Point of this doc is to situate myself, feel more grounded\u2026 It\u2019s going to be a substack post<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Game of Thrones decade, 2011-2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Louis CK<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jan 2010 was the first time in ~15-16 years that I didn\u2019t have to go to school. I had an unknown number of months of free time before I had to enlist in the military (found out in Feb that I was enlisting in April), and it felt like paradise. The most free phase of my life<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I worked in marketing for a software company. We used to use the phrase \u201cdigital marketing\u201d then, and now it seems quaint and dated \u2013 what marketing doesn\u2019t have a digital component now that everyone has a smartphone?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
music<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Art<\/p>\n\n\n\n
News<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Apps<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Quora<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Married<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Army<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Got a job<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Left my job<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Decade began with a global financial crisis, I didn\u2019t really feel it because I was in the military at the time<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Arab spring<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Digital music sales topped CD sales in 2012<\/p>\n\n\n\n
50 shades best selling book of the decade<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Age of streaming<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Inception was the big movie that launched the decade with the bwongs that now come in every movie trailer. The Social Network also came out that year, and black swan, megamind, easy A, tangled, love and other drugs, httyd, despicable me, 127 hrs, eat pray love, <\/p>\n\n\n\n
mass effect 2, god of war 3, bioshock 2, <\/p>\n\n\n\n
iPad released<\/p>\n\n\n\n
(wrote this in 2020) I don\u2019t want to wade too deep into this, but I wanna say that 2011 was a different world. Gay marriage was still not fully legal in the US until 2015, and even in 2014 I didn\u2019t think it would happen for 10-20 years. I don\u2019t think I understood \u201cinternalized racism\u201d until ~2016<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 2012, The Office aired an episode with blackface in it. They\u2019ve since edited out those scenes and apologised for them. I\u2019m not sure if they should be edited out, but I do think it\u2019s good of them apologise for them in retrospect. Still, my point is\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s not quite fair to single out individual utterances of racism from the past and frame it as though the person who uttered it was a singularly terrible person for having ever said it. All manner of bigotry – racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia – was in the *cultural ether*<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019m not looking to defend or protect anyone. I\u2019m trying to be fair in my assessments. Here\u2019s a thread about how I remember literally everyone in my life around me laughing at gayness and transness. It was set up that way in the media we all consumed<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I can tell you what I\u2019d do if someone say, found a video of me and my friends laughing in 2004 saying \u201cthat\u2019s so gay\u201d \u201cu f*ggot\u201d, \u201cwhat a r*tard\u201d and so on. I\u2019d apologise. Sincerely, I never meant to hurt anybody with any of those utterances. I didn\u2019t know then. I know better now<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I remember when my friends and I – guys and girls both – watched these scenes, we didn\u2019t think twice about it. It seemed funny at the time, and harmless. Maybe the girls had a different perspective they didn\u2019t share with the guys bc they couldn\u2019t trust us<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yea to be clear I\u2019m not saying we should simply overlook and\/or easily forgive past mistakes simply because they were in the past. I think it\u2019s important for us to acknowledge our mistakes. A lot of the social grace required here is hard to codify<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This would\u2019ve been around… 2006? It makes me *extremely* uncomfortable to remember. I remember there was venom in my voice. Where did that come from!?! I must have learned it from somewhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Like, recently when that Yoho guy called AOC that? Whatever produced that utterance, I had some version of that programming in me too. It would be disingenuous of me to pretend otherwise. It takes time and effort to uninstall the venomous bloatware that society saddles us with<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s an eternal tension here between the concept of individuals and the concept of community. And this goes to the heart of some of the oldest questions about responsibility. It\u2019s neither simple nor easy to resolve. We just have to keep trying our best<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it gets more complicated when we talk about groups of people. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are always fresh new people to commit abuse, and each new abuser comes equipped with the plausible claim that they didn\u2019t know better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n