On Being Twitter Free and having Col. Kurtz as a Role Model

I Turned My Back on Everyone Horrible and Now I'm Lonely

So, I recently sent myself into permanent exile from social media (well the microblogging style, I was never on Facebook) which is tantamount to cutting out the better part of my tongue but was, regardless, an amateur self-surgery that i needed to perform for a long time, probably similar to my peers having to remove that price albert from their dick when they turn 45. I know i held onto the hellscape of social media for some type of empty prestige and the rationalization that any hope i had of getting a book deal (as in getting an agent/editor to call/write me back) was intertwined with the bot-ridden 350k twitter followers i had once amassed for well over a decade. 

Despite thinking about it for years and the strong encouragement to leave following Elon Musk’s Frankenstein’s Unmonstering of the site (what do you call making a bad idea materially worse as an unstable persistence?), I had found a nice community on Bluesky of seemingly rational professionals (whereas Threads felt like an incessant audition for a reality show on TLC circa 2014) and it wasn’t until 3 events that I noticed that the clock ticking down had stopped a long time ago and it was well past time to turn into a fucking pumpkin and get the hell out of dodge on a popsicle stick.  

The first was the thoroughly (from my perspective) unexpected reaction to the death and destruction in Israel on October 7^th. While I know full well that people hold a variety of feelings towards the Israel/Palestine issue I kinda naively thought there was a general consensus that systematic murder and rape of civilians was bad in any context. Bad in Nigeria, bad in Sudan, bad in Ukraine, bad in Palestine and, henceforth, bad in Israel. I have to say it’s fucking interesting sensation to watch people whom you regarded as friends or at least “friendly” acquaintances engage in excuses, denials, rationalizations and, at times, endorsements and celebration when tragic news of your family hits. It’s somewhat destabilizing, like when the brain initially doesn’t compute an unexpected death or when someone hits you from behind and you’re scrambling to organize multiple sensations into a coherent message so you know how to react. More to the point, it’s like someone offering you a hit of a joint and then shoving a hot fucking poker in your ass Edward II-style. 

And that’s the feeling I got from the behavior of people I “knew.” When it comes to absolute strangers reacting to 10/7 it went into some Fellini-esque  shitscape of haywire sociopathy commodified for the limited vernacular and intelligence of those desperate for a sense of purpose to share on TikTok. Epitomized by the celebration and jokes at the Democratic Socialists of America rally on 10/8 in Manhattan there was no shortage of fuckers all bonered up to cheer the rape and murder of my relatives.  

As I wrote in an earlier essay, I said some things, I still mean what I said. Fuck you. 

The second pillar to collapse under my willingness to be on social media happened earlier this year. Someone I consider a friend, the writer/artist Ed Piskor (best known for Hip Hop Family Tree and X-Men Grand Design) took his own life. I didn’t know him closely, we only spent one long day together in person when I interviewed him for the deservedly-defunct streaming network Comic-Con HQ. I had admired him through his work prior to the taping but by day’s end had really come to deeply respect him as a person and artist. We kept in infrequent touch digitally for some time but hadn’t been in contact for quite a few years. From what I understand earlier this year two young women came forward with stories about his behavior that was, for lack of a better word, fucking stupid. The best way to describe the behavior would be as come-ons, one which was quite crude and another that took advantage of a mentor-style relationship. Nothing illegal, nothing that came of anything beyond the initial conversations but deeply unappealing and ill-advised. The young women were well within their rights to share the story but several third parties, seemingly spearheaded by the writer Alex DiCampi engaged in a persistent harassment campaign of Ed which resulted in the loss of an exhibition in his hometown of Pittsburgh and the loss of at least one business deal. Yet the attacks, many of which were wholly unfounded, continued on until he took his life and only then they finally stopped. Maybe in the limited emotional reality manifest in their work they realized any further exaltations might seem redundant.  

I was unaware of any of this story until after I got news of Ed’s death and was taken aback by just how upset and uneasy it made me feel. In trying to learn more about what happened (and to assuage the reflexive instinct to wonder if I could’ve helped) I repeatedly came upon people celebrating his death, continuing to spread stories that were factually suspect before the suicide and were by then proven positively false. In addition to this repugnant display of roman plebes jerking off over dead monotheists I found Ms. DiCampi and others involved in the harassment, instead of contrition or shutting the fuck up, relishing their newfound notoriety.  

This time I kept my mouth shut despite my strong feelings. 

The final explosive shit that broke the camel’s back was the result of the resurgence of the student protests ostensibly against the Gaza War. I defend unequivocally a student’s (or anyone’s) right to speak or to protest, even when the university itself is entitled to preclude those rights. Having said that, I don’t think such belief against abridgement also requires me to ignore what the fuck is coming out of that goddam student’s mouth and a lot of it had a fuck-ton of trouble with the existence of jews (try as you might to tell me otherwise, that’s what those little Ivy-League shits mean when they say “Zionist” and chant “river to the sea” and scream “intifada” and if you try to invoke those Jewish Voices for Peace uncle toms as a counter argument I'm gonna shove a Black for Trump up your dick). 

Whereas back in October I was put on my back foot by the reactions from the mass of idiots best termed as the gamer-class; a type of contemporary westerner that has the critical thinking skills of a toddler with a glass pipe of gummy bears but is convinced, though a steady diet of parental adulation and young adult narratives that they have it all figured out. This time around it was the expressions of a theoretically more sober-minded and professionally thoughtful class of person that wore at my tenuous grasp on mental comfort. When a NYT opinion writer tours the Columbia quad, pimpled with fresh Patagonia dome tents and talks to students showing the unbridled temerity to forgo attendance at class all for the ambiguous and forcefully inarticulate goal of untangling the innumerable (and frequently proprietary) investment funds the university participates in and said writer describes this behavior as “brave” I have to wonder who of us is watching the director’s cut of reality.  

After weeks of voicing confusion and frustration at the simple-minded reading of the protests from people I respected (ie; not gamers) I was at the wall and knew the gig was up and online society was no longer for me but of course, being me, I couldn’t leave without one more kick at the bear which was voicing my feelings that, given the protestors disposition towards me I really didn’t need to worry myself too much if the police knock their teeth in (still feel that way). Of course, it’s wrong to think anyone on social media will carefully parse deliberately shocking material but the quality of the rancor I engendered was still something new. The amount of “shitty Zionist” “just like Hitler” “not a real protected class” and “Work will set you free” tweets took on a quality of 19^th century Poles with torches outside the shtetl determined to stop the feasting on Jesus-sanctioned babies. The slobbering glee flecks coming off the contempt so eclipsed the stolid concern for the suffering of families in Gaza that one thing was clear: It was time to go. 

The transition has been interesting. Not getting news in real-time has been the biggest adjustment but I made it through Trump’s conviction without creating a lurker account so I passed a major test for myself. What I wasn’t expecting was the degree of drop in access to certain types of news; mainly those dealing with trans rights, police/justice issues and the like, while my reading of articles in major newspapers and magazines has increased considerably with the spare time the absence of coverage on issues surrounding underrepresented communities has not increased proportionally. Not a huge surprise but the benefit of trying to have a diverse feed clearly paid significant dividends in keeping up with people that aren’t right outside my door. 

What has been more complicated is that, even without the screaming meemies of social media providing an anxious soundtrack to my meager existence, the sense of moral isolation, the corrosive effect of seeing reams of people become strange, selfish, hateful thrill seekers of easy ethical narratives didn’t abate, it got worse. I’ve been apprehensive about personal interactions with all but a handful of friends; I’m incapable of accepting what people say at face value and instinctually search for hidden meaning; I’m in a persistent state of agitation wondering what people around me are hiding beneath the surface. Interaction with people is probably the best remedy for this condition but fear of a negative experience and yet another erosion of trust bringing me to a breaking point has caused me to close up shop as a social being.  

Which brings me to last week. One of the few people I enjoy seeing on the regular, a gentleman in my apartment building who shares a steady diet of pop culture got me on a Star Wars discussion (about this new series I wasn’t even aware of) and he mentioned one of his buddies was kinda “passionate” about the franchise. I joked that the dude probably thinks I'm the devil incarnate, and he responded, “yeah...he called you a genocidal Zionist” 

Well fuck. Guess I haven’t left social media, I only deleted my accounts. 

So, I did the only thing with that news I could think of which was watch Apocalypse Now for the first time in 30 years. 

Watching Coppola’s movie as a newly corporeal signifier to an online genocidal Zionist was a revelatory experience. I saw kinship in Col. Kurtz; alone, isolated and quietly disgusted with everything around him, especially the symbols of his own making. As Brando languidly spoke into his Dictaphone I realized that the only reasonable course of action is if I also create a record, for posterity but also to clarify the brand of asshole I am, to describe my snail on the edge of a razor. To make some futile assault on my other self from far, far up the river as we wait out the end of the American experiment. 

So, I’m gonna start writing here on the regular. Like I promised last time until I stopped writing on the regular. This time it isn’t so much with an eye towards my future self as a professional scribe as it is a last-ditch play for my sanity’s affection. The plan, as it looks in my head now, is critical writing on pop culture, socio-political bullshit, chapters from the memoir that is probably not happening; with the hope of finding other people who are similarly alienated and of a more curious disposition than a declarative one. I’m not writing “reviews” (whateverthefuck they are these days) but articulating interesting questions/concerns/neurosis (I already have one lined up on the impossibility of zero-reading Stephen King’s Cujo and the rhetorical similarities between pro-Palestine protestors and gamergaters). Hopefully it’ll resonate with some folk out there because it’d be nice to feel less...whatever this is.  

So, one favor to ask. I’m no longer on social media in any significant way so it would be appreciated if this desperate cry for help sounds of enough interest that you’d share it with a couple of people whom you also think might be interested. I’m still fresh enough from the TV cameras that I’m not immune to the encouraging tonic of approbation. I still crave attention; I just should have the methadone variety these days.  

Feel free to drop ideas for essays in the commenting thing on this app. Also does anyone know if there’s a program that automates the bouncy-ball read-along captions? I’m seriously thinking of dictating these essays on camera because those fucking youths won’t read something even half as fucking long as this and I kinda want them to catch me talking shit. 

Another Word to the Wiseguy 

Things of the Week

Criterion’s beautiful transfer of L’Haine

This Salmon recipe as the tastiest leftover ever

Summer Sandals

Junior Mints in bulk

Reading Mason & Dixon with reference wiki