Open letter to a picture of myself back in cubicle life, 2003-ish, part II.
What up, dude! Howyoubeen since that last talk? Good?
Good.
Now back to that red Mac on your desk — more to the point, the founder of Apple Computer, Steve Jobs. After he dies, an affliction called Steve Jobs Disease is going to strike. SJD rots techbros’ and finance dudes’ minds. Boys who contract SJD become delusional, start to think they all batman, honey.
Remember that utopian mumbo-jumbo from childhood about computers changing society? They changed us, they sure did. Surveillance capitalism is thriving. More ways to gamble than ever before. People work longer hours barely getting by while Wall Street-loving bros design new gadgets and apps for nickling-and-diming working-class folks more efficiently. This past year, the bros rolled out a basic version of AI, but marketed it to investors like it’s the most bad-ass and big-minded AI straight from the most outlandish sci-fi. Even better, their AI promised to eliminate jobs, a fact which prompted investors to foam at the mouth.
Yet the Earth is still burning. Gotten worse in twenty years, not better. Technology could save us and this planet. But currently, it is primarily a get-richer-quicker-scheme with gatekeepers who are white nationalists who think with their dicks.
2023 is dystopian, but stupid and racist, 2003ish-Me. In 2016, the country will elect…we’ll just name him Dumber Than Dubya so we don’t spoil the surprise. Thankfully, the USA will not reelect him in 2020. Comparing 2016 and 2020, almost every voter demographic — blue collar, military, white, Black, Hispanic, etc. — will see a decrease in votes for this Republican. However…and contain your surprise…his tally from ’16 to ’20 will increase with the $100,000–200,000/year crowd. Low-six-figure-earners were simultaneously the largest loss in votes for the Democratic candidate as well as the largest gain in votes for re-electing DTD.
Yup, the well-off, but not super-rich. The maintainers of the broken status quo. Insulated, but not as safe as they wish. This sad fact about the 2016 and 2020 elections, you get it. Looking at this picture, you worked with these people. Encountered many in the years since and have known this mentality your whole life. Kierkegaard: “The petty bourgeoisie is spiritless.”
You love movies, so do I. Remakes are still big. Some rock, some suck. As a new year begins, though, what the world needs is an Aliens remake, only Carter Burke is the hero. Talk about shareholder-friendly: my idea is that the company-man Carter not only survives, but takes his earnings to go all venture-capitalism, buys a winery, starts a fashion label, orders AI to write a self-help guide in his name…cha-ching.
Your sci-fi book…you think the idea is utopian fiction, not dystopian. But…then again…you don’t know where it fits as the world keeps shifting around. Weird times. And bros know they are in the wrong. One day in the future, cube-me, it will occur to you that healthy, mature rich people don’t build bomb shelters for themselves and stockpile survival gear like the “invisible hand of the free market”clique seems to be doing. The world has normalized the paranoia of its most fortunate.
This picture makes the future-you understand how desensitized Americans have become to the psychological dysfunction of the money-hoarding set. Instead of bunkers filled with guns and gas masks, rich white trash need therapy. Those deep-down feelings of guilt about not paying enough in taxes…let’s work through them with trained mental professionals instead of betting it all on the world ending, what do you say, lads?
The high-net-worth crowd displays mean-spiritedness and hints of mental illness, but the public pretends that they are kindhearted and big-minded. Though you don’t want to sound judgmental or holier-than-thou here. People got bills to pay. It’s in their best interests to smile and nod at the “job creators” who call themselves “alpha males.” Critical thinking isn’t needed in these times and those who comply get compensated. The Powell Memo laid down the law.
The business world has issues, not like you’re surprised. Only its crap crosses over to your fiction-writing adventure in ways you didn’t expect. But this is the Universe giving lessons, which is what the Universe does. Here’s what the Universe has told you: readers are cool, dude! Real cool. You write weird stuff and some like it while other folks say it’s not their cup of weird-tea and it’s all good. The vast majority of other writers rock, too, a different vibe than ad agency copywriters and designers. Fellow fiction writers post little victories at points in their writing ventures and you are happy for them. Your breakthroughs get love in return. Not very red-white-and-blue-capitalism of us word-people, not getting all cutthroat or challenging each other to fights like we’re worth billions of dollars. And fortunately, due to the fact that one has to get out of bed and go through life and interact with the larger world, the majority of non-readers are great.
With that said, upper-middle-class white people who do not read books — now that crowd got creepy once you self-published. Too many of them give off the fascist vibe upon hearing that you write stuff.
But once again: it’s the Universe giving lessons. Yeah, the crowd who voted for Dumber Than Dubya also gets their armbands in a twist over writing that they were not going to read in the first place…probably a link between the two or some type of clue in there somewhere, detective.
Here’s the analogy, marketing-guy sitting at your marketing-desk doing marketing-stuff: readers are your target audience and your product is not expensive. (Not being negative, your books are priced just fine.) But the fascist pisser of it has to do with this segment from outside of the target audience with money who keeps demanding to hear the sales pitch and monopolize the conversation about your product — a product they have no intention of buying. Your e-books are $2.99 and they seem to think that their $2.99 for an e-book is better than another person’s $2.99. In truth, most don’t talk to you about your writing, they talk about you to your target audience. You hear about it third-person. 2003-Me: those fellow employees who get ahead by going behind co-workers’ backs and complaining to supervisors — yeah, their vibe exists outside the walls of that company. It’s been weaponized.
Not every upper-middle-class white person who doesn’t read does this, but enough do and I don’t get the ugliness from any other group of folks. The problem-children control a disproportionate amount of the money and that makes it a bigger deal. Plus, the static I get as a white male nobody-writer is nothing when compared to how they treat people due to skin color, religion, gender, and sexual orientation. Whatever I experience, others feel it fifty-fold, easy. Though this is on the cusp of changing and has been for decades because systemic change is inevitable and beautiful. The push forward is amazing to observe. It’s why the negativity has this dangerous-but-stupid quality to it. Small-minded people are scared shitless.
Writing helps make sense of it. And know what happens when you, a straight white dude, jots down thoughts about topics like racism, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, homophobia, and sexism? Some people who disagree with these thoughts will never, ever, ever, ever post a word suggesting that they disagree. Ever. Not one sentence of disagreement or differing point of view. Not ever.
But they don’t remain silent. Instead, they start to care about grammar. A subject they hated in school, now they’re passionate about the written word. They fixate on little technical aspects of your writing — every word choice, how it flows, etc.
When you get annoyed by these indirect attacks, you remind yourself that they are doing so because, while they disagree with your thoughts, verbalizing a response terrifies them.
You said something like “Racism is bad” and those words got their blood boiling. Not because they are, you know…racist or anything. Never. Or you wrote “fascism is bad” and now they are grammar-nazis. But they are not actual nazis, though, noooo…not one bit.
Yes, indeedy, shit’s weird in 2023. Blogging helps figure out some stuff, like journaling did back then. You still got those journals. The cool thing about blogging is that others read your posts and thank you because they got something out of it. That’s a rush.
People who read your work and think it sucks deserve your thanks because they took the time to read. Pursuing writing in a time when democracy is in jeopardy makes you appreciate every reader more. And the committed NON-readers…hey, you always loved Cabaret and the story made you wonder about early-1930s Germany. Well, now you have an inkling of life back then. While the Germans probably would have taken the vaccine if a pandemic like Covid were to strike, they still share traits with the modern-day Right wing here in the USA. And being labeled a “free thinker” in Stalin’s Soviet Union, let’s just say that your understanding of this time in history feels clearer now.
In the midst of it all, you got a new story working and you’re ending the year okay.
2024?
Who knows?
Fifty-six years after 1968, a turbulent year itself.
A year when the Republicans committed treason to steal the Presidency.
Part I. Other “Open letter to myself” posts. Did one when I turned 50. Wrapping my head around taking drinking to the edge. Seeing my first book in a store for the first time.
Some earlier posts:
• NYC vacay. May, 2003.
• Operation Week Off
• ID photos should look stupid.
• A thank you, from me to Rush Limbaugh..
• Intersection of Memory Lane and Flashback Avenue.
I also write fiction. I have two dark comedies available, Fearkiller (Volume 1) and Notes from Trillionaire Island: Fearkiller (Volume 2), as well as Revolutionizer Alpha, the first book in a sci-fi series. I also wrote a story about God. It was weird, but then I decided to make the story and its sequel free. And all of the sudden, it didn’t seem as weird. Writing about God is much less weird when you write about God without charging money for it.
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