June 9, 2020
Participation Prize
I saw Warren Ellis write in his weekly newsletter the other week that people should turn off their Twitter and Facebook accounts in these times to end “doomscrolling,” a catchy term that is immediately understandable without the need for further instruction — to read it is to know what he’s talking about, and probably feel just a little bit guilty for taking part even unintentionally at some point or another. This past couple of weeks has been full of doomscrolling.
In our defense, it’s been hard to know what else to do. It feels as if there are only three options available to anyone in the US at this particular moment in history: Protest, donate, or speak out. (The latter translating, for me as a white man, as shutting up and promoting voices of Black people speaking out; I literally can’t add anything of value to the conversation personally other than saying I agree!, so…) Everything else? Everything else is doomscrolling. What is the alternate? To pretend everything is fine?
And there’s been so much to scroll through — if the last few years have seemed like an endless torrent of shitty news, the last couple of weeks has turned that up to near unthinkable levels. Every night, the country is filled with protests turned into police-led riots; every day features politicians responding in ways that either fall short of what’s needed or, worse, seem designed to heighten tensions and inflame anger even more. There’s no end to it, it feels like.
(And all of this is happening even as we’re still in the middle of a pandemic, with the police using tear gas in the middle of a pandemic, really doubling down on that whole “this is inhuman and unthinkable” thing because cruelty and control is the entire point, of course.)
I was emailing with a friend yesterday, both of us checking in and essentially asking, what are you doing, donating, protesting, something else…? Because, in a way, that feels like the only conversation to have right now. What are you doing? There has to be more than doomscrolling. That isn’t anywhere near enough.
June 8, 2020
June 5, 2020
And In The End
The thing I’ll miss most about Wired is, of course, the thing I’ll miss least about Wired. Because why should I expect anything else?
I started there through nepotism, kind of: Laura Hudson, formerly editor of Comic Alliance, had taken over as culture editor for the website, and we were friends. I suspect the fact that I’d already been writing for places like io9 and Time worked in my favor, too; I had experience working for “mainstream” outlets instead of just the comic press, and I think it was comforting on some level to feel like I wouldn’t be completely inept if given the opportunity to write for something on the scale of Wired. (Just partially inept; I’m still me, after all.)
I must have done something right, because I outlasted Laura, who left editorial after a couple of years, and also the man who replaced her, Peter Rubin. All told, I ended up staying seven years at the site, which feels pretty incredible to me, to be honest. (Not least of which because there was once a point where it felt as if two years was the outer limit of my tenure anywhere.)
I’m leaving because of that most common reason these days: COVID-related cutbacks. Wired’s parent company Condé Nast has been pulling back all across the shop, despite increased readership because there’s no advertising dollars right now, so I knew it was coming even before getting the phone call a month ago, and we left it with a mutual hope that I might be able to do occasional freelance stuff for them in the future — I hope that happens l because I want to continue to be connected to the outlet in some way. It’s been good to me in all manner of ways; I have happy memories there.
As to the thing I’ll miss most and least… Well, the meat of my last few years at the site was While You Were Offline, a weekly column that picked five social media conversations each week and curated them, explained them and tried to put them into some kind of context. It was, in many ways, like a version of Fanboy Rampage!!!, the thing that started my career off in the first place, and it became this strange, welcome primal scream into the void during the Trump era.
It was also a fucker to do every week, eating up hours of my life and changing the way I interacted with the internet and media in general, and to be blunt, now that it’s gone, I’m not quite sure what it’s going to be like without it. I’ll no longer have to go down a research hole for hours every Wednesday and Thursday…! But at the same time, I’ll no longer go down research holes every Wednesday and Thursday…! It feels like a death, in the oddest way, which feels fitting, somehow. That’s how it feels to leave Wired as a regular contributor, as a whole.
June 4, 2020
Normal Service Will Be Resumed
I was talking to my therapist about everything, because that’s what you talk to your therapist about; specifically, I was talking to her about the protests and the police brutality, about the riots and the curfews and the sense that things were, honestly, slipping further and further towards a dystopia that still feels almost fictional if you think about it too much — there’s still a pandemic out there as everything is happening, and I really can’t shake the question, what happens to the infection rate now that we’ve all started gathering in large numbers again? because that’s how my brain works — and I said, essentially, how are we supposed to not feel utterly overwhelmed by all of this?
The things is, as overwhelming as it feels, as debilitating as the totalitarian forces stepping on us slowly, the sight of the President pushing the country closer and closer to martial law because he’s a scared old racist who can’t even manage to hide how small he really is being both laughable and horrifying, as bad as this all feels right now, I don’t want it to stop feeling this hard. Yes, it’s a struggle to work right now, yes, my brain refuses to engage properly on normal tasks because I’m all too aware of everything else that’s happening, but… that’s got to be a good thing, right?
When the coronavirus started closing everything down, ending the world as we knew it, I remember thinking to myself that I didn’t want quarantine to become normalized in my head, for the simple fact that it’s not normal. Months later, that’s harder to comprehend fully because… well, it’s been months; memory fades, and while I can objectively look at the Way Things Were, or think about the millions out of work as a result of all of this, the emotional costs for everyone unable to see loved ones, the hundreds of thousands dead, it somehow did become easier to accept everything. It became the new normal.
What’s happening now can’t go the same way. We can’t accept that nightly protests, the police and the National Guard (in DC, the military, too) at war with the citizens they’re supposed to be protecting, is just the way things are now. It’s too important to surrender and accept that as a new new normal. So, overwhelmed it is.
