Hello everybody. I made this blog because I love sharing photos, art and music online - A LOT - but I'm really sick of the modern internet. Every time I go on social media I'm made frighteningly aware of how much it wants to harness my attention, pull me in its clutches, and never let me leave. I might sound melodramatic but that's exactly how I feel. I walk around and see all these people with 9hr a day screentimes staring at their phones and scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. I think about all we could be doing, how much we'd benefit socially and emotionally and intellectually, if this would all just go away.
I can't tell if this is stupid or not, but I keep thinking about Ian Mackaye and Minor Threat and Straight Edge. About how Mackaye renounced drugs and alcohol because by destroying your body and your mind in this way, you are willingly giving yourself up to being controlled. I'm not straight edge, like, I'm a college student. What am I supposed to do, not drink beer? But social media destroys our bodies in our minds in the same way. We're engaging in this constant feed of slop and I'm pretty sure the only way to free ourselves to quit it all, cold turkey. But I don't know anybody who's about to do that, including myself (though I do try).
Dykes to Watch Out For was a lesbian-political-satirical-soap opera comic strip by Alison Bechdel that ran from the 80s to the early 2000s. As a dyke to watch out for, I've obviously read all of it. The (debatably) main protagonist, Mo, who I'm pretty sure is a sort of self-insert character for Bechdel to project all her anxieties and insecurities, is constantly freaking out about the insanities of modern politics. She's also really, really, really, really, really annoying. At one point, and I don't know if this is a reference to something else or not, so I'm sorry if this outs me as the troglodyte I am; Mo says something like:
"Mindless entertainment is the handmaiden of fascism!"
I read this, and I thought, "Mo is literally me."
DTWOF characters age realistically throughout the comic strip, while reacting to the constantly shifting political climate. That's one thing I love about it. Throughout the 20-year strip, characters endure divorce, cancer, death, quitting vegetarianism, the lesbian radical feminist bookstore shutting down at the hands of Bunns & Noodle, bisexual awakenings, transitioning, and affairs - lots and lots of affairs. Everyone's cheating on each other all the time. It's crazy.
If DTWOF existed today, Mo would probably be in her 60s. More likely, I imagine her dying of an anxiety-induced heart attack. In the best case scenario, Mo and Sydney move out to the suburbs, with not too many cats, maybe a small, eye-boogered dog to walk around their progressive neighborhood, and Mo gets really into Tai-Chi to save herself, and the only thing they watch are British murder mysteries on PBS. And they're rich because of Sydney's super successful graphic autobiography-turned-Broadway musical, so they don't have to work or anything.
Either that, or Mo is a hermit, cowered in her bed in the dark, awaiting the inevitable doomsday when the mindless youth fed a countless stream of fascistic brainrot overtake the universe as "I'm just a girl" plays on 2x speed on repeat in the background.
