s all a product designed to sell me on that identity.
I was invited to this wedding maybe a year back. It was a secular wedding. I had only been to religious Christian weddings, and I was curious to see what a secular American wedding would look like.
It was bad. It was all about the bride’s image. The wedding did not exist for the two to become one; it existed so photos of it could be taken and posted to Instagram for everyone else to comment on. The wedding was not about the union of the bride and groom — it was about putting on a show for everyone else to watch, it was a political struggle for the boomer parents and their friends. There were no vows — instead a procession of people came up and guilted the groom by telling him how stunning and brave and strong and powerful his bride was, and how he didn’t deserve her and needed to respect her individuality and choices and equality at all times. The marriage was not about how to go about his responsibilities to his wife, but about how he ought to contort his appearance to meet the expectations of the outside world.
This one’s more for American evangelicals. The American evangelical understanding of the sacraments is literally pornographic. The evangelical does not believe that anything happens when he is baptized. Instead, he is baptized to show that he has accepted Christ. Baptism is understood to be the first work you must accomplish to prove this. But prove to whom? Show to whom? To the third-person camera we carry in our heads. When Baptists demand that their children be able to articulate the faith before they can be baptized, they are not testing for faith; they are testing for *articulation*, and articulation specifically for their own sake, to prove that they did a good job. In the meantime, the child suffers. Baptize your kids.
It is imperative to believe that all this is a gift. When you are baptized, it’s a gift from God, and it’s effective — it really does change you from the inside out, and that’s the focus of the ritual, not how you look. You don’t need to will these changes into existence; it will feel like they they just kind of happen provided that you really do believe that baptism is efficacious, if you have faith. When you are married, that’s a gift from God — you really do become one with the other. When you do works, like working at a job, it’s not about looking good to the outside world or being a responsible adult or plugging into the system better than other people — it’s about loving and serving the people who derive real tangible benefit from your work. And these are all gifts, the concept of “deserving” or appearing a certain way to the outside world, does not apply. No matter what I do, I do not deserve my baptism — God knows and decided to give it to me anyway, because he loves me. Hopefully one day I’ll be able to say the same about marriage.
I used to like the show Survivor, and other reality shows used to be very good as well, before contestants were hyper-aware how their actions & words were going to be edited and fit into a narrative for the audience (and especially social media). In the past, these shows would have amazing characters because people were acting genuinely... real jerks, real villains, real breakdowns, betrayals, making fools of themselves, which is wonderful television & feels like genuine human social interaction. Now, with Twitter and everyone on TV trying to make a brand of themselves, it’s so rare to see genuine human moments (and every time they happen, the host breaks the fourth wall to say, “hey audience! Look how amazing this moment is! This is why we love Survivor!”). It’s entirely tiresome & worthless now.
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
Excellent article. As a "writer" myself, that last bit I felt in the nether regions. At times, I have been infected with the EE and my writing suffered, more importantly, the meaning of what I was trying to convey suffered as well. I suppose to some degree I am still learning how to keep EE from crawling out of my subconscious into my words both spoken and written. Is is certainly a form of social disease, of course, it is conditioned into us.
I was thinking the E.E. derangement syndrome sounds a bit like Uncle Teds oversocialization concept. Does this make sense?
Only a real racist can truly love this https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=M_5Go8gTdYU
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.
One of my friends described this as “carrying around a third-person camera in your head.” People make Marvel-tier quips and then mentally pose for the camera while smirking.
I remember when I used to watch tv. Tv right now feels like there are no characters that are genuinely interesting or enjoyable as characters. It’s all dark triad Machiavellian power struggles and I really like characters that are likeable people, good people who are interesting, like the characters in the Blue Sky era of tv shows.
I remember watching one of those shows, watching a scene of dialogue between two of those characters. They were discussing the evidence for a case or something, and what it might mean. It suddenly dawned upon me that, while these characters weren’t exactly breaking the fourth wall — they weren’t looking at the camera or speaking to the person on the other side of the camera — this particular dialogue would never take place in the real world. The fact that the dialogue was taking place only made sense if you took into account that people outside the show would be watching it. Had all this taken place in real life, the characters would have a phone call, or a text thread, or the conclusions drawn would be so obvious that they wouldn’t even need a conversation. The dialogue didn’t exist for the characters; they weren’t having a conversation to process the facts of the case, but rather *to keep the audience informed of the facts of the case*, to spoon-feed the conclusions to the audience. And the dialogue was so buttery smooth, so polished — all these characters knew exactly what to say, and when to say it, and I really envied them for that. And it’s all manufactured, all scripted — the writers had infinite time to figure out exactly how to couch their words.
When I realized that, I quit watching tv entirely. The illusion was shattered. The show has all these professionals who are very passionate about their work, and their work is very interesting, and it’s changing the world, and blah blah blah, and I bought into it for so long and idolized it for so much time, only to realize that it’s all a product designed to sell me on that identity.
I was invited to this wedding maybe a year back. It was a secular wedding. I had only been to religious Christian weddings, and I was curious to see what a secular American wedding would look like.
It was bad. It was all about the bride’s image. The wedding did not exist for the two to become one; it existed so photos of it could be taken and posted to Instagram for everyone else to comment on. The wedding was not about the union of the bride and groom — it was about putting on a show for everyone else to watch, it was a political struggle for the boomer parents and their friends. There were no vows — instead a procession of people came up and guilted the groom by telling him how stunning and brave and strong and powerful his bride was, and how he didn’t deserve her and needed to respect her individuality and choices and equality at all times. The marriage was not about how to go about his responsibilities to his wife, but about how he ought to contort his appearance to meet the expectations of the outside world.
This one’s more for American evangelicals. The American evangelical understanding of the sacraments is literally pornographic. The evangelical does not believe that anything happens when he is baptized. Instead, he is baptized to show that he has accepted Christ. Baptism is understood to be the first work you must accomplish to prove this. But prove to whom? Show to whom? To the third-person camera we carry in our heads. When Baptists demand that their children be able to articulate the faith before they can be baptized, they are not testing for faith; they are testing for *articulation*, and articulation specifically for their own sake, to prove that they did a good job. In the meantime, the child suffers. Baptize your kids.
It is imperative to believe that all this is a gift. When you are baptized, it’s a gift from God, and it’s effective — it really does change you from the inside out, and that’s the focus of the ritual, not how you look. You don’t need to will these changes into existence; it will feel like they they just kind of happen provided that you really do believe that baptism is efficacious, if you have faith. When you are married, that’s a gift from God — you really do become one with the other. When you do works, like working at a job, it’s not about looking good to the outside world or being a responsible adult or plugging into the system better than other people — it’s about loving and serving the people who derive real tangible benefit from your work. And these are all gifts, the concept of “deserving” or appearing a certain way to the outside world, does not apply. No matter what I do, I do not deserve my baptism — God knows and decided to give it to me anyway, because he loves me. Hopefully one day I’ll be able to say the same about marriage.
I used to like the show Survivor, and other reality shows used to be very good as well, before contestants were hyper-aware how their actions & words were going to be edited and fit into a narrative for the audience (and especially social media). In the past, these shows would have amazing characters because people were acting genuinely... real jerks, real villains, real breakdowns, betrayals, making fools of themselves, which is wonderful television & feels like genuine human social interaction. Now, with Twitter and everyone on TV trying to make a brand of themselves, it’s so rare to see genuine human moments (and every time they happen, the host breaks the fourth wall to say, “hey audience! Look how amazing this moment is! This is why we love Survivor!”). It’s entirely tiresome & worthless now.