Sunday Morning, So Far - Anger, Indiana Voters, Social Media, Another Submission

 I closed out last night by sending out a new story, "Thomas Kemp Went Missing", and this came back immediately:

This is just a quick email to let you know we have received your submission and look forward to reading it. 

In the meantime, we invite you to keep up with all news related to SPOOKY Magazine (along with lots of other vintage horror goodness), by joining the cozy horror conversation in our Facebook group. That way you'll be among the first to know as new things develop. We also invite you to check out one (or both) of our previous issues, if you haven't already. Each one makes for a darn good read, if we do say so ourselves (and we do)!

Thanks for your interest in SPOOKY, and for sharing your fiction with us.

Have a wonderful day!

Josh Strnad and Jose Cruz
Editors, SPOOKY Magazine

Word came in that my ride to church was sick. Well, I was last week. 

I read Season of the Swamp by Yuri Herrera review – the birth of a revolutionary (The Guardian). Misfires can be more interesting than a sure thing?

I started watching Filth on Netflix, then realized I had seen it. I am not sure when, or how. My memory slippage worries me. I passed on Orson Welles because that needs to have my full attention. Instead, I have The Good Cop running in one tab. It is not distracting. So far, its most interesting thing is casting Tony Danza as a corrupt cop - his face is more Stallone, and his character is more Ray Liotta.

I am going through my email.

I have been holding onto Hoosier voter turnout down, but better than before. First, around 100,000 fewer voters showed up this year. Second, a sizeable minority remains who do not vote. If either group had voted, there might have been a different election. I wonder how many of these non-voters think as some of the people I work with think - this is a Republican state, their votes do not count.

The Groke has a new issue coming out.

I realized this morning that the world has become more angry as I have become less angry. Is it the Zoloft? Is it weeding the stress out of my life? Is it what I learned from the Orthodox Church? There were things I knew, but I discarded or ignored or forgot. I re-read Hume's Essays before prison, and in prison, I re-read Albert Camus and Henry David Thoreau. I also started reading the Orthodox Fathers. This was long before the Zoloft. It was myself who decided I needed to re-examine my life and figure out how to change my self-destructive ways. One thing, I had to figure out was why I was angry, then I had to stop turning my anger inward.

Then I came upon this in my email, which just reignited the whole thing about anger: Posting Less by Anne Helen Petersen.

The vitriol wasn’t really about Louks or her thesis. On X, it’s about finding something — someone — to be mad at, and then directing the firehose of social media in that direction. Her post made her visible; once visible, she became a target. As Ryan Broderick put it in his newsletter, “it’s not really worth analyzing why X users are so angry over something this obscure — it’s likely because there are just not as many normal people to rage at these days — but it is important to use this as an example of why X simply cannot be used as a regular social platform anymore.”

***

Everyone, everywhere, was mad; it was too easy to become the accidental target of that anger. And so my posting muscles atrophied. Here’s where I acknowledge that my ability to refuse avenues of self-promotion is the result of my past manipulation of them — and, just to be clear, I’m not telling anyone to leave a platform they feel is serving them.

But I also think there’s something larger going on, particularly with those of us who’ve been posting for most of our adult lives: on Tumblr, on Facebook, on Twitter, on Snapchat, on Instagram. We’re exhausted with the labor of self-documentation — especially when it seems that our posts aren’t even surfacing for our close friends. But we’re also tired of being perceived.

I see the exhaustion in my non-media friends, whose early Facebook and Instagram posting habits have faded into a single seasonal shot of their kids — if that. I see it in various influencers and creators quitting the business entirely. I see it from writers here on Substack, posting on Notes about how much they hate Notes because all they really want from this platform is the ability to write for an audience that wants to read their work, not react to their posts. 

I had no real use for Twitter beyond marketing. Never did I take the full dive Ms. Petersen describes. All the same, I spent too much time on Yahoo Chat and I recognize the same gravitational pull she describes for Twitter and Instagram. 

She also makes several points that make me think the days of social media are numbered. It is too toxic for real sociability, for building a community.

I am hungry without caffeine or nicotine, so I am taking a break.

By the way, The Good Cop is not amusing, but I have only gone through 1.5 episodes.

sch