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[FBT] on Softness and Screwed

Maybe I’m soft

Good god almighty the Tech Bros, amirite!? I mean, we all knew they were supremely full of shit, but sometimes they at least pretended to be benevolent. Not anymore. Everyone is still up in arms about Zuck’s opportunist about-face on decency. And Musk is…well Musk. I don’t read most mainstream news anymore, but I can’t escape these guys. Even smaller, lesser known Bros, like the WordPress founder, are happily immolating decency with public pronouncements to stir shit up.

I posted on Mastodon “In the interest of sanity, might I ask any of you who know journalists to call them up and request that they give no more attention to mediocre white dudes who have outsized egos and billions of money?” and I meant it. What would happen if we just didn’t pay them any attention? Would they slowly fade into unknown billionaire existence, eventually eating lunch at the employee cafeteria everyday, like the 11th richest person on the planet?

What would happen if the media did, actually, stop the current strategy of clicks and eyeballs vis a vie sensational headlines and terrorising us all with all these dudes? What would it mean to focus in on anything, literally anything, that isn’t driven by ego, power, control and individualism?

In journalism there is “hard news” and “soft news”, just like how in education there are “hard skills” and “soft skills”. Now I’m no expert but…oh, wait, I AM an expert.

I will be brief because some of my readers are not here for educational philosophy. For decades many in my network have championed actual education, the long-stretch goal of which is essentially self-actualisation. This is a term popularised by Maslow, but even Aristotle was pontificating about our human states of becoming. Education is, briefly, not only acquiring skills but realising our free will, potential and unique unicorn properties so that we can survive the shitshow that is existence. At least until we’re dead, education’s purpose to help us survive and thrive, not just get a job.

In society, education is both contrasted and conflated with other terms like learning, training or skill development. The field is semantically messy, and at the end of the day many don’t care about actual education. For society writ-large, the purpose of education is not self-actualisation, but rather compliance, conformance and control. I’m not talking about educators, you fluffy, beautiful bandits of resistance leaders, I’m talking about the systems around and through which people have access to education. Learning to learn, being intellectually curious, bravely looking the human condition in the face – these are not economically responsible endeavours. Thus, they have traditionally been reserved for the privileged (and the possessed).

ANYWAY, “soft skills” is a term usually describing the skills acquired in learning how to interact with our fellow humans. Skills that make us less of an asshole, like communication skills or how to collaborate. “Hard skills” are maths and stuff. Perhaps you’ve heard this dichotomy elsewhere? Hard skills, soft skills. Hard sciences, soft sciences. Hard news, soft news. Like most dichotomies, I don’t like this at all. The connotation of “hard” versus “soft” seems to reinforce some sort of negative value judgement that is, like much in our world, neither right nor wrong but just a matter of perspective.

When it comes to the news, “arts and culture” are “soft” and “politics and business” are “hard”. Now, however, we live in a world were everything is all jumbled up. It’s difficult to pull out what’s important to us, even without modern information landscapes. Our politics and cultures have collided into culture wars. “Soft” power is wielded in the halls of “hard” power, and vice versa. But a big thing about our modern society is that we have to navigate our own becoming while watching every-freaking-body else’s. It is ridiculously hard.

What if, though, we started treating the actual human dudes who are playing this game that none of us want to play like they are a “soft” news story? What if we treat them like human-interest stories that get cut in production? What if we don’t have to watch their becomings (and, arguably, mid-life crises that are absolute cringe)? Given their power, we should have some journalistic attempts to understand and report on what they’re up to. I’m just questioning if we need to pay attention to them every fucking day, week, month and year and what would happen if we just…didn’t.

Maybe I’m anti-parasocial

Lesson 2: You don’t have to draw what other people want to see. cc-by-sa Laura Hilliger

I am trying to become over here, and I do not feel that I should be forced into relationships not of my choosing. Most of the time, people think of parasocial relationships as funny, little obsessions. My “one-sided emotional bond” with the men in power is not cute, it’s damaging.

Before you try to insist that I can, however, choose not to have feelings about the egomaniacal people running the Western world, I would like to point out a few things:

  1. My friends, my family, my colleagues, other people are also caught in this relationship dynamic. Thus personal choice plays no role in our capture. I cannot avoid information about all these powerful men (and occasional women) without becoming a full-on recluse.
  2. The harm these people cause is real. I experience viscerally what it means when, for example, they talk about withholding funding from wildfire victims*. No, I can’t control anything but my emotions, but choosing not to engage with the hard stuff because it is not impacting you directly is the definition of callous.
  3. Despite the rational judgement that the harm these people cause can be mitigated by rule of law and collective refusal, the reality is that rather than being branded pariah these motherfuckers are celebrated. Their companies haul in billions in government contracts. They are using their power and platforms to manipulate the behaviours and emotions of hundreds of millions of people. Some people think these things are just fine.

Meanwhile, in case the blustery bullshit of TechBros isn’t enough, there’s also protocol fighting, ill-advised theoretical social experiments and clandestine geo-political upheavals. 

I do not consent.

* I could have chosen any number of examples here. Destroying anti-hate policies and procedures, deporting citizens with refugee/immigrant/migrant parents/ancestry, penalising poverty, and so on

Maybe I need help?

I am so sick of winter. I’m constantly cold, it’s grey af and my garden looks sad and miserable. The co-op also doesn’t have enough work on, which doesn’t help my mood. At the moment SAD lamps aren’t doing a lot.

What about you? How’s it going?

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