The pandemic, as horrific as it was, provided the opportunity for reflection and retrospect, as society was withdrawn in an act of self preservation. Remote work, social distancing, risk mitigation, and the rest allowed for all kinds of time to reconsider one’s existence. I wonder if many took the opportunity to do so. I did, though mostly on the most superficial of matters.
I realized I like shoes a little too much, and not for attention grabbing. No attempts to look fresh. No chasing complements. I kept buying shoes to not wear outside. Silly. I also realized that I love shoes, but not shoe laces. Put deadstock knots on any shoe that I could, then flipped them inside to make most of my shoes into slip-ons. I don’t need a snug fit since it’s been forever and a decade since I’ve pretended to be athletic (outside of one foolish foray into indoor soccer, which reaffirmed my lack of athleticism and my absolute disinterest in it).
I also realized that I wasted so much time and money at the gym. For the little I was trying to achieve with a gym membership, I could have just used one month’s worth of membership to buy a set of exercise bands. I regretted going to the gym to speed-walk on a treadmill, when I could have just been home to walk my dog. I do not miss the gym TVs being set up for the primetime commentary on Fox News and MSNBC to rage bait me into more time on the treadmill or recumbent bike. To think, I passed up on all the opportunities to watch my dog shake his ass from the sheer force of his tail wagging as he sniffed all the scents that were released from the rain for mindlessly staring at whatever talking head was on at Fox News pretending to lose their shit. I did my dog dirty.
Unfortunately, the pandemic also lead me to reddit, the internet’s version of a book club for cliff notes. I was experiencing weird symptoms for months, and google being a shell of itself, lead me to the covid longhaulers subreddit when I tried to see what the symptoms were about. That subreddit got a little depressing after a while, so I moved on to the Herman Cain Awards subreddit, and then to non-covid related subreddits. I had avoided most all social media up until the pandemic, mostly to avoid pretending to have friends I don’t have. I didn’t realize just how short my attention span would become, or how low the bar would be dropped to pass for acceptable entertainment. Posts of tiny tweets. Posts of short Tiktok clips. Quick quips and quicker critiques of quips. Just a quick stream of drips taping my dome like a perverse water torture.
If social media is designed for instant dissemination of media, with algorithms rewarding a steady output of short content, where does discourse go from here? Can intelligent discourse be achieved when we are all trained to move onto the next, then the next after that, and then even more still? I find that I no longer have the patience to read longform articles in the newspaper, because I want a quick payoff. I also can’t fuck with commercial breaks anymore, especially now that YouTube is putting every ad under the sun for a five minute clip. It’s already a challenge to power through the low-bar short-form content on YouTube, and then they go squeezing in all the advertisements. Stringing sentences together takes so much work. Watching people string sentences together takes so much work. It’s simply too easy and convenient to move on to something else. Because there’s a blitz of quick-hitting jabs from throughout the internet. And I keep finding myself punch drunk with little to show for it.
Soundtrack for the day on Spotify, 08022024:
- I Wish – Stevie Wonder
- FICTION – POLKADOT STINGRAY
- Cowboys from Hell – Pantera
- Head/Off – SebastiAn
- 99 Problems – JAY-Z
- Rhythm Nation – Janet Jackson
- Super Freak – Rick James
- Careless Whisper – George Michael
- Volume Up – 4Minute
- Moving Out (Anthony’s Song) – Billy Joel
- Saddest Song – No Use For A Name
- Name of the Game – The Crystal Method
- Funky Worm – Ohio Players
- Nothin’ but a “G” Thang – Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg
- Smooth Operator – Sade
- 悲しい歌 – Pizzicato Five
- Up The Ladder To The Roof – The Supremes
- Home Is Where The Hatred Is – Gil Scott-Heron
- Would – Alice In Chains
- Up All Night – El-P
Lost Time 