I take it that the Catcher in the Rye discourse has reared back up again. I find that exhausting and I haven’t even seen any of it directly. I wrote all I want to about Salinger and those specifics here. What it really provokes in me is an even deeper sense that contemporary social culture is deeply dependent on the Person-Guy, and I will never be free of him. The Person-Guy is the term
"Because I gotta tell you, I find this all fucking exhausting."
I find the whole choosing one's canon based on how many Wokemon points one scores to be a particularly dreary status game, one that has jack-all to do with music or literature or anything other than status and Wokemon.
Here's my theory: the successful class that you are describing have jobs and social lives that allow for/require never ending comparisons with peers via smartphone engagement. That makes people neurotic/unhappy (these folks mirror the trends in teen mental health caused by the same problem). Combine that with that class not having kids, delaying having kids, and/or creating the idea of "parenting" that filters the entire experience back through themselves (and their phones), thereby negating the normal maturity that comes from child-rearing. Namely: to learn to love someone else more than yourself, thereby softening the pains of aging and the fear of death.
I think it's the single most mean-spirited thing I've ever read on that site. The description of who Tech Bros are and why they suck must be at least three times the length of the average trope description on the site. I come away with the distinct impression that the people involved in composing the description loathe tech bros more fervently than they do paedophiles or purse-snatchers, and also that none of them have ever met such a person.
I will never get over the fact that SomethingAwful enriched a domestic abuser for many years and then, when faced with that reality, chose to enrich his lackey and enabler just so they could keep their safe space operational.
As a lit prof, at this point I'm excited at signs that people read literature at all.
Yeah, assuming that anyone's tastes will remain static is dumb. It's not true for either readers or for writers themselves. Henry James and Edith Wharton both thought the hated Walt Whitman's poetry. They both later "confessed" to each other that they just hadn't previously grasped what he was doing.
One of the great realizations of my life was that I will always be someone's LOLcow, someone's Person-Guy. And I can either live my life trying not to be that, desperately performing to stay one step ahead of the new Person-Guy archetype (because, as Freddie noted, it's ever-shifting as people run away from one Person-Guy form to the next), or say "fuck 'em" and be the absolute goddamn weirdo the Creator put me on this Earth to be.
I doubt Lit Bros are real and I’ve certainly never knowingly came across one, but I wish there were lots of them. They sound annoying as fuck, but at least they would create a market demand for new fiction. I’ve got nothing against women writers. I’ve read both Elena Ferrante and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. But it would be nice to not feel like such a weirdo being a dude reading a novel in public and it would be nice to see on the bookstore’s new lit shelf more alternatives to all the books targeting boozy women book clubs.
One of the (very few) social benefits of being a mathematics major was the early realization that your tastes and interests were wildly different from the vast majority of humans, and making peace with that fact. There was zero random social interest in your opinion about the continuum hypothesis, or anything else for that matter, and a lot of my early adulthood was spent getting comfortable with being culturally oddball. It certainly was isolating and kinda miserable at the time, but at 53… wow, it’s not nice to give a fuck and to just enjoy what I enjoy regardless of how judged.
"Because I gotta tell you, I find this all fucking exhausting."
I find the whole choosing one's canon based on how many Wokemon points one scores to be a particularly dreary status game, one that has jack-all to do with music or literature or anything other than status and Wokemon.
The beautiful irony here being that the Person-Guy take writer has by now become its own category of Person-Guy
There is a simple, yet unfathomable answer:
Modern American society is deeply narcissistic, and the core of narcissism is insecurity.
Here's my theory: the successful class that you are describing have jobs and social lives that allow for/require never ending comparisons with peers via smartphone engagement. That makes people neurotic/unhappy (these folks mirror the trends in teen mental health caused by the same problem). Combine that with that class not having kids, delaying having kids, and/or creating the idea of "parenting" that filters the entire experience back through themselves (and their phones), thereby negating the normal maturity that comes from child-rearing. Namely: to learn to love someone else more than yourself, thereby softening the pains of aging and the fear of death.
TV Tropes has an article about "tech bros". https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TechBro
I think it's the single most mean-spirited thing I've ever read on that site. The description of who Tech Bros are and why they suck must be at least three times the length of the average trope description on the site. I come away with the distinct impression that the people involved in composing the description loathe tech bros more fervently than they do paedophiles or purse-snatchers, and also that none of them have ever met such a person.
The biggest reason for their insecurity is likely that they have heavy privilege-guilt.
I will never get over the fact that SomethingAwful enriched a domestic abuser for many years and then, when faced with that reality, chose to enrich his lackey and enabler just so they could keep their safe space operational.
As a lit prof, at this point I'm excited at signs that people read literature at all.
Yeah, assuming that anyone's tastes will remain static is dumb. It's not true for either readers or for writers themselves. Henry James and Edith Wharton both thought the hated Walt Whitman's poetry. They both later "confessed" to each other that they just hadn't previously grasped what he was doing.
One of the great realizations of my life was that I will always be someone's LOLcow, someone's Person-Guy. And I can either live my life trying not to be that, desperately performing to stay one step ahead of the new Person-Guy archetype (because, as Freddie noted, it's ever-shifting as people run away from one Person-Guy form to the next), or say "fuck 'em" and be the absolute goddamn weirdo the Creator put me on this Earth to be.
The second one is way more fun.
Well, we gotta get our two minutes hate from somewhere.
I still don't get Wife Guy.
I doubt Lit Bros are real and I’ve certainly never knowingly came across one, but I wish there were lots of them. They sound annoying as fuck, but at least they would create a market demand for new fiction. I’ve got nothing against women writers. I’ve read both Elena Ferrante and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. But it would be nice to not feel like such a weirdo being a dude reading a novel in public and it would be nice to see on the bookstore’s new lit shelf more alternatives to all the books targeting boozy women book clubs.
I dunno, I like guys who like baseball.
One of the (very few) social benefits of being a mathematics major was the early realization that your tastes and interests were wildly different from the vast majority of humans, and making peace with that fact. There was zero random social interest in your opinion about the continuum hypothesis, or anything else for that matter, and a lot of my early adulthood was spent getting comfortable with being culturally oddball. It certainly was isolating and kinda miserable at the time, but at 53… wow, it’s not nice to give a fuck and to just enjoy what I enjoy regardless of how judged.
Opening Day is in Korea this year.
Self-diagnosed Imposter Syndrome always strikes me as a kind of paradox. If you think you have imposter syndrome you almost, by definition, don't.
If you actually have imposter syndrome you think that your problem is that you are an imposter, not that you have a confidence issue.
And there are a lot of imposters out there! When I'm pretty sure I'm one in a particular setting I keep my mouth shut about it.