Fortune Favors The Bold

You know when you have the thought, “maybe it’s time I went on a diet?” and then you start subtly altering your eating habits and indulgences in a completely disorganized manner, and it’s ineffective but that’s okay because your not committed as the original inspiration for your motive was clearly something random and bonkers? Well…

So, I’m trying to go on a “vicious criticism diet” because I do strongly believe that it is awful to gratuitously insult people all day… to not just judge them poorly but to also speak freely and purposefully about them with the intent of undermining or intimidating. And, while we’re in this topical range, I also believe it to be unhealthy to linger on ideas or works that are misconceived, thoughtless, talentless, etc. Especially when the judgments are really hyperfocused and exaggerated. (Carolyn and I were talking yesterday about the “Louis C.K. + Ming vase” comment and how my distaste for it was very specific but that there was a point in there that was valid. Obviously I focused on my distaste and set out to caricature it because, frankly, I hadn’t thrown enough punches yesterday after a marathon of snideblogging. BTW, you’re still following me after all that Brad’s nonsense. Great.)

We can fast-forward through a much larger chunk of navel-gazing and get to the central idea of this post:

In order not to be viciously critical at people, I’m not abstaining from anything, it turns out. I’m simply going more subtle. I’m sharpening my ability to say, in non-provocative words, just how fucking stupid I think certain people are acting. This is mostly occurring in my comments on other sites, where I have a standard to uphold anyway. In order to skirt the commenting policies against outright violence, I’m writing even-tempered responses that are dripping with condescension. And this is supposed to be good for me?

Going back to the diet metaphor (and separating appearances from results), this is like ordering the broccoli pizza instead of the pepperoni.

I have a long way to go before I become reformed. I am serious about having concluded that I should be a kinder person who works to uplift the world around me… not so serious yet about not calling people fucking idiots when they’re acting like fucking idiots.