You’re to blame for Fake News

May 1, 2018 Joseph Lyttleton2 Comments

I’m sick of the term “Fake News”.

It’s one of those intentionally simplistic terms – like “The Big Bang Theory” – that exists because the general public can’t deal with complex concepts without them being stripped to their basest form. Still, it’s the term du jour, so for the purposes of this article, I’ll use it.

As it relates to the US presidential election, “Fake News” is more accurately known as propaganda: distorted news stories and statistics used to push lies about immigrants, urban crime, Muslims, and other boogeyman designed to scare you. This form of propaganda isn’t unique to the US, of course; Brexit was fueled by it, and fear of the “other” has been the politicking weapon of choice since the first politician gave a speech.

But in the broader context of our lives, “Fake News” has always existed, and it has never been a liberal or conservative issue, just a matter of laziness and opportunistic cynicism.

A Long and Tortured History of Fake News

I’ve been calling out my friends’ tendency to spread fake news for years – and lost some for doing it – only to see the same people lambaste Trumpers for spreading fake news. The irony physically hurts.

The uncomfortable truth about the current form of fake news – the Facebook-viral, Russian bot-pushed, grammatically-indifferent breed – is that it didn’t just appear out of nowhere with perfected tactics for reaching the most susceptible (gullible) targets. These tactics have been deployed and honed for years by all kinds of sources pushing their dubious claims, most of them not inherently political. Some you probably trust.

I didn’t call them “fake news” back then, I called them bullshit.

To help explain this, I’m focusing on one website (though there are many) and how it fits into both the current political moment and the road that got us here: Naturalnews.com

Natural Bullshit

Natural News is one of the most unapologetic sources of bullshit I’ve ever seen. There was a time a few years back when it would pop up in my Facebook feed almost every day.

In its heyday, NaturalNews.com existed as a poorly-designed, green-hued nightmare of circular reasoning and supplement peddling. It ostensibly existed to provide information about “alternatives” to Western Medicine (a.k.a. “medicine”). There have always been snake oil salesman, and there always will be. Natural News just did it digitally.

Natural News became a phenomenon largely because it pushed the roundly debunked and thoroughly bullshit idea that vaccines cause autism. Even now, as I type this, the top link on the site declares “Highest AUTISM rates found in countries with highest VACCINE compliance” (playing the hits). It also went all-in on the “evils” of GMOs, another bullshit scare tactic that you – yes, I know you’re reading this – probably still believe is a big concern.

What made this site so effective and so useful for people spreading its lies is that when you clicked on an article, it appeared to be a legitimate news article, with quotes from relevant experts and links to supporting articles. For a reader ready to buy what Natural News was selling, that’s all it took to be convinced that the article was properly researched and well-sourced. Click, share.

But those articles were garbage.

The quotes were almost never actually quotes. They often referenced “a person there” or “an expert”, but never gave a name, as if they had to maintain the person’s anonymity lest Big Brother snuffed them out.

Worse, if you clicked on a link embedded in the article, it inevitably took you to a different article on naturalnews.com, generally written by the same guy (or avatar, at least). Keep clicking and you’d go further and further down the rabbit hole of that website, perhaps even coming right back around to the original article. It was an ouroboros of bullshit, and goddamn was it effective. The creators of the site knew, if you’re predisposed to believe them, you wouldn’t check their work.

The site’s most dedicated readers were usually those who called themselves skeptics, those people who never trust the “official story” and pat themselves on the back because they voted for a third party candidate once. Self-proclaimed skeptics are always the easiest to fool.

If you go to naturalnews.com now (I wouldn’t recommend it; except to check my claims, so I guess you should do it), the website has transformed, unsurprisingly, into a pro-Trump, “Deep State” conspiracy-pushing, manure factory. Still poorly designed, but at least it’s keeping up with the latest bullshit.

I say “unsurprisingly” because, as someone who has been tracking bullshit for my entire adult life, as soon as I saw the political “fake news” websites during the election popping up in my feed, I recognized all the same tactics being used, both in terms of self-referential links and the way they preyed on “skeptics” and “free thinkers.”

Nowadays, Natural News has gotten a little more sophisticated: Its links go to other websites, sites with names like “Deep State News.” Regardless, it’s the same tactic as always, linking back to different like-minded (almost certainly interconnected) sources to give the sheen of authenticity to its claims. The snake is still eating its tail, one source of bullshit feeding another. (Who would have thought that “The Human Centipede” would turn out to be the most culturally astute film of our times?)

It’s possible that Natural News’ turn to Trumpism is just a natural development of its anti-establishment roots. If you don’t trust doctors and the medical establishment, it stands to reason you probably look askew at the political establishment, too.

On the other hand, if you’re a bit more cynical – as I am – you might note that Natural News always had a political slant at its core. I don’t mean Republican or Democrat, or even conservative or liberal. Rather, its politics were about persuading its readers that all “official” sources were lying, so you could only trust them. (And while we’ve got you here, why don’t you buy some vitamin supplements?)

“Everyone else is lying but me.” Sound familiar? When Trump praises Fox News and calls all other news sources “fake” he’s relying on the same tactic that Natural News used to secure a loyal and defensive audience. As soon as you’ve earned someone’s trust and, more importantly, built their distrust of others, they’re yours for life.

Let me be clear, I’m not saying Natural News was a Russian-backed front for spreading fake news (unless it turns out it really was, in which case, I’m also not not saying that).

What I am saying, though, is that all “fake news” sources use this same tactic to create loyalty. It’s not a new tactic. It originated with the original – and still best – purveyor of lies the world ever knew: Religion.

In the beginning…

Once you’ve convinced your followers that only your book, your prophets, your preachers, your celebrity spokesperson have access to the truth, it becomes impossible to dispute your claims.

I said above that I have been tracking bullshit my entire adult life. What I meant was that, as soon as I de-converted from Christianity at the age of 20, I began to look for all the ways that religion convinced its followers – convinced me – to stay in its grasp, even when so little of it made sense.

As a young, firebrand atheist, I was obsessed with debunking Christian myths and disproving its claims. I followed a pretty standard trajectory for an atheist, from excitable (and mean) reactionary to stately but acerbic provocateur, to where I am now: an old man tired of the fight. I mostly don’t write about it anymore, because the debate has gotten tiring, and the results non-existent.

But I bring up my young atheism because that’s where I first noticed the tactics of modern “fake news”: utilize self-referential sources, engender distrust, muddy the waters around what can be known (i.e. facts).

In one specific topic, I saw those tactics being used to prolong a debate that had long been settled: Evolution vs. Creationism (Intelligent Design).

Creationists like Ken Ham have no chance of winning the debate on the merits of facts or reason, so they turn to other methods for winning adherents to their political views: repeating assertions ad nauseam, no matter how baseless (repetition creates the illusion of veracity); arguing that one can’t trust what is seen with one’s own eyes; and proclaiming that biologists (all scientists, really) are part of a conspiracy to trick the world.

Sound familiar?

These same tactics are used by Climate Change deniers, Natural News quacks, and Donald Trump, among others.

When writing article after article about religion in my early 20s, I felt a bit like Chicken Little screaming that the sky was falling. Some people humored me, some even agreed. Turns out, the sky really was falling, and everyone thought they were safe under their particular awnings.

The future is bleak

Things are going to keep getting worse because of technology. Don’t get me wrong, technology is amazing, but its most amazing feature is also its greatest danger: it makes what isn’t real look like it is. Whether it’s getting us emotionally invested in the arc of a talking raccoon in a space epic or creating a video in which Obama appears to be calling Trump a dipshit, our world is increasingly virtual; in other words, fake. Eventually, our tech will overwhelm our ability to tell the difference.

For those looking forward to 2018 or 2020 in hopes of the truth winning out and Trumpism being eradicated, well, don’t hold your breath.

It’s not enough to know that “fake news” exists; we need to be humble enough to acknowledge that we are susceptible to it, and to blame for it.

You are to blame. I am, too.

I’ll admit, I reposted that fake Trump quote about Republicans. I’m at least partially responsible for that “quote” having more legs than it deserved.

This is the simplest form of fake news, and it’s one that was pretty easy to debunk because it gives the supposed source. Trump never said those words, and obviously he wouldn’t have. The fact that I reposted it speaks to my own willingness to put aside common sense when something feels true enough.

(There is a similar damning “quote” going around, with George Soros supposedly admitting to using Black Lives Matter to stir up violence in America. It’s just as bullshit as the Trump quote and proof that tactics know no political allegiance.)

When I read that the quote was fake, I double checked and was dismayed to find I’d been suckered. I deleted my post and now tell other people when they post it. People often smugly respond, “Well, even if he didn’t say it, the quote is true,” not getting the irony that they’re making fun of other people for believing lies. We have to be better than this.

Calling out these blatant lies is a small thing, but it’s some effort towards stopping the deluge. Sadly, I fear it’s a bit like cleaning up an oil spill with a teaspoon.

You’re to blame for Fake News.

You have spread fake news. I don’t care who you voted for, I don’t care how much of a “skeptic” or a “free thinker” you are. You have helped spread false information. Maybe you found out and corrected yourself, maybe you quietly buried the evidence, or maybe you are still convinced of its veracity. Whatever the case, you’re guilty.

And to prove it, I will list some lies that you believe or did believe. I won’t provide my sources, but I assure you, these are all facts. If you doubt me – good, that’s the first step – I encourage you to do the research yourself and learn why these lies became so massive that most of society accepts them as truth.

Here are lies you have undoubtedly believed at some point in your life:

Carrots improve your night vision
Diamonds are rare
It’s dangerous/too difficult for women to get pregnant after 35
Vitamin C will cure a cold
Milk strengthens your bones
Mary Magdalene was a prostitute
You need to drink 8 glasses of water a day
A woman frivolously sued McDonald’s for spilling hot coffee on herself and that’s why we live in a nanny state

We not only live with our lies, we love them. We define our world by them. Like it or not, there is a good chance your idea of the world has largely been shaped by at least one of those lies above (I used to drink a big glass of OJ every time I felt a tickle in my throat).

The spreading of lies isn’t going to stop. Liars aren’t going to stop. The only way to make a better world is to be better consumers of information.

It’s not enough to just be a “skeptic.” We need to be curious. We need to be invested in the truth. We need to be interested in the wider world.

But, before all that, we need to admit, we’re part of the problem.

Same Sex Marriage Is Legal

June 26, 2015July 2, 2015 Joseph Lyttleton

This website has devoted many many words to the fight for marriage equality over the years. Today’s monumental ruling by the Supreme Court that finally, inevitably made same sex marriage legal is a victory worthy of great celebration.

In time, I will have processed the information enough to write something marginally compelling, but for the moment it just feels good to bask in the nation’s celebration. In that spirit, here are just a few of my favorite images from Twitter today.

Go out, celebrate and have yourself a Gay ol’ time!

Love Letters, Emails and the Impossible Task of Memory

March 27, 2015 Joseph Lyttleton3 Comments

Memory

I’ve been writing. I have created drafts of the first 2 chapters of 10 Cities / 10 Years: The Book (not the title). It was in those first cities – Charlotte and Philadelphia – that the foundation of the whole endeavor was set, both in experience and in patterns: Move; Meet; Learn; Love; Detach; Disintegrate.

For much of what I’ve written, I’ve relied on memory, an imperfect capsule. I didn’t start out trying to capture every moment as it happened. I didn’t keep meticulous journals and notes to document my travels or my evolution as I progressed through 10 cities. Instead, I have snippets of remembrances: poetry, letters, rants written down, the occasional diary entry. The fullest details are left to be reconstructed through the loose connections and misfilings of my frayed synapses.

This is how myths form.

How I reassemble this story, as a series of events building up to a decade, will not be how the other participants – those who only appeared for a short time, a year or less, maybe only a month – will remember it. I will tell stories that some people won’t remember at all. I will leave out happenings that others will have believed to be of utmost importance.

The final product will be a version of history. Not history.

Emails

I have taken to reading old emails to fill out the memories. I’m lousy with names, always have been. If I’m introduced to someone, there’s a 50/50 chance I’ll have forgotten the name by the end of the conversation. Part of the problem is that I’m a visual learner. When I see something written down I am 10 times more likely to remember it.

The other problem is I prioritize my socializing: If there’s a pretty good chance you’re going to leave my life and I will never see you again, I won’t put much effort in storing the information.

Now, as I’m sitting down to recount old stories, I am realizing that there are ancillary characters who, though not particularly vital in the grand arc of my story, still played an important role for a brief moment. And their names are mostly lost in a mixture of time, space and liquor.

Thankfully, I was a better documentarian than I realized. It turns out that my aversion to phones (seriously, don’t ever call me) served a purpose: I have written literally thousands of emails to friends and lovers over the years. Sometimes they were nothing more than a single sentence, a brief greeting when I was feeling lonely or I knew the recipient was having a rough day. Much of the correspondence is built on long forgotten inside jokes.

But there are longer letters in those digital file cabinets in which I wrote at length about the events of my days. In one email to a friend, I discussed attending a house party after my first week in Philadelphia. I have no memories of that party, and the letter is short on specifics, but I did list the names of my neighbors: David (the landlord), Phil, Seth and Alexis. None of these people were especially important to the direction of my life, though I did spend a number of nights attending parties and shows with Alexis. Knowing her name doesn’t strengthen my memories of the year, but it does provide a precise detail by which a reader can latch onto her as a character.

It’s these kinds of details that make me grateful for the nearly limitless storage capacity of Gmail. And yet, in those dusty tombs are also the fragments of many lost relationships.

Love Letters

I have never intentionally thrown out a letter or a note from a friend. If it was handwritten, I most likely have it somewhere. Even if it’s nothing more than a Post-it note, it’s likely stored somewhere in my file of papers. When I was a child, I received an odd penpal letter from a boy in Russia (odd because it was in response to a letter I had never written) and I’ve kept it ever since (I never wrote back). There is just something about words written with pen or pencil that hold so much power.

Most of those notes are from old lovers. There are letters of courtship and eroticized notes from the height of romance, but there are also desperate recriminations and sad postmortems from the failing or failed end of a relationship. I’ve kept them all. They are history, not told by the victors, but by the defeated.

In the early goings, when I left a city for the next, I had 1 or 2 ex-girlfriends who were reliable e-companions. I was always trying to stay friends with exes in those days, and so our emails back and forth still included pet names and the occasional admission that feelings had not faded. But we were trying (or trying to try) to be platonic.

There is nothing sadder than an old love letter, except perhaps an old love letter that was never meant to be a love letter. To sit down with the specific intention of expressing one’s feelings in a letter is a reflection of love, albeit a calculated one. To sit down, though, with the simple idea of writing about one’s day, only to be so overwhelmed by your need and longing that you pour out your feelings on the page, well… that’s just love.

And it’s gone.

Ex-lovers move on, as they should. They get engaged, they get married, they have children and they don’t go through their old emails and love letters and reminisce about some phantom to whom they once foolishly devoted themselves.

Well, perhaps they do. Even in happiness and contentment, they must wonder about the past and try to remember how both the pain and the pleasure could have felt so intense. They wonder if it was ever real. They have their doubts. They have their memories.

An Impossible Task

When this decade ends, I’ll string together a through-line from Charlotte to Brooklyn, attempting to assemble a cohesive story out of 10 disjointed, directionless years in which I spent as much time trying to forget as I did remembering. I’ll piece it all together with love letters, emails, notes on scraps of paper, photographs and, most importantly, memories. Yours and mine.

It will be a lie. It will be a myth. It will be a kind of truth. Like a love letter.

Why Do We Seek Labels?

January 8, 2015February 12, 2015 Joseph Lyttleton281 Comments

It’s almost a daily occurrence now. On Facebook or Twitter, in an article or mind-numbing listicle, someone is discussing the traits, burdens and/or pleasures of being an introvert. Based on the unscientific sampling of my personal feed, 90% of the narcissistic self-promoters in the world are actually meek and shy introverts.

When us loners aren’t breathlessly talking about how weird it is that we prefer books to people (haha, I’m soooo crazy!), we’re posting the results of a Briggs Myers personality test (or some generic knockoff).

“I’m totally an INFP.”

“Well, I’m an ENFJ.”

“Oh, I could definitely see that. I guess that’s because I’m an ENTP.”

“I kind of figured all of you were CUNTs.”

And when we get bored with scientific classifications that mostly mean nothing, we fall back on the original sugar pill of personality labels: The Zodiac.

What’s Your Sign?

How is it that a generation raised on “Be Yourself” entertainment is so obsessed with conforming to labels? How can we, on one hand, talk so much about how our race, gender and sexuality doesn’t define our potential and value, and then turn around and say without a trace of irony, “Oh, I’m a Cancer, that’s why I’m so emotional”? Why are we so in need of being sorted?

Hate to break it to you, but you aren’t Harry Potter.

I realize that most people who read horoscopes don’t put much faith in them. They read them for entertainment, they read them because they’re bored, or they read them because it’s fun to see how they match up with their lives. But, like the lapsed Catholic who still crosses himself before entering a scary, black basement, there is an ounce of belief in these people.

It’s not faith in the Zodiac (though, obviously, there are people who truly and fully believe in the bunk), but rather a kind of desperate hope that there could be some truth in the predictions. If the horoscope is true, if the Briggs Myers is accurate, if Muhammad is the Prophet, then there is understandable order in the universe.

There isn’t. At least, not in the way you want.

IntroPerversion

Being an introvert can be great. (Except when it’s not.) There is no question that I fit the label. I fit many labels. I’m shy, I’m pensive, I’m a Wallflower, I’m serious, melancholy, calculating. (Except when I’m not.) I am many things that are really just synonyms for the same trait, which is [fill-in-the-blank].

I imagine, though, that being an extrovert must be pretty great, too.

Except when it’s not.

We have an unhealthy compulsion to be categorized. I don’t like to say, “Because of the internet…” since that’s a very myopic way of looking at the world. I don’t think the internet is fundamentally changing us so much as it’s allowing us to more fully reveal the truest human nature. That said, because of the internet, we are becoming more and more obsessed with telling other people what our label is, presumably so they’ll better understand and accept us.

Am I too quiet? Well, don’t be mad at me, I’m just an introvert.

Am I not assertive enough? That’s just my personality trait, I’d rather create than control.

Am I bad in bed? Must be because you’re a Gemini.

We’re so scared of admitting our failings – of admitting that being less than perfect isn’t a quirk but a reality – that we seek a label for every single possible human personality.

I’m guilty, as well. I am bi-polar. Mostly it’s an affliction I have to deal with to get through day-to-day life and I don’t tend to talk about it in my real world life.* I rarely tell co-workers and don’t bring it up with friends and roommates unless I think they’re someone who will appreciate the conversation, usually because they have a similar struggle. I don’t want to be defined by my condition.

Except when I do. Because at times I do want to wrap myself up in the label. I want to use it as an excuse so that all my worst behaviors and traits can be written off and forgiven. I want permission to be weak.

We are all weak at times, and in those low moments we seek the comforting reassurance that it’s not our fault, not our responsibility. It’s just our nature.

That might be true, but what of it? There are positive traits and there are negative traits. There are qualities to be celebrated and qualities to be corrected. And then there are traits and qualities that just exist, neither good nor bad. I think of it (as I do most things) in evolutionary terms: There is no right or wrong way to be, generally, but there are traits that are more beneficial for particular circumstances.

I have great qualities for being a writer. I have lousy qualities for being a pop singer (even if I do have an ass like Nicki Minaj).

Our incessant need to label ourselves speaks to a great insecurity within us. Maybe it’s because of the constant bombardment of celebrity news and digitally-manipulated images, or maybe that insecurity always existed and the internet is just allowing us to admit it.

Either way, it’s a sickness. Not the insecurity. Insecurities can actually be a gift, a reminder that we are not done yet, that we can always do more to improve ourselves. No, the sickness is the desire to label ourselves, to say, “This is who I am so deal with it.” There are more than 7 billion people on this planet. If the world doesn’t want to “deal with it” they’ll just ignore you, like I imagine most of your friends on Facebook already do.

Nobody cares if you’re an introvert, an INTJ or a Taurus.

We only care what you actually do. So close the Buzzfeed quiz and go create something of lasting value.

*I use this space to talk about my condition on occasion because I want people to understand it, and I want people who are dealing with the same problem to have a place to feel less alone.

“New York Experience Required”

November 12, 2014February 3, 2015 Joseph Lyttleton

Over the span of this decade-long project, I’ve held 15 different jobs, not counting the odd jobs/side projects I’ve taken on to make a little extra money in lean times. Of those 15 jobs, more than half of them were found using the most infamous of search engines, Craigslist.

There is a lot to be wary of when using CL for goods and/or services. When looking for places to live, you may discover that the pictures in the ad do not match the actual apartment. That “Used but like new” furniture may include an extra helping of bedbugs. Or the limo service you looked into but never signed a contract with might still arrive on your wedding night in a duct-taped POS and expect you to do business with them. Anything can happen.

So, why, you might ask, would a person still do any business on Craigslist if there are so many scam artists, shysters and loons on the site?

The simple reason is that, despite all the noise, if you know how to look, you can still find better deals and job opportunities on CL then on any other site, all without signing up for extra services or junk email. There might be better sites for 1 or 2 specific things, but there is no better place for doing everything.

Now: I’m looking for work again. I’ve had a job for about a month and a half and I very much enjoy it. But I’m not getting enough hours, and New York City is way too expensive to try to get by on $300 a week. If I was still in New Orleans, I’d be set, but Brooklyn is decidedly not the Big Easy (though they share some of the same grooming habits).

With as much restaurant experience as I have, I should be able to find work easily. I received job offers from both of the first 2 restaurants I interviewed at in Boston. I had a job in a week. It was actually kind of disappointing because I generally enjoy luxuriating in the unoccupied time off for a few weeks while I explore my new city.

Alas, New York is a bit harder. Obviously.

Most of the ads for restaurants in both Manhattan and Brooklyn include this caveat: “New York experience required.”

Why, you might ask? I can’t really say for sure. I’ve been into numerous bars and restaurants throughout the city, and none of them strike me as any busier, any wilder, any more Herculean places to work than those I’ve worked in the other major cities. I suppose it might be a way to keep out the country bumpkins who served 6 years in their papa’s Iowa truck stop diner. I’ve never even lived in Iowa. Put me in, coach!

But I guess it really isn’t that bad. I do have restaurant experience and I’m getting called in for interviews (I have 1 today). It could be worse.

I mean, look what this person is looking for:

I know everyone wants a hard worker, but that’s ridiculous. Also, I don’t think it’s acceptable to call a woman a “dish” anymore. Maybe I’m just old fashioned, but there are better places to post this kind of filth. Like Tinder.

I still applied, though. I mean, I need a job dammit!

Wish me luck.

Be A Secret Feminist

September 30, 2014October 22, 2014 Joseph Lyttleton

At some point in the last 50 years, some marketing genius in the vein of Don Draper came up with one of the greatest advertising schemes ever: They claimed that if you use the same soap on your face that you use on your body, you will die an ugly, unloved spinster.

And we bought it. Not just women, men, too. One of my roommates currently has upwards of 7 different bottles of bizarre scented chemicals standing in our shared shower. I’m sure each and every one of them does something magical for every individual part of his body, from the tips of his hair to the calloused skin of the feet. There is probably a taint softener somewhere in there.

I have two items in the shower: A combination shampoo/conditioner and a bar of soap.

I assure you, I am a hideous, unlovable troll. But I think that’s just a coincidence.

What Kind of Feminist Are You?

Feminism is all the rage these days. And by “all the rage,” I mean, the mention of the ‘f-word’ makes people want to Joe Pesci someone’s neck. There’s a civil war erupting right now between 40-something feminists and 30-something feminists and 20-something feminists and then the (mostly) teenagers who are #womenagainstfeminism.

I suppose this kind of rift was inevitable. Every group will splinter, every religion develops sects. Feminism has existed long enough for it to go from a political movement with easily definable goals to an ideology with nebulous theories on ‘equality.’ It’s not so much that the ideology is flawed or wrong, it’s that the message isn’t being conveyed very elegantly.

The speech that Emma Watson recently gave at the U.N. for the #HeForShe movement (and that movement itself) is precisely the kind of feminism I signed up for when I was in college and first being exposed to the cause. It’s a movement of inclusion, not exclusion. It’s a movement that says, We lift women up, not by knocking men down, but by helping each reach a higher level.

As Emma said in her speech, “It seems uncomplicated to me.”

So it is.

But there are a lot of future women (and men) growing up today that, while they would agree with the individual checkmarks of feminist equality (equal pay for equal work; women’s right to choose; anti-discriminatory policies; etc.), don’t want to be saddled with the Feminist tag. And I get it.

I’ve been a feminist for over a decade, but waking up to a Twitter feed that is positively exploding with abusive rhetoric (on all sides) makes me want nothing to do with the label. Whether it’s about “rape culture,” “gamergate,” “misogynistic atheists” or some other hot button topic, I find myself compelled by the arguments. Compelled to turn off my computer and run away.

I’ve never been one to shy away from giving my opinion, but the ferocity of the debates has encouraged me to stay back. I don’t engage, I don’t respond. If I see an article that makes some interesting points (even if I don’t agree wholeheartedly with it), I’ll surreptitiously retweet it, but otherwise I keep my mouth shut.

I have become a Secret Feminist.

Be A Secret Feminist

For the young girls and boys growing up today that think gender equality is a no-brainer but have only ever known the term “feminist” to come with scare quotes, it can be hard to feel like there is a movement that represents them. This is especially true for white teens who for all intents and purposes are living in the utopian future that feminists of the 19th and early 20th century envisioned.

(Keep in mind: Equality doesn’t mean nothing bad will ever happen to a girl. Life is still life, shit happens.)

The thing is, sexism is not as overt as it used to be. The Mad Men office environment would never fly today, and there are laws intended to make sure that’s the case. But that doesn’t mean sexism in the workplace has been eliminated, and it certainly doesn’t mean that feminism has won the fight and can now be put back in the closet next to your Sexy Snowman Halloween costume.

But for a large subset of the younger generation, there is a huge disconnect between the rhetoric of Feminism’s most outspoken members and the world they actually live in. Activists tend to believe that people will fall into complacency if they let off the gas at all, but that sort of gung-ho advocacy can be repellent to people who aren’t confronted with inequality in their daily lives.*

So, how does Feminism rehabilitate its image? That’s a tough question, and something that isn’t going to be answered in a 1500 word essay. I do know, though, that it’s possible to be a feminist and stand up equality without wearing pins and starting every conversation with, “Well, I’m a feminist, so…”

It’s okay to be a Secret Feminist.

I grew up in an excitable Christian community that would have had a term for that kind of devotion to the cause: Luke warm. Well, who asked them?

The world needs activists. It needs proud, outspoken proponents for causes. Without them, important issues would fall between the cracks and change would never happen. But the world also needs regular people who don’t fight over every little detail and live in relative harmony with their fellow humans, even when they have fundamentally different worldviews.

What was the biggest boon to the equal rights campaign for homosexuality in America? Not marches or parades, not politicians or scientists. It was Ellen on television every weekday afternoon. It was Neil Patrick Harris charming the (figurative) pants off of Middle America. Ellen Degeneres, the Lesbian sitcom character, disappeared from TV in a scandalized flash, but Ellen the flamboyant TV host is the new Oprah.

So, how does your average, mellow citizen live as a feminist without turning into a caricature? The easiest thing I can think of is finding the little nuggets of sexism in your life and pushing them out. For instance? you ask.

Stop buying into the beauty lies of an industry that insists every natural part of you is an abomination. And I mean that literally: stop buying their products. Yes, when these companies came up with these marketing tricks, they were just making up things for us to be insecure about. They were fake problems. Now, though, society has embraced those standards of beauty and they are ‘real’ (as real as any cultural standard can be).

It’s nice to say, “You’re beautiful just the way you are,” but that’s a bunch of greeting card horseshit, and while you’re embracing your inner beauty, someone else is getting made up and winning the heart of the guy/gal you wanted. It’s a brutal world out there. Sometimes you really do have to fight for what you want.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t hit back at the industry that birthed this monstrous culture. The easiest way is pretty obvious: Stop buying those stupid fucking magazines. Women’s magazines are more pornographic than Maxim. Why are you buying them? (I mean, I get it if you’re a teenage boy and you can’t get your hands on Playboy, but even then, have you not heard of the internet??)

If you really must have those beauty tips, may I suggest doing what housewives have done for decades: Get in the longest line at the grocery store and read it there. Those magazines are 90% ads and about 6 pages of content, so you should be able to get through 3 or 4 different issues by the time Widow Henderson finds her $.50 coupon for that 30-pack of toilet paper.

For crissake, cancel that damn subscription (may I suggest getting something else instead).

There are a lot of insidious ways that sexism has seeped into all of our lives, but none of them is more pervasive than these beauty standards. Some might see the new impossible beauty standards for men to be a step in the right direction; after all, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. But that’s the poisonous mentality that is hurting feminism. We shouldn’t be hoping for a worse world for men, we should be hoping for a better world for everyone.**

It’s not easy to push back against the tide of mass culture and the multi-billion dollar beauty industry, but a million individuals making a small change in their life is more impactful than an angry Twitter feud or a dozen articulate blog screeds (of which this is attempting not to be). Enough small steps become massive marches.

The beauty industry’s profits rely on you hating yourself. I’m not saying that the answer is to just “Love yourself.” I’m saying the answer is to hate them back. If you must participate in the zero sum game that is Cosmetic Beauty, do it without feeding their coffers. Self-esteem is hard; spite is easy.

(Now, I would never suggest that you steal beauty supplies, but…)

*Some feminists would argue that we are all, daily, living in a world that is shaped by inequality and sexism. While this is likely true, it’s in ways so subtle that an innocent bystander can’t be blamed for not necessary seeing everything through those lenses.

**Standards of beauty aren’t all inherently bad. It’s part of our very biology to seek them out and I’m not going to pretend that I don’t find some people more attractive than others. There comes a time, though, when those standards grow so unrealistic that they cross over to the level of satire.