As an old man dies he experiences an implosion of his psyche. The millions of memories become inaccessible as dementia sets in. What bubbles to the surface are unresolved traumas and core memories. New information can’t get in. Growth stops. It’s now impossible to be anything but what you are.

And bigotry is the right word here. It’s hard to parse because it’s not just bigotry against one group, it’s misanthropy, so it’s bigotry against multiple groups but for the same reasons; they are not you.

I imagine there is a similar kind of ignorance among SF Valley bot people. They can only speculate on what the lower class thinks, assume a city that big and diverse is a powder keg. But living in NYC was a reminder that people are generally good and so is multiculturalism.

I didn’t realize how much of a gift it was to grow up in NYC until I left. You can really see the curse of lack of diversity in those who grew up in the Midwest or the South. NYC is cosmopolitan and remarkably cohesive for such a populated place. Los Angeles was conversely much more segregated.

I get really irritated when people talk about meritocracy. In this country, if you are famous, it’s because you are perfectly mediocre, a useful idiot, or safe. True artistry is so rare and seems to slip through accidentally. All the geniuses are retired or dead.

I had to give him my health insurance to afford coverage for my wife and daughter. I have to be careful out there because I am our only source of income. Good health is my only option. Somewhere out there a millionaire just wasted the equivalent of my yearly salary on something frivolous.

…or hear on a pipecast

Who I am on paper comes with a certain weight and pretense. If I don’t show up and say certain things to certain people, those things might not get said, heard or internalized, and the world gets noticeably worse for it. The king may kill the messenger, but the message cannot be unsent.

And yes I’m talking to you because that’s part of the narcissist’s pattern to return to the scene over and over again until you figure out the crime and find the culprit (it’s you with the candlestick in the conservatory)

And Joe even used to follow me on Twitter. Before I nuked my account, I soft-blocked him to force him to unfollow me because I had lost so much respect for him. Blocking me is not the flex you think it is.

What’s most wild, is this latest celebrity isn’t even the most famous GenX guy I have this dynamic with. I have no doubt Joe Rogan remembers the time I was invited to have a meal with him but I spent the meal with my back to him because he was rude to me. If you can’t do basic human decency, gfy.

I’ve been the scapeGOAT so often it’s just funny when it happens now. The unprompted block is just evidence that I got under the skin. I don’t enjoy this process it’s compulsive and tied to an autistic-level frustration with injustice. Also, wound recognize wound.

Of course there is the small window of authentic “I’m blocking you because I think I respect you and am frustrated that you are unhappy with me”, which goes both ways.

Part of this concept of “everyone is just a person online now” should inform BOTH sides of the parasocial relationship. The person who sees the people he interacts with as “fanatics” will always pre-diagnose them with some amount of madness.

When an impressionist doesn’t understand their subject well enough to perform a faithful parody, the best they can offer is a pastiche of (bad faith) assumptions.

Fame and wealth creates a gulf between the celebrity and the everyday life of the average person. When the role of that celebrity is to opine on people’s hearts and minds, the gulf makes the other side increasingly illegible.

Definitely feels like somewhere between 1893-1920 right now. open.substack.com/pub/mallonkh...