#81 - Having Fun In Public

Being mocked on the internet because a random person you shared public space with decided that your behavior should be documented and broadcast without your consent or even knowledge is truly one of my absolute least favorite things about the current surveillance culture we live in.

It’s the fault of the system, but the individual behavior of so many people seems to be intent to destroy fun.

Everything is cringe to the wrong audience, but if it’s not harming anybody, then leave people alone!

Even when people’s actions are being shared because people are sharing them in a positive way—the people kissing on the subway platform deserve privacy!!!

The damage that Elf on a Shelf has done to society. Innumerable!

This shit should be against TikTok’s terms of service by the way. The companies do have a responsibility in curtailing this behavior instead of rewarding it algorithmically.

Over the holiday week, a dude having fun with his popcorn station job was taped and uploaded for mockery and scorn (surprise! the subject of the video is a fat person! who is therefore immediately worthy of derision apprently!). The internet “heartwarmingly” enjoyed the guys commitment to the bit and “turned around the mockery into genuine appreciation”. And look…it’s better than everyone bandwagoning and consigning the invasion of privacy and fatphobia but like, do we all really think that dude doesn’t know that 90% of those comments are just people proving to the greater public that they’re a Good Person? Because “no guys this person is actually really cool” is not the defense the Good People of the internet want it to be.

And this guy, who was just doing his job (and doing it extremely well I love customer service so much, and getting a genuinely even spread of fake butter on popcorn is something I appreciate so much I have been craving popcorn for days), now has to deal with the fallout. AMC is putting him in their twitter videos to promote the theatre chain—free marketing they’re absolutely not going to compensate him for—and like, what’s he supposed to say if he’s not comfortable with this? When the world exposes that kind of cruelty and possibility for bullying it makes us trust the world less, and it makes power something that is only attainable through appearing “unbothered”. And maybe I’m just projecting a lot because I’ve been ruthlessly bullied for being fat before, but like…what if he is bothered? What if he doesn’t want more videos circulating with open comment sections? Is there a way for him to communicate that without being accused of overreaction?

I’ve been thinking a lot about how reading comment sections can often be akin to self-harm. (Not just with fatness, I think when I was unemployed I used the Caroline Calloway Snark Reddit as a way to self-flagellate because I too at that time was an unemployed woman in my late 20s who lived in New York and had an expired driver’s license—& the sub was really into nitpicking that having a license made someone a “functioning adult” and I was able to double down that I was in fact useless and untalented even though the comments were never talking about me. But when you read a bunch of people’s worst thoughts you get to assume they would have them about people outside of the snark subject.) When Gatorade featured a fat woman doing a full Crow pose in an ad this week, thousands rushed online to declare the dreaded ✨normalizing obesity✨ line even though it was clearly a strong and healthy fat person MID WORKOUT. But that’s why fatphobia is an oppressive system, there is no such thing as a “good” fat person regardless of the efforts. Fat people are not seen as people in their own right, but rather as failed thin people.

(“I’m fine with fat people as long as they’re working on not being fat.” Okay, please describe how you can tell that though. Also using “health” as a measuring stick for how people deserve to be treated is bullshit regardless of a person’s size. It’s wild! They don’t mean health they just mean fat it’s not even good coded language because it applies to absolutely no other measure of “health”!)

Anyway, recording people out in public will be the death of fun as we know it. We’re all already incredibly overly self-conscious compared to any other time in history. And it’s because people admit their “worst thoughts” all over the internet and then we read them and go “oh people really DO have all of those worst thoughts I project onto myself” and it makes it really hard to trust other people or sympathize. Our first thought is not reflective of our most conscious selves which is why actions matter most, but the erosion of filters and compulsion to post broadcasts the worst of the first thoughts to every corner of the internet.

Bad faith interpretations, calling other living people “NPC’s”, and treating people just trying to go about their days as expendable characters to feature in a TikTok is a horrendous way to live. The girl who got frustrated because people were walking by while trying to film a video in the London Underground should genuinely have her brain studied. I don’t think she relates to the world correctly anymore. And that’s really scary for her and for what it says about how quickly the need to “create content” will fundamentally change how people relate to the world. And the apps are encouraging it, and the creator economy and lack of well-paying traditional jobs fuel the fire, and algorithms reward scandal and negativity so people start seeing the world through that lens.

I don’t think it’s the fault of the individuals who create it. I think it’s a pipeline that they’ve been entered into without understanding the consequences. There is no such thing as “knowing what you signed up for” when it comes to vitality, fame, or online infamy. The human brain cannot comprehend the number of people who comment on any given situation on Twitter. And there’s like, not that many people on Twitter. (The idea that a BTS livestream has garnered over 20 million people watching in live time is absolutely incomprehensible to me. How can one person handle having that many eyeballs on them, that many people scrutinizing and immortalizing what they’re saying?)

But filming people living their lives without their consent is a blight on society. I hate that there are people arguing that by being in public we ever consent to being filmed. It’s weird and creepy and another example of how outsourcing entertainment to be done by individuals is a bad thing. When Billy On The Street was popular, Billy Eichner used to constantly talk about how he never even watched the clips that they couldn’t get releases for because it was useless and disappointing to know they could never release it. He always praised the interns and PAs who had to approach people for the release to be signed—especially when the interaction had been heightened. But it matters! And the lines have deteriorated because there’s no oversight. Deregulation is the downfall of a polite and useful society. Humans are not built to only look out for themselves and I think approaching the world through an individualistic lens makes that all the harder to remember.

The isolation is on purpose. Cultivating distrust amongst communities is meant to separate us. To defeat the spirit and hope for a better future. Capitalism demands complacency and the easiest way to achieve that is by making life so exhausting that we don’t have time to recover so everyone numbs out instead.

The internet is easy. Scrolling is easy. It’s on purpose and it’s meant to make it seem like the best option. It does take more effort to read a book. Not a lot more effort, but enough to create a small barrier.

The downfall of the publishing industry and magazines has meant that writers now do it themselves and cultivate micro-niche audiences for their work. And there is so much value in having a direct line and the ability to communicate intimately with an audience—but it also means that a sustained lifestyle via writing is not coming from a workplace that has benefits and copyeditors and finished products that have an overarching purpose and message. It’s not bad that a bunch of people have newsletters and zines but it creates all of these separate realities. The general populace has no generic reference pool. I would actually love it if The Village Voice made a comeback and started employing some gritty New York-y reporters to talk about cool shit happening in the city and how to get involved in tenant protection committees in your neighborhood. It’s exhausting to seek all of the information from separate sources! The whiplash of scrolling past atrocities with jokes about the banalities of life sprinkled in between cannot be a good environment for either of those messages to be contained within. No one can be an expert on everything.

We’re losing historians. Like, as a profession. Information is so accessible, but only surface level. The breadth of history is so vast and what historians focus on has been so heavily politicized. It breaks my heart because I love history. There’s so much rich detail and understanding in seeing how people have behaved for millennia. It’s important to recognize the humanity and joys of the ancestors before us. The adversity they overcame but also how they sourced joy through struggle. The Irish sing and dance (and drink) because that’s how they survived. A thumping bodhrán drum kickstarts the heart. The same way a bluegrass band will. Music is connective. Humans want to gather around something warm, smoke a native plant, drink a distilled grain or fermented fruit, tell stories, and sing. Isolation is the opposite. Even just small interactions, slight abrasions overcome, and minute moments all make us aware we’re alive. Convenience is a myth created to keep us inside. Go get the thing from the store, you just might have an adventure while you do.

One of the best history classes I took in college was focused on just the Jackson years of presidency. It’s a time in history that’s often skipped over because war plots so much of what’s deemed necessary to understand. But American history is a rich disaster to examine. The cruelty is important to note because the monstrosity of Andrew Jackson’s behavior is magnificently juxtaposed with his humanity. He was a murderer, a war criminal, and responsible for the genocide of thousands of Native Americans. He also had two adopted Native children whom he dearly loved. It does not erase nor ease the suffering, but it does paint the wild reality oh his life a little more vividly and we should try and understand how one human can live with such cognitive dissonance. Evil is complex, that’s what makes it so frightening.

(Jackson was the first president to win the popular vote and lose the electoral college. His opponent was nepo baby John Quincy Adams, who brokered a backdoor deal with the “always a bridesmaid never a bride” founding father Henry Clay in order to secure the presidency. During the race, Jacksons’s wife passed away after a rumor caused her great distress. Jackson blamed JQA and never quite recovered. He was immensely popular with the white land-owning populace—he wasn’t “proper” like the stuffy presidents before him (he came two prezzie’s after Madison who I like to refer to as the last president whose shoes had a heel and a buckle), his big block of cheese was immortalized by The West Wing, and his inauguration was a Wild Party style celebration on the front lawn. Biiiiig “everyone’s invited” throw the flyer invitations in the air and let them disseminate through the stairwell vibes. Anyway, had he gotten rid of the electoral college then, America would look vastly different now.

He fucked the banking system up and then left before the crash happened. Poor Martin Van Buren got blamed when it really was unavoidable. Jackson was great at evading responsibility. He murdered people in Florida (when it was still under Spanish occupation and he was nearly killed by their crown as penance) and he was only famous because he won The Battle of New Orleans during the war of 1812 but the problem with that battle is that it occurred after we had already declared victory in the war. It just took so long to get word to Louisiana that he fought an unnecessary battle and then it was framed as a victory when it was really just an expenditure of human lives on both sides because of the limits of communication. But history is written by those who remain to tell it.)

Deep curiosity is hard to engage with when google is right there, packed with surface-level listicles. It’s weird to watch as the internet moves from ironic to post-sincere. Gen Z seems to think that millennials earnestly said “adulting” which is so ahistorical it’s funny. But of course, modern history is hard to learn, the documentation of it is scattered across archived websites and blogs that no longer exist. The pictures that define the early 2000s are all posted on private semi-defunct Facebook pages. MySpace profiles in all of the custom HTML cursor glory are lost to time.

The internet used to be a place to have fun and be nerdy. But after the market became aware of making way more money off of nerd culture, the nerd propaganda began. The internet got sleeker, and “cool” people now know about tropes but in a way that radically shifts how books are written and spoken about. Tvtropes was just a weird archive of facts that movie nerds needed an outlet for, it wasn’t meant to destroy the idea that originality was necessary for a plot and story regardless of the narrative conventions used within it.

Anyway, it’s the companies that are rewarding the behavior so it’s their responsibility. Any semblance of regulation would be good for the system but it could start anytime if they actually cared about the mental health and quality of life of the audience.

People should be encouraged to be themselves out in the world. One of my favorite aspects of living in New York City is seeing the spectrum of human existence that can be captured in a single subway car.

It’s not that there’s a right and wrong way to live, but I think respecting each other is a fundamental component of community. Yes, even the people we disagree with. It’s harder when the disagreements are so extreme, but resisting extremity is again beneficial for us and detrimental for the corporations.

The public engaging in surveillance behavior makes it easier for it to be normalized. Cops shouldn’t have access to Ring doorbell footage! And we should not be installing Ring doorbells because they are self-setup panopticons that only serve the Powers That Be and bonus(!) create paranoia for homeowners.

Filming people in public is bad. The attention economy is Audrey II demanding to be fed and people are so willing to sacrifice others for a shot at fame. How dare parents pull pranks on their kids on Christmas morning for a chance of going viral. Why would you want to make your child sad on purpose? Why would you expose them to a vitriolic comment section making sweeping judgments about their personhood based on a one-minute snippet of their life?

I didn’t pay attention during bible class, but there’s a whole thing about not judging others lest we be judged right? Feels fitting.

It’s exhausting. Resistance begets fatigue. But I do think we have to be better than it. We have to rise above the bait. And like also be kind and respectful of each other because it’s tough out there right now and the world could always use a little more kindness.

And I don’t think kindness is always easy but it is always worth it. We’ll be okay as long as we all have each other (& we stop pointing cameras at strangers for nebulous engagement reasons). I don’t think that shame is a great motivating tactic, but I do think that the internet is currently fueled by a combustion engine of Having Opinions and Needing To Share Them and we can just…not. It’s a passive act of resistance, but oh, what a classic! Conscientious objecting comes to the internet! Stop quote-tweeting Matt Yglesias it’s what fuels his bad take machine!!

Anyway, I think the only way to defeat the attention economy is to rob it of importance.

Resistance can actually look like reading a book! Truly my dream protest in that there is actually nothing required of me beyond understanding that other people’s misery will never bring me joy and attention without care is a hollow replica of the comfort everyone is so desperately crying out for.

And that’s all they’re doing, but we can re-shape what care looks like and figure out how to heal—regardless of how cringe and sincere we may have to become to do it.