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.

Writers Versus Content Creators

June 9, 2014August 3, 2015 Joseph Lyttleton2 Comments

I am a writer.

It used to embarrass me to say that because it comes across as so utterly pretentious. Anybody who’s published a poem on Poetry.com can call themselves a writer, which pretty much dilutes the word. I’ve only felt comfortable calling myself a writer in the last few years, partially because I’ve published nationally and some of my stories and poems have appeared in journals. But the more basic reason that I feel comfortable using the ‘W’ term for myself is because I work damn hard at it.

I edit. I edit like a ~~motherfucker~~ professional. Not a single post goes up on this site that hasn’t been read and re-read and edited for typos and grammatically confusing phrases and then rewritten again to make sure that it isn’t all just one big rambling mess. If an article goes up and I spot a typo after the fact, I pretty much can’t do anything until I’ve fixed it. And that’s just for blog posts. You can’t imagine how much time I spend on short stories and the longer pieces I work on. I’ve been editing a completed novel for years. It’s been finished, I’ve submitted it to agents (no interest found), and yet still I return to it in hopes of improvement.

Editing is only one part of being a writer. A very, very, very important part of it, but still not the whole shebang. A writer should also care for craftsmanship, the interplay of words and sounds. One needn’t look far to see that very little of what is written online has been crafted in any manner. Even if we’re ignoring the gibberish that gets posted in the name of SEO and Google analytics, publication on the internet is largely about filling space. Websites don’t employ writers, they employ content creators.

CONTENT IS KING(?)

“Content Creator” is this era’s greatest Orwellian euphemism, presenting the mindless sputum of the half-literate as ‘content’ and declaring the banging of one’s head against a keyboard as ‘creativity.’ Internet content is, by various definitions, valuable, even when it only exists to point the reader to the work of a superior thinker or artist. Unfortunately, the chained up monkeys who type this stuff, while still unable to reproduce Shakespeare, have learned how to market their smeared shit so effectively that we all stop and look.

A great many articles published online contain barely 100 words worth of original content all in reference to someone else’s video, photographs or article, copied whole cloth from another website or news source. So content-less has content creation become that the only real purpose of any creator is to slap up an attention-grabbing headline to bring in the hits. With headlines like “This Video Will Change Your Mind About Everything” and a screenshot strategically frozen to reveal cleavage (yes, Upworthy, I see what you’re doing), sites get your clicks and your shares, spreading their empty content like the mental herpes it truly is.

A content creator might push back and say, “You’re just bitter because you’ve failed as a writer.” To which I say, yeah, probably. But what is a writer if not someone who has failed at everything else in life.

WRITERS WRITE RIGHT

I am not criticizing the Internet. I have no qualms saying that the World Wide Web is the greatest scientific achievement in all of human history. Yes, even beating sliced bread. Counter to common belief, I don’t think the Internet is making us worse people, or even less social. The Internet didn’t turn us into assholes, we already were assholes (slavery, anyone?). This tool is transformative and quite often magnificent in the way that it brings together ideas, cultures, experiences and, most importantly, people. Blaming the Internet for our shortcomings as a species is like blaming the automobile for car crashes. In a certain light, it’s vaguely true, but it’s obviously missing the larger picture.

I know a lot of writers personally. Some I like and some I don’t, while some like me and most… tolerate me. Most of the writers I have known over the years have, at some point or another, stopped writing. At least, in a serious way. They may toss out a poem here or there, or loosely maintain a blog. Many of these writers have attempted to get their writing published and found out the hard way, like I have, that it is really, really hard to get published in this age, especially if you’re not writing erotic fan-fiction based on someone else’s creation.

It’s… disheartening. I’m not saying it was ever easy to be a writer, but I don’t think anyone would dispute that this is the hardest age for a writer to find a faithful audience and make a living by it. The Internet is, somewhat, to blame for that. The other party at fault is us, the writers. We have grown to accept the truism that no one will pay us for our writing, like we’re all part of one global internship and our bosses are waiting for their coffee. I’m not saying this isn’t true, just that it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. Of course no one’s going to pay for what they’re getting for free. Remember what your mama said about buying the cow? Yep, we’re all sluts.

This is truly a shame because nobody has changed and shaped history more than writers. Great ideas and revolutionary movements spread through the written word. As much as Twitter gets a bad name for its 140-character limit and seemingly frivolous content, it actually serves a tremendous function because it helps spread messages. It lets us share the word.

Writing has value. Content doesn’t.

EXTRA! EXTRA! READ ALL ABOUT IT!

We’re a headline culture, so it’s no wonder that we believe all human knowledge can be reduced to a series of bulletpoints for easy consumption. The epidemic of scientific illiteracy that has created the Anti-Vaxxers, the Climate Change Deniers and the Intelligent Design Movement is largely based on these various groups believing that if they read a couple of headlines, a Wikipedia article and a science study abstract, they’re suddenly as informed as a person who has devoted their life to the field. You can’t reduce hundreds of years of research into an afternoon and then call yourself an expert.

The more reductive we become, the harder it is to convey anything meaningful. Even the flashy content creators are shoving extra information into their headlines (“#16 Will Blow You Away” “#3 Will Literally Get You Pregnant” “#10 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”) because the fire-hose torrent of hyperbole is losing its ability to draw eyes. Everybody is screaming with ALL CAPS that what they have to show you is worth your 5-second attention span, and in reality almost none of it is.

Which is why it’s time for writers to fight back.

Don’t give in to the easy pull of content creation. Don’t aim for the lowest common denominator. Don’t over-hype your work with misleading, exclamation-filled headlines. Be a writer. Craft your words with care, edit them to perfection, and if the world doesn’t care, do it again. And again, and again. The world doesn’t owe you an audience. As a writer, though, you owe it to yourself and to your work to actually give a damn about the quality of your writing. The word will remain long after all the content has been banished to the unlit alleyways of internet obscurity.

So what are you? Content Creator, or Writer?

#WritersVsContentCreators

You Are Not A Genius

March 17, 2014September 28, 2014 Joseph Lyttleton1 Comment

Let’s start with a very basic fact: If there is an average intelligence, somebody has to be below it. An average, or mean, is not the number that is most common (that’s the mode), or the number that is smack dab in the middle of all the numbers (that’s the median). No, the average is the value we get when all numbers are added and divided by the number of numbers. In this case, those numbers are I.Q. points.

Theoretically, if there was just one massive, industrial-strength moron on the planet, and everyone else were of an astronomically higher degree of intelligence, everyone (but that one) could be higher than the average I.Q. But that isn’t the case. Without any practical way of giving the whole planet an intelligence test, we can be fairly sure that the average and mode for I.Q. points is damn near the same.

I don’t care how good you are at Minecraft (whatever that is), you my dear reader are, with high statistical likelihood, not a genius.

Uh, Fish Are Pretty Dumb, You Ninny

Have you seen this fish quote? It’s the quintessential quote for the internet age. First of all, it’s frequently attributed to Albert Einstein, but was never said by him (basically, if you have some banal sentiment to express, claim Einstein said it), secondly, it doesn’t really make any sense (expecting humans to have basic reasoning and problem solving abilities isn’t the same as expecting a fish to climb a tree), thirdly, if everyone is a genius, then being a genius is suddenly not special. Who cares?

And fourthly, fuck the guy who did say this. I get that we’re worried about self-esteem and people being made to feel bad about themselves, but telling everyone they’re special isn’t the solution, it’s the problem. While you’re assuring your kids that no matter what they do, they’re a success, reality is waiting in the wings to show them that you can’t buy lunch with a glowing sense of self-worth. People fail. That’s how they learn, and grow. Ever met an adult who was coddled their entire childhood and never made to work for anything? They’re the worst.

There is a kernel of truth in the idea that judging everybody on the same scale fails to truly appreciate a variety of skills. A musician shouldn’t be judged on his ability to do spreadsheets, nor would you reject a doctor if she wasn’t good at watercoloring. I’ve known intelligent businessmen who couldn’t write an intelligible literary essay to save their lives. We all have a limited amount of space in our brains (as I’ve noted before, the 10% idea is a myth), so we prudently save room for the knowledge and skill sets that most benefit our profession.

That’s what separates us (I include myself) from the geniuses. Geniuses have minds that are capable of functioning at a level beyond the grasp of us mere average schmoes. A genius isn’t just someone who is a talented guitarist or knows how to program a computer or write an enjoyable book. Those are all excellent skills to have, particularly if your line of work is guitarist, programmer or writer. But they don’t elevate you to the level of genius.

Well, What is a Genius?

After being so adamant that you are not a genius, I’m going to admit that defining a genius is kind of difficult. If we’re talking about I.Q. points, there doesn’t seem to be one consistent metric, though anything above 140-150 is generally considered genius or gifted. I’m not sure how common I.Q. testing is anymore, especially since the tests have often been accused of having a cultural bias. I’ve never taken a test (not a real one; I’ve done the online ones, but those aren’t legitimate gauges of anything), and I don’t know of many people who have. 100 is generally considered average, and most people fall somewhere around there, which is why I.Q. points are often represented with a bell curve.

But when we use the term genius in casual conversation, whether referring to Steve Jobs, Vince Gilligan, David Bowie or some other public figure, we’re not concerned with their intelligence quotient, we’re referring to their achievements. Which is why the term genius is hard to define, and why it’s becoming so overused. We should guard against conflating our personal admiration of someone with objective acclaim. Which is not to say that Jobs, Gilligan and Bowie aren’t geniuses, only that when we’re basing a judgment on a person’s output, it’s really only the historians who can make the call.

Indeed, the old adage is true: Genius is never truly appreciated in its own time. Except, that’s not a lament, it’s a recipe. Achievement can only truly be appreciated with perspective.

The World’s (Not) Full of Idiots

The flip side of the fact that not everyone is a genius is that not everyone is an idiot.* I hear it all the time, on average once a day: “The world is full of idiots!” I had a roommate who pretty much peppered that phrase into every discussion he had (though, when I called him out on it, he denied any memory of ever saying it). Read any political site or article and you’ll learn that Republicans are idiots, and so are Democrats. Liberals and conservatives, all idiots.

It’s not just politics, though. Fans of The Big Bang Theory are idiots, as is anyone who listens to Dave Matthews Band or reads Twilight. Basically, if someone does or enjoys something that you don’t, they’re an idiot.

There have been studies that show correlations between intelligence or success and musical and literary tastes, but no such study could ever hope to prove causation, and bias almost inevitably enters into such surveys. Comparing the fan base of The Big Bang Theory, which is the most highly watched sitcom on TV, with that of, say, Community, which is poorly rated but critically adored is a fool’s errand. As a huge fan of Community (and a person who has next to no interest in TBBT), I would love to believe that my preference reflects some sort of mental superiority. In truth, it just speaks to my sense of humor.

You Are Not A Genius. Deal With It.

Be content with your average-ness. What choice do you have? You’re certainly not going to read books on new and difficult subjects to expose yourself to original ideas and educate yourself. Who’s got time for that? Accept that you will always be somewhere in the middle, with the vast majority of the population. At least you won’t be lonely.

And learn to deal with the mindblowing notion that people who hold different beliefs, have different tastes and enjoy different experiences aren’t lesser than you.

Or, you know, don’t. Idiot.

*Just as there really are geniuses in this world, there are idiots, too. They’re just not as numerous as you think, and most of them are probably refusing to get their children vaccinated for fear of autism, so evolution might weed them out anyway.

This Is The Most Important Post You’ll Read All Day/Week/Month/Year/LIFE

October 26, 2013March 4, 2015 Joseph Lyttleton

Really, truly, this is it. This is the post that will change everything. After this post goes viral, nothing will be the same.

Dogs will be cats. Gravity will pull up. Nicholas Cage movies will be good.

This post is so earth-shatteringly, life-changingly, adverb-creatingly important that you need to share it immediately, before you’ve even finished it, because I promise it’ll be worth it and why even think about it, just Tweet it and Facebook it and Tumblr it and Instagram it and Myspace it and Snail Mail it and Pony Express it and Carrier Pigeon it because if there is anyone who hasn’t read it by the end of the week they won’t be able to function in the new paradigm that will have shifted or begun or matriculated or whatever it is paradigms do.

You remember that post last week that was the most important post you had read all week? This post is even more important-er than that.

And that video you saw yesterday, the one that was going to revolutionize the way the world thinks about stuff? Yeah, well, be prepared to be nostalgic, because that’s the past. This post is the PRESENT! No, wait, this post is the FUTURE! YES!

This post is so revolutionary that it’s preemptively nullified any upcoming ‘Most Important’ posts that haven’t been created yet.

That’s right, Upworthy.com, this post single-handedly makes your entire existence meaningless. BAM! I’d apologize, but I don’t have time for that, I’ve got to write the single most important thing to ever exist in all of history. Suck it, The Bible.

For too long, the world has existed the way it is, with bad things happening to good people, and the rich getting richer, and low-fat ice cream not tasting as good as real ice cream. Well, NO MORE! It’s time for a change, and I want you to remember that it was in this post where you first read someone calling for change.

Sure, sure, other people have called for change, in the past. The Occupy Wall Street movement wanted change. And the Tea Party wanted change. And Obama wanted change. And Bush, Jr. wanted change. And Hobo Henry wanted change. But their change wasn’t the same as the Change I want. So my Change is more important. And better, and faster, and sexier, and bluer, and less filling, and twice the flavor, and child proof, and chemical free, and available in your choice of Red, Blue or Taupe, and perfect for those quiet Sunday afternoons when you’ve got nothing to do and you’re bored and want to leave the house but you don’t want to go to the movies alone and it’s too cold to walk around downtown so you stay in and flip through the channels all day and then on Monday Susan asks, “How was your weekend?” and you’re like, “It was nice,” and then you just go back to your desk.

Yeah, that’s my Change. BAP!

I hope you weren’t too attached to the status quo, because: BOOM! That’s dead.

Someday, your children are going to ask you about what the world was like before the existence of The Most Important Post Ever and you’ll think back wistfully and try to remember, but you won’t be able to because it’ll seem like a completely different life and so you’ll send little Bobby and Esmeralda to bed and sit in silence in your easy chair and wonder if you’re too old to wear skinny jeans, but NO, you’re not too old, because ‘too old’ is a construct of the world that existed before The Most Important Post Ever and that no longer applies in this newer, better world, so go ahead, buy those skinny jeans, they look great on you. FLURP!

And when the world comes knocking on my door to thank me for FINALLY changing the world in the right way after all those other posts and videos and viral links didn’t do the job, I’ll be modest and say, “I just knew something had to be done.”

It was the least I could do.

You’re welcome, world. You’re welcome.

#Twitterpated

June 4, 2013November 4, 2014 Joseph Lyttleton

I’m on Twitter. I don’t post with it all that much and I honestly don’t have the knowledge or the inclination to build a larger Twitter presence. It’s a kind of social networking proficiency I’ll never grasp, and that’s okay because for me, Twitter is more about what other people are saying, not what I can say. I’m a little too wordy to ever effectively utilize the medium.

I was one of the countless people who absolutely shit on the idea when I first heard about it. A kind of Facebook Status Update minus all the other features and with a limit of 140 characters? Who would use that, and more importantly, why? It seemed designed for the kind of banal, self-centered, grammar-challenged postings that are the bread and butter of teenagers. Why would anyone want teenagers to have even more ways of expressing their pointless ‘opinions.’

Well, it turns out my kneejerk reaction was ill-informed and hasty. Twitter is full of teenage idiocy (and adult idiocy), certainly, but there is so much more to it than that. From interesting articles to hilarious one-liners and thoughtful conversations, Twitter is actually an impressive and useful amalgamation of all the best things on the internet (it’s also a collective for the worst things, because Twitter is essentially the Cliff Notes of the World Wide Web).

Today alone, my feed has been filled with a couple related but separate conversations that I found endlessly interesting. One was a debate that Michael Ian Black has spurred, anew, about ‘Rape Jokes’ and whether they are ever permissible (a topic I covered during the recent Daniel Tosh kerfuffle). This seems to be one of Twitter (and the internet’s) favorite topics of debate, and while it so often breaks down into histrionics, MIB was making some wonderfully un-hysterical points.

The other was a conflict between Patton Oswalt and Aaron Belz (a man I’ve never heard of until today) because of the latter’s apparent defense of Sammy Rhodes, who Oswalt accused of joke thievery. Rhodes has since taken the particular tweet down, so I don’t actually know which joke it was, but I spent a good amount of time going down the rabbit hole trying to find out. This basically came down to whether or not you were a fan of each respective joke teller, but Oswalt is a bigger name and a more talented debater, so the fight felt pretty one-sided (plus, joke stealing is never okay: If I see something funny, I retweet it directly).

As both topics are hugely contentious subjects among stand up comedians, I read each one of them with quite a bit of fascination (if not at least a little bit of schadenfreude). No, neither topic was going to be settled, but unlike blog posts or comment sections, a Twitter debate has immediacy to it. It’s as close as the internet gets to a coffeeshop debate. Granted, Twitter isn’t the best medium for finely nuanced discussion, but the character restriction does require that participants whittle down their arguments to their most cogent and relevant points (ideally).

I follow plenty of provocative writers and thinkers, including Ezra Klein, Cory Doctorow, Neil deGrasse Tyson and Anonymous to name a few, but comedians and humorists are clearly the most adept to and well-suited for the medium. This isn’t just because Twitter is a natural place for one-liners. As Shakespeare once wrote (or didn’t because SHAKESPEARE IS A LIE), “Brevity is the soul of wit.” Intelligent, funny people tend to know how to get the most humor out of concise thoughts, because nothing kills a joke like an endless, meandering build.*

Even a year ago, I would have said I could give or take my Twitter account. I only created it because I felt like I should have one. I was basically peer pressured into it. But, recently I’ve found that Twitter can be a limitless stream of humorous, insightful and/or challenging thoughts. It’s better than Facebook or Stumbleupon for presenting me with links of interest, not because it’s more refined in its targeting (its a whole lot less refined) but because the sheer number of posts is so massive. And unlike Facebook, it doesn’t attempt to weed out posts based on what it thinks I’ll be interested in, it just gives me everything.

Now, that can be overwhelming from time to time. Sometimes looking at Twitter is like having dozens of magazines and newspapers dropped in my lap. While I’ll never have the time or focus to read every single news item that looks interesting, it’s nice knowing that that repository is there when I want it.

And of course, the power of Twitter’s omnipresence can be both marvelous (See: Political uprisings around the world) and dangerous (See: The Boston Bomber Manhunt), but that’s true of any tool. And that’s just it, Twitter is a tool, neither inherently good or bad. Twitter is a lesson for everyone who claims that technology is ruining society: It’s not about the technology, it’s about who has access to it.

Consider me converted. Humanity created something that seemed solely designed for the frivolous and managed to elevate it to the level of profound discourse. And pictures of food.

Plus, when I just need a good laugh, my Twitter cup overflowth:

Um, follow me?

#

*Actually, long jokes are usually my favorite because they require so much of the listener, but you have to be an especially talented storyteller to pull them off.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Not Quite Young Man

May 16, 2013July 2, 2022 Joseph Lyttleton

I have been doing this for eight years now, as of June 1st, 2005.

What shape do we expect the decades of our life to take? In my twenties, I lived in 10 different cities, became the first member of my family to graduate from college, marched through a few serious relationships, abandoned the religion of my youth and completed writing 3 (of 4) novels.

But so much is left undone.

If my twenties were a movie (or, better yet, a season of a TV show), it would definitely be ending on a cliffhanger: 10 Cities / 10 Years is incomplete, my ongoing real world education progresses, I continue a Ted Mosby-esque search for a lasting relationship, and my goal to merge my Humanist worldview with my literary aspirations has yet to produce a book deal.

That feeling of incompleteness is what motivates most us to keep going. For me, the thought that someone else might take up the mantle of 10 Cities / 10 Years if I failed to complete the journey has kept me on the path, both in the project and in life. That state of noncompletion, though, can feel like a weakness, or even, on the worst days, abject failure.

After all, I’m about to start a new decade of my life and the list of my accomplishments is relatively short.

Young Success

I can’t imagine being a Mark Zuckerberg, who created Facebook at 19 and turned it into a billion dollar business by the time he was 23, or a Swift/Beiber-type musician who will always be best known for the songs they did at a young age, no matter what they do with their aging career. Sure, some of these teenie-bopper artists transition into adulthood with their careers intact, but for every JT or MJ, there’s a dozen Britney Spears and whoever else was in N*Sync.

That’s not to say that any of those people can’t or won’t do important things later in their life, only that their names will always be associated with something they accomplished when they couldn’t even legally drink alcohol. Now, most artists, inventors and creators in any medium would give their entire careers to have one success that brought them world-wide recognition (if not renown), so there’s no reason to pity the Zuckerberg/Beiber/Swift-s of the world (that, and they’re really, really, really rich).

The truth is, most artists are burdened by this, no matter how successful they are in their careers. Due to our limited cultural attention span, for a large percentage of the population Radiohead will always be the band who wrote “Creep,” Michael J. Fox eternally remains Marty McFly and F. Scott Fitzgerald is unjustly known exclusively as the writer of The Great Gatsby. Each of their respective fans will love them for much more than that, but in the shorthand of our collective consciousness, an artist can only be known for one thing. Some artists embrace their legacy, others spurn it.

My Success?

It will be my great fortune in life if I can achieve some sort of national (dare I wish, global) recognition for this extended literary project. I’ve gone all in on this whole ‘man of letters’ thing, so I either make a career of it or I’ll be signing autographs down in front of the 7-11 dumpster.

It’s perhaps unbecoming to publicly hypothesize about future success that hasn’t been achieved, but don’t fool yourself: Every artist you know spends a good portion of their time imagining what life will be like if (when) the world finally acknowledges their talents. Even those guys who sneer at pop artists and talk about how they will never compromise their art for financial success are dreaming of grandeur because either a) they’re full of shit or b) they have delusions that the world will magically transform and suddenly start rewarding integrity. No one works to create anything just so it can go unappreciated or unseen.

If 10 Cities / 10 Years grows into a book and launches my career, it’s likely nothing I create will ever break out from underneath its shadow. Knowing my personality, I can imagine that will frustrate me in my latter years, when I’m sure to be doing the best work of my life. But if that’s the price I pay to be able to pursue my ambitions as a career, so be it.

Whatever comes of 10 Cities, though, I have no intention of ending there. I have dozens of novels in me, as well as ideas for movies, TV shows, plays, and countless other art forms that I will never not aspire to master. Despite the epochal shifts through my twenties, those ambitions haven’t changed one iota. I might have stopped believing in heaven, but that doesn’t mean I stopped believing in the everlasting life of the artist.

Maybe it’s nothing but pretension, a delusion that was endearing in a twenty-year-old but is pathetic in a thirty-year-old. But the greatest art in the world was created by men and women with just such delusions.

So we beat on… oh, you know the rest.