#it’s rather about the fans who get happy over the jamal thing when it’s nothing to be happy about

[evansbby]

hi I don’t think basing your entire view of white men on one dumbass is a productive thing to do. Personally this whole identity politics thing is not just reductive to the experiences huge cross section of coloured people especially women, but also to “white people”. Brits and different from Europeans who are different from Australians who are different from Americans. Not to mention how these groups are themselves incredibly diverse. Women of colour get shafted in a lot of places even by their own communities, sometimes especially by their own communities. They surely also get orientalised and fetishised by “white” people. However telling young women of colour things like “they don’t want to be seen with us” or “they don’t want to take us back home” just plays into the comfort of identity politics and screws their opinion of inter racial or inter national relationships, which very much should be the norm. Not to mention assumes white people are a monolith or that the term “white” is in any capacity appropriate to group people. White is a concept. Anyway I’m sorry Chris Evans has such a reductive view of WOCs. But super imposing Hollywood, especially American media, on the world is not only misguided but only going to screw up how we approach people which cultural differences in romantic contexts, and propagates the idea that “white culture” exists the way it does in America all over the world. “White” is not a thing. It’s a concept based on exclusion.

bestie i just woke up…

i didn’t say anything wrong, it was MY experience not based on him but how it reminded me of how white boys IN REAL LIFE have acted with me and countless of my friends… or did you completely skip that part?

i refuse to be gaslit lmfao all i did was state my opinion in my tags of my personal experiences and how i don’t agree with the jamal thing. i don’t need you coming here with your university thesis and fancy wording trying to act all superior and condescending and accusing me of something you KNOW wasn’t my intention.

[renaroo]

Wednesday Roundup 15/6/2017

So this is a day late but in my defense I had a ridiculous amount of comics to get through with no one to blame but myself here. And you know what? I genuinely enjoyed almost everything. But does that mean every comic was good this week? And even so what did I think was the best? 

Honestly I don’t know how to write these intros for people who wouldn’t be here to read my opinion anyway so let’s just jump into it. 

Marvel’s All-New Wolverine, Marvel’s Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows, DC’s Detective Comics, DC’s Gotham Academy: Second Semester, DC’s Justice League of America, Image’s Motor Crush, DC’s Superwoman, IDW’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, DC’s Titans, IDW’s Transformers: Salvation, DC’s Wonder Woman

Marvel’s All-New Wolverine (2015-present) #21 Tom Taylor, Leonard Kirk, Cory Hamscher, Terry Pallot, Michael Garland

Okay I need this issue to reread a million times over because there are just so many things I love all at once. Like, oh my gosh. I was almost in tears multiple times because relationships! Healing! Supporting each other!

Wade and Gabby alone could just about make this issue perfect, but then you have Laura and Daken hugging and worried about each other, and Old Man Logan being likable for the first time in any of my readings of him. There’s so much I enjoy, though I find the cover rather deceiving. This is much more of a Howlett family reunion than anything else, though I did enjoy Riri’s parts in it.

I just eriously adore these characters and it meant a lot to see them all come together like they have here and that cliffhanger HURT so much more for it. 

I will nitpick the art a bit because we’ve been doing so good about keeping Laura in the Wolverine costume which is much preferred to her X-23 wardrobes, for sure, but this issue it pretty much looked exactly like one of her old costumes without the midriffs and it was kinda weird. I know she took off a lot of her armor for skin contact but it’s... idk. It was weird. 

The main thing I’m happy about though is that as we go on, I realize that literally all of the Marvel books I’ve kept are going out of their way to not involve themselves in Secret Wars and it’s kind of beautiful. Laura and Gabby are stuck on an island that’s quarantined (and I can pretend Wade’s there with them instead of whatever’s going on since I dropped Deadpool for the summer crossovers, thanks Tom Taylor!), Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur are literally off world, and the rest are non-616. So yay me!

Marvel’s Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows (2016-present) #8 Gerry Conway, Ryan Stegman, Jesus Aburtov

For those who don’t know, Mary Jane Watson is genuinely one of my favorite Marvel characters and is easily one of the reasons I ever stuck with the Spider-Man comics for as long as I did was because of my interest in her and wanting to see her and Peter.

I can also thank her for my genuine attraction to redheads probably.

But one of the main reasons that I’ve loved this book so much is because, as written by Gerry Conway, this is the Peter and MJ of my dreams. I love them so much, and the complications that comes from their relationship and from growing older, raising a daughter, and MJ’s desire to continuously be the glue to keep both Peter and Annie together logically causes her to seek out a way to continue being Spinerette without syphoning off Peter’s powers. 

It’s almost like growing old, having a stable relationship, trying to keep things fresh while raising a kid, are all dramatic and worthy of good storytelling in their own right or something HMM.

Anyway, yes it’s completely on the nose where this is going and it’s a little curious how MJ’s not immediately aware of the connection between what’s going on with her right now and the horrible, arguably traumatizing experience she and Peter had, but who knows what’s canon anymore lol

Basically, I sideye a bit from a story point of view, but this series continues to make up for it with the real thing that matters to me: these characters and their development.

DC’s Detective Comics (2016-present) #958 James Tynion IV, Aluaro Martinez, Raul Fernandez, Brad Anderson 

Honestly I really love the slower issues where Tynion takes more time to make moments for the relationships between the characters and give us interractions we didn’t know we wanted -- Kate going with Luke and Jean Paul to a basketball game, Cass and Clayface being adorable by reciting a play, Bruce at a poker game with a bunch of assholes in homage to Almost Got ‘im!? It was a lot of fun honestly. 

...

Okay I take issue with Cass’ dialogue. I know she was repeating lines from a tape and such but it’s weird to see her make so much progress when just two issues ago she was almost monosyllabic. Like... I want to see Cass gradually learning, I want to feel her frustration with hitting walls, I want to see her struggle and achieve despite the struggle because that gradual progression was honestly something we weren’t delivered in the former canon. We have a great opportunity for it here. 

But y’know. I’m particular with Cass and it’s hard to say where her baseline for reading and speech even is in this canon because her dyslexia may be in tact but her circumstances growing up are completely different. So I don’t know. 

Now. I’m a sucker for Bruce and Zatanna team-ups because I’m a schmuck but I’m really excited for next issue. Had a lot of fun with this one. This feels like a decent pace for Tynion -- at least in my opinion. 

DC’s Gotham Academy: Second Semester (2016-2017) #10 Brenden Fletcher, Becky Cloonan, Karl Kerschl, Adam Archer, Massyk, Sandra Hope

This comic is speeding toward an end and I’m not sure if I’m ready! 

From the beginning, for me at least, the selling point for Gotham Academy has been just how much these kids felt like real teenagers and real friends with all their various relationships and connections, platonic or romantic or something in between. And it’s powerful to see that coming to play as an advantage to completing Olive’s arc, but also as a disadvantage since the consequences of many of her actions hurt that much more.

I’ll save a lot of my thoughts for a complete wrap up of the series but overall, very happy and very grateful for the continuously good read that is GA

DC’s Justice League of America (2016-present) Volume 1: Road to Rebirth Steve Orlando, Jody Houser, Ivan Reis, Andy MacDonald, Stephen Byrne, Jamal Campbell, Mirk Andolfo

WE GOTTA GET THE BAND BACK TOGETHER. WE’RE ON A MISSION FROM GAD. 

In all seriousness, I’m a huge fan of Vixen and Ryan Choi as well as a big fan of Justice League International, as it was in its 80s glory. So my interests with this particular lineup were piqued from the beginning and I made myself wait for the first volume to dive in. 

For the most part, this is a team gathering exercise. Characters that have lacked the spotlight in the last few years -- Vixen, Ray, Killer Frost, and the Atom -- were given whole issues to reintroduce them to this continuity. And honestly those issues were great. I really, really love the updated origins for them and feel that they’re a good blend of honoring the past of the characters as well as adapting them for a new world. 

Lobo, Batman, and Black Canary took back seat, but considering that there were already tensions showing within the group, I think it’s safe to assume that giving the spotlight to the rest of the team won’t always last this long. Things are nothing if not explosive among these members.

I really did mean it when I said this is a team gathering exercise, because there’s no first case to unite everyone. There’s not any real antagonists or team-ups we see to speakof. It was just getting hte jLA together. 

And for me it’s enough to get me intrigued, though I’d completely understand if people told me it was far from enough for them. 

Now they just need to add Big Barda, Booster Gold, and Ted Kord and I’ll be satisfied. 

Image’s Motor Crush (2016-present) Vol. 1 Brenden Fletcher, Cameron Stewart, Babs Tarr

I was not the biggest fan of this team’s Batgirl team though I appreciated the aesthetics and what not. There just never seemed to be a storyline that really interested me and I couldn’t be sold on the characterization for Barbara. So I kept hearing about Motor Crush for the last year and was really itnerested in it so I wanted until this volume came out and. 

Well, quite simply, I’m in love.

Tell you what, those biker gangs that kept coming up really confusingly out of place in Batgirl make a hell of a lot more sense now that I can see this team’s actual passion project. 

So I love Motor Crush a lot, I’m really invested in Domino, the mystery that is her origins and the powers of Crush itself. I love her relationship with her ex, Lola, I love her father -- I love just about everything and the cliffhanger really surprised me. 

I will say that while I love having a world that speaks for itself rather than constant narration, it’s a little hard to follow this world entirely, I’d like a bit more explained than what has been, but at the end of the day I’m very excited to see more. 

DC’s Superwoman (2016-present) #11 K. Perkins, José Luís, Ray McCarthy, HI-FI

You know, I have made it clear that I’ve been worried about this title for a while now, really just hoping it was going to find its direction and wow us with the great potential that is the Super Family outside of the main Kent triad. And I feel like that’s for good reason -- the end of Jimenez’s run let a lot of people feeling justifiably scorned, there was a mishandling of a lot of heavy and important subjects that were raised, and at least the initial stuff with Perkins taking over kind of left one wondering if they had a fully formed direction to go toward next. 

But I am really glad that I stuck it out for this long because the family of John, Lana, Nat, and everyone else is so important and so fundamentally different from the dynamics found elsewhere in the new familial renaissance of the DCU that I needed it. And I hope it continues to emphasize these relationships and how important they are to each other.

I’m still unhappy with how anxiety and mental illness is being handled in the title and find it lacking since it was brought up to begin with and now being ignored. That subject alone is making me rethink my disinterest in Green Lantern books as a whole because I have loved and felt inspired so far by what I’ve seen of Jessica Cruz and their handling of anxiety, and it’s why I picked up Silk at the high recommendations of a close friend. 

So I’d like for mental illness to be treated better in this title -- the least it can do after bringing it up and treating it the way it did at the end of Jimenez’s run, but there’s so much value in the non-nuclear family dynamic of the Irons household and of the uniqueness of Lana’s powers and her approach to fighting crime that it’s worth it. For me anyway.

IDW’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2011-present) #70 Kevin Eastman, Tom Waltz, Mateus Santolouco, Ronda Pattison

I knew the end of this storyline was going to be, at the very least, explosive but wow, WOW I had no idea how many twists and turns it was going to take in that time. That was a phenomenal ending to the Mutanimals storyline for the time being, and I just feel so bad for Slash, down to my core. I’m so worried about him, and whenever he will be allowed to recover.

At least I hope he’ll recover.

This series is seventy issues strong and i’m just so blown away by the way they still manage to keep me on the edge of my feet while so many different storylines and character developments are happening at the same time.

I mean, I even feel for Old Hobb here!

I do suppose a complaint I could hold here is that the titular turtles themselves have ultimately not been very front and center throughout this storyline, and that really showed in the conclusion, where for the most part they were lost to the colorfulness of the huge, colorful supporting cast that has been developed over the years. 

For me, personally, I think that’s honestly okay. We can’t have the same story over and over again with only the main four characters driving the narrative, and it’s been a long standing tradition in TMNT for a good 30 years now to sort of embody the concept that our main guys don’t really look for situations to get involved with but sort of fall into them naturally. 

Not to mention it’s probably a strength that 70 issues in, we haven’t once repeated plots or stories or put any of the characters on a loop of development to end up right back where they started. I don’t think the achievement of that can be understated, especially as we near that landmark #75!

DC’s Titans (2016-present) #12 Dan Abnett, Kenneth Rocafort, Dan Brown

Bleh. BLEH. I was holding out judgment on the twist of Wally and Donna and Roy ending up in some kind of love triangle because I wanted the context but honestly the context is kinda... bleh. It would be awesome if we lived in some world and time where Donna’s origins were not constantly retconned and thus the source of her characterization in every run of every thing she showed up in. Which is by no means a new problem but still.

And my opinion is... Wally and Donna are both going through a hard time and Wally is having to accept that his life is fundamentally different from the previous world he knew, that he can’t just badger people into returning things to the way they were -- especially Linda, who he loves but it’s a very one-sided relationship as a result of the parallel universe paradox and stuff. It makes sense to me that in a ploy to gain some sense of control over that, he and Donna both would try to take fate in an unexpected direction, into their own hands. 

But making it a love triangle with Roy just kinda keeps my eyes firmly rolled into the back of my skull. 

I overall like Lilith, Dick, Garth, and Karen’s development and characterization in this issue. I think they’re taking Lilith in interesting directions and I’m really curious about what her omen means for the future, since apparently there’s a traitor among them. And they set up plenty of reasons for various members to be that traitor in this issue but I can’t help but assume already that it’s going to end up being a twist. Good twist or not remains to be seen. 

IDW’s Transformers: Salvation (2017) John Barber, Livid Ramondelli

I’m going to be completely “original” here and say that I’m not a fan of Ramondelli’s at for the various Transformers comics. i know! I know. Shocking, never said before, completely going against the general fandom consensus. I’m such a brave soul. I know. 

Okay, joking aside though... I didn’t think the art was bad in this one-shot. Actually! I’d argue a lot of it was even good. He may not be my favorite artist and I’ll think that his colo gradients are butt ugly most of the time, but there was better handled action sequences than usual, the characters looked like they had weight, and we even got a range of expressiveness in the characters that is... well, frankly, not usual for Ramondelli. 

So other than that shocking revelation, I thought Barber performed good once more on tying the TF universe together again, answering some prior plot points and nicely knotting off loose ends. Trypticon being a Titan is not the biggest revelation in the world, but the development of Sandstorm and the Dinobots was great, and I loved just how devious Starscream truly is under Barber’s pen even though I’ve fully been enjoying the characterization for him in Till All Are One. 

But the most important thing of all: SPARKLINGS. SPARKLINGS. All I’ve wanted for years is baby transformers so I am HAPPY BEYOND BELIEF. THEY’RE NO LONGER A DYING SPECIES AND THESE PRECIOUS BABIES COULD BE BORN WITHOUT EVER KNOWING THE CIVIL WAR AHHHHHHHH

DC’s Wonder Woman (2016-present) #24 Greg Rucka, Bilquis Evely, Romulo Fajardo Jr. 

WOW! I mean, just wow! What a resolution to everything. I have so many emotions for Diana, for Barbara Ann, for even Veronica Cale of all people. Etta and Steve were great, the art was amazing.

It’s just such a relief and such... honestly just an amazing feat that Greg Rucka is beginning to wrap up this just phenomenal run of Wonder Woman 

I really enjoyed how everything turned out and it was so remarkable to see Diana’s resolution to save Veronica but also to not turn her back on her friends and loved ones as well as the torment it is for Barbara to not be able to get into Themyscira after all her life’s work.

And I liked Diana’s assessment of Veronica at the end, it was true and also blunt to the point of cruelty. But fitting also. 

It’s amazing what a turn around I’ve personally felt when it comes to Veronica’s character because in all honesty I was not a fan of her most of the time in the preboot, but Rucka really has fleshed her out and done something unique with her perspective now. There is tragedy but there’s also less deniability for her fault in all of it. 

I’m sad to be coming toward Rucka’s end on the run, but I’m also so happy to see the love and passion he’s put into everything culminating to what it is now.

This is a genuinely hard choice but I think if I go by what tugged on my heartstrings the most, what gave me the most joy overall and just feelings unrelenting from start to finish, I would have to say that my pick of the week is All-New Wolverine. I adore this series and I couldn’t be happier with this issue and how they’re keeping my precious Marvel girls faaaaaar away from Secret Empire. A close second would be Wonder Woman but really I would happily recommend my entire pull this week. It was a geat week for comics.

But that’s just my opinion! I’d love to know your thoughts. Agree? Disagree? Think I missed something I should’ve picked up this week? I’d love to hear from you!

[sambinnie]

All links mentioned are clustered at the end, if you’d like to read/listen to them too.

I’ve never been one for the middle road, in habits, emotions or tendencies, but if there’s one thing 2016 has taught me — I hope — it’s that it’s possible for me. At last. I’ve been more willing, as I’ve grown fractionally older, to welcome the change of heart that time and experience bring; I’ve been more likely to say, ‘Well, this is how I feel at the moment, but who knows,’ rather than, ‘No! Never! Impossible!’ Only there have been some hold-outs from this: some political groups, some voting histories, some educational choices, anti-freedom groups, hate groups. Thankfully, they could all be bundled up in my mind as Big Bads, so I didn’t need to ever fear that I could be wrong about any of them: and if someone had expressed those choices, even once, even in error or misunderstanding or drunkenness or foolishness, or ever been associated with anyone who’d expressed those choices, then great! Into the barrel of doom with them, and good riddance!

I have loved so much of social media, so much of the quickness of thought to make the jokes, dark or otherwise, because that’s how I see the world. The kindness, too: those people who tap a “xxx” or a digital embrace to someone suffering. I’ve been at both ends of that, and it feels good.

2016, however, and everything we’re seeing unfold from that and the last few years before it, has made me wonder at the meaningfulness of these interactions. Other people than me have written about this, probably better than me, and research can show whatever we want it to (also known as ‘2016’s catchphrase’) but some gut instinct in me has hollered louder and louder than social media does nothing, for me, in quite a major way. I’m sure anyone who’s reading this can give me some counter arguments — friendships, business contacts, social and political movements — but there is a hollowness to my life on there. On here, I suppose I should say. Having been mostly off it for several months now, I can see with greater clarity that the time I spend with friends and family on sofas and bar stools and around kitchen tables, without photos, or hashtags, or tagging, or comments, just ephemeral conversation and moments that are gone forever: these times have been better for me, and have filled some deeper need.

And of course social media can be an educational, fascinating place. It’s hilarious to suggest otherwise. So congratulations and a big shiny medal to me if I now understand that Black Lives Matter, or grasp the violence that faces the average transgender man or woman, or see that even the most supportive, feminist man occasionally uses language and jokes that chip away at the average woman. Those fights are easy to understand and easier to engage in. 

But – and here’s the tricky bit – how much time did I give, really, to thinking about why someone would support and vote and fight and hurt people for beliefs opposite to mine? It’s not comfortable to defend these people, to acknowledge that they are human and have family they love and interests they believe to be best. It’s not easy to say, in my circles, But What About Straight White Men, when we’ve had such a bloody great time turning them into the butt of every smart, knowing, accurate, deserved joke. But the number of people I know on social media who are actively trying to make the world better (could count on two hands) rather than just spitting into someone’s online soup (thousands) is worth my consideration, if I’m spending hours a day with them. And the things we’ve hated in those hours! We hate this film. This politician is trash. That TV programme is shit — look at this gif about it! The readers of those newspapers are just a dumpster fire of burning garbage.

So this is what I’ve concluded, after much thinking and reading and listening: that there are two issues here. Two things that tie my feelings about social media and my feelings about what’s on social media together: firstly, nuance, and secondly, opportunity versus morality.

Nuance, as Jon Ronson (a man who’s had his share of online kickings) says on the Guys We’ve Fucked podcast*, is wildly unfashionable now. Pick a side! Quickly! Don’t worry about circumstance, or history, or mis-readings, or context! Just go go go get our boots on and pile in! My online bubble that I’ve been happy to cosy up in seems the same: straight white guys: be quiet. Leave voters: racists. Republicans: racist misogynist climate-change deniers who should also be quiet. It doesn’t matter why they feel that way. Let’s just remind them as forcibly as we can that they are hateful humans we don’t want to dirty our hands with, and that’ll teach them a lesson they’ll never forget! After seeing our scorching memes, they’ll be thinking like we do in no time! Except: they are actual people. Everyone’s frightened of something, and whether or not I agree with the veracity of the source of that fear, they’re still feeling afraid. They still have goals, which I may or may not agree with, but those goals won’t change if I tell them their goals are trash. In an episode of the Invisibilia podcast* called Flip the Script, Hanna Rosin visits Aarhus to talk to the police who decided to stop prosecuting young Muslim men travelling to Syria to fight for Isis, and instead engaged with them, offering them care and support, employment and housing. They made them feel like they were welcome in Denmark, that this was their home, and in 2015, even when traffic was spiking from Europe, only one individual left Aarhus to fight. In the programme, Jamal, a young Danish muslim, says of his feelings before this positive intervention received him, ‘I thought: they call me terrorist? I will give them a terrorist.’ Treat those we disagree with as racists, as misogynists, as bigots, as fascists, and guess how they’ll be tempted to behave. (Side note: It’s also really worth listening to the Adam Buxton conversations* with Richard Ayoade, Iain Lee and Jon Ronson (again!) talking from various different angles about kindness, nuance, context, and how it feels to be a Woody Allen fan these days. Also, there’s a stand-up routine by Louis CK – helloooo, problematic public figure – which also covers nicely the idea of correctly using The Right Terms but having not great goals with it, and being pummelled for using Incorrect Language but wanting to communicate positive ideas. I can’t link to it as it autoplayed on Netflix while I was painting the hall, but the thought was pretty smart.)

As Oliver Burkeman said in his This Column Will Change Your Life piece*, it’s moderation that’s key to a better world, not battling for victory. No one really ever wins a war. As This American Life’s podcast* on Reconsideration showed, it’s giving people a chance to be listened to that offers that chance to change minds, not shouting them down with facts that will only make them dig their heels in harder. Anger is a vital political tool, but my anger too often feels like hatred, or disdain, or dismissal. It serves no purpose. It’s a toxic, pixelled sledgehammer. It makes the world worse. I’ve really been doing a shitty job at making things nicer, guys. 

Secondly: opportunity versus morality. As part of my feminist beliefs, I’ve been pro-Instagram; why should some dude tell me what I can and can’t photograph? If people like my lunch pic, what’s wrong with that? If I look great and want to record and share it, what the hell is your problem? Only suddenly, as I’ve been using it less and less, Instagram looks so lonely to me. I think of the humans at the end of Wall-E, tapping their screens and never looking up, and that’s how it feels: I like the sunset someone else has photographed while I’m missing it because I’m looking at my phone. And even if I’m snapping it myself to share — what am I missing by not just looking at the damn thing, and letting it pass through me, a beautiful gift to warm my soul? Do I really believe the tech ads about how much better a father’s night in the woods is with his kid because he brought their tablet along? I know the feeling in me when I pick up my phone to take a picture of something with the intention of sharing it, and it feels like a greasy, dizzy dilution. For me, it’s not about the over-curation of our perfect online lives, but about the inability to live in my offline life without outside approval. I’m not having real fun until 20, 50, 1000 people have liked it too! 

And putting that smartphone opportunity up against my moral code: just because we can do something, should we? If I can live-tweet a couple arguing on a train journey, does that make it not nightmarishly intrusive? If I Instagram a photo of someone in a terrible outfit, does that make me a warrior for underprivileged rights? If I pause every lunch with friends to take photos to post online for others to view and like or not like, am I connecting more, or less? Am I making the world a more claustrophobic, judgemental, short-sighted place if I collude in this weird global surveillance?

And god knows, I’m a hypocrite. I’ve been mean as mean can be, online and off-, about people whose political views I disagree with. I’ve Instagrammed my Christmas day lunches, my children’s artwork, my brunches with friends, my views from a train. But why have I interrupted the flow of conversation or silence before the play started to post a picture of the theatre stage and ceiling? Why have I unintentionally asked my family to hold off from eating because I wanted a picture of the meal I’ve just made? Why did I stop thinking about whatever I was thinking about just to snap an image of the sky? I’ve thought and thought and can’t get any further than Because other people might like it. Which is, to me, right now, at this moment, fathomlessly sad. (But who knows how I’ll feel next week, a year from now, twenty years from now?)

Have some ideas on social media changed me? Of course. People and articles have educated me hugely in ways that have hopefully made me a better person. But do those new, positive and instructive ideas warrant staying on social media? Not at the moment. Twitter is a thousand people shouting apocalypse at me, Facebook is an algorithmic sink and Instagram is an endless time-suck scroll of kids I’m not playing with, art I’m not making, trips I’m not taking, food I’m not cooking, homes I’m not helping people into, chances I’m not helping others receive, political aspirations I’m not supporting because I’m just swiping my finger along this screen tap tap tap swipe tap swipe tap swipe swipe swipe…

But right now, I’m trying to make changes. I’m off twitter, I’ve deleted my Facebook profile, I’ve turned my Instagram to private and am slowly weaning myself off it (I still hit like at what I’m seeing, but the (v good, v scary) Moment app is also making me realise how much of my day — my life — is lost to tapping a heart icon on a flat screen next to a photograph someone else has taken that ultimately means nothing to me as pixels on a screen). The cards, notes, emails and texts I’ve sent and received over the last month or two have made me realise how much more valuable these quiet interactions are to me at the moment. I think about the adults I’d like our kids to grow up into: outward-facing, forward-looking, clear-eyed, generous with their time, generous with their thoughts, independent, handy (all the way from cooking and cleaning, through to crafting and mending and building), confident, kind. And it doesn't matter that I’m thinking of it in terms of my kids: like those men we laugh at for only finding feminism once they have a daughter (who cares why they found it! they found it! they're engaging!) it’s not about whether or not I have children. It’s about which adults we want to share the world with. Adults we might disagree with, but whom we could hopefully rely on for respectful conversation, thoughtfulnesss, retreat on either side, apologies, space for error, learning, growth, change.

I’m not saying we should forgive anyone who asks for it — only maybe I am, because what does the alternative produce? And I’m not saying we should love everyone in the world, no matter what they’ve done in the past or continue to do in the future — only I guess, I suppose, perhaps, maybe I actually am, because hating people feels shit, does nothing, and makes the world boring and hate-filled and dead. We’ve tried that! We’ve tried telling men/cis/white women/privileged feminists/baby boomers/Tories/right-wingers/Brexit supporters/homophobes/transphobes/racists/abusers/Cameron that they’re just a crapsack, nothing but a punchline, should get pushed off their soapbox or fixie or 4x4 or youtube channel into the fiery pits of hell! We’ve let the warmth of righteous indignation warm us at night and not minded the language we use against our enemies because look at the way they’ve treated us! Look at the terrible things they’ve done! So we hurl insults and craft jokes and smash bridges with our pixel sledgehammers and wait for the likes and retweets and thumbs up and YEAH comments to flood in, and if they do then our point is proved, good work, and if they don’t then maybe we up it a bit more next time.

(Or sometimes, I wonder if it’s all a handy distraction from the way we’re treating our planet at the moment, like gum we can replace at the corner shop once we’ve chewed all the goodness from it. That’s frightening. That’s genuinely sick-in-the-night, silent panic-attack terrifying. But we buy new phones and new phone covers and charge them up and snap a picture of ourselves with them in the mirror and grind our teeth that some dude took up too much space on the tube and Steven Moffatt can’t write women. Yes! Those things might be true! But, to play the card we all dislike the most: haven’t we got other things to worry about? Not necessarily bigger things, or better things, but fractionally more pressing things? Shouldn't we all be hurling money as hard as we can at scientists and policy makers in the hope we can stop sawing down and burning up the only home we’ve got? Shouldn’t we be campaigning against companies who design their products with built-in obsolescence, rather than grabbing those products as fast as we can so we can use them to tweet our rage at companies who use unreliable delivery companies? And I understand that climate change isn’t a stand-alone issue — capitalism, our lifestyles, our conditioned social priorities, corporate power over government, dissolution of employment rights, exploitation of workers — all of this feeds into climate change and the terrible way we’re treating our planet. I understand this. And all of it feels slightly more pressing than how I can correctly display my individualism to people who don’t or barely know me.)

The fact remains, the basic philosophies of most major religions (if we put aside meat specifics and some potentially dodgy sex/marriage stuff) throughout human civilisation probably have a point: care for the needy; practice humility; think of others; show forgiveness; show respect; love everyone.

If the future looks scary, the answer isn’t to build the wall higher and sharpen our words. It’s so painful, and it’s so difficult, and it’s so simple. Right now, if we can take the time to type our disdain and disgust, we’re in a privileged enough position to take a deep breath, dive into life, and make a better choice.

  1. *Jon Ronson on Guys We’ve Fucked

2. *Invisibilia, Flip the Script

3. *Richard Ayoade on Adam Buxton 

4. *Iain Lee on Adam Buxton

5. *Jon Ronson on Adam Buxton

6. *Oliver Burkeman, ‘Moderates are the real tough guys’ 

7. *This American Life, For Your Reconsideration