kung fu grippe

Every Person on the Planet

It’s almost 2010 and you’re telling me that you aren’t going to treat every person on the planet like a potential customer?

It is, indeed, almost 2010, and I am, indeed, absolutely telling you that. At length.

I treat all the actual humans I meet in my life like, as you say, a person.

As stipulated, though, avatars are not, in that sense, people. They can’t be. No more than yearbooks are high schools or yellow pages are local businesses. I can’t pretend to know anyone based on a compressed computer graphic and a funny internet name. That is, prima facie, asinine.

And, for myself, this oddly persnickety metric of mine also means never devolving into the kind of emotionally ductile merchant-child who will feign a non-existent relationship in order to vend his goods. Actually? That’s pretty much exactly what I never want to be.

If you’re interested, Steve — and you do appear to be interested — my book is not about selling things to “every person on the planet,” and it’s absolutely not about being universally liked.

It’s about learning, at pains, to be honest.

With yourself. With your friends and co-workers. And even with alllllllll those six billion planet-dwellers you’ll never actually meet — people who have zero way to even know whether you’re being honest.

Yep. “Every person on the planet” gets that honesty. Even (or especially) when they’re just avatars. That’s the deal.

And, then? If you’re lucky, you surround yourself with the kind of actual face- and heart- and hand-possessing people who appreciate that honesty. If you’re lucky.

I’ve been lucky. I’ve been really, really lucky.

Nope. I don’t want people to be into what I do, say, think, or believe because I pretended to know them on a computer network; there’s plenty of books and sites to overserve those folks already. As long as the gold stars and the autofollows and the adds keep coming, they’ll stay happy as pigs in slop. And, why not?

Me? I’m way more interested in connecting with the people who’ve realized how hollow and unrewarding that kind of wholesale nonsense really is — how malignant it can be to shore up one piece of made-up life with another piece of made-up life. People who’ve learned the hard way what a drag and a burden it is to sweat your “personal brand” in the pursuit of a better-fitting mask.

Not “customers.” And certainly not “every person on the planet.” Just anyone who gets it. And, anyone who can still see the sickening slick of crappy-ass, weakkneed decisionmaking that has dutifully ferried them from bullshit job to bullshit relationship to bullshit brand maintenance to bullshit makebelieve friendships.

Bring me the people who want it to stop now and who are ready to shatter the crockery to make it happen.

Them, I like. SO much.

As for Gary? I love Gary. But I’m not Gary. Gary is Gary. I am me.

You, my friend, are you.

I’ll confess that I’m disappointed that you (and a handful of other folks I enjoy following) are so upset about what I wrote. I can’t change that, but, still, I do not like making people unhappy.

That said, I absolutely stand by every syllable of everything I’ve said. Jesus Christ, if I had extra legs, I’d start a motherfucking chorus line about it.

But. Thing is, I really want to get back to posting shitty new wave videos and pretentious poems that no one but me and Dickerson like, so I need to really wrap this up in toto.

Thus. Thanks.

But, with respect: I think we’ve both just proven the point I was (apparently unsuccessfully) trying to make during Acts I and II:

I said something.
You disagreed.
I’m fine with that.
I’m pretty sure you’re not.
I’ve tried to respond like a gentleman.
I truly hope you’re okay with that.
I cannot change it if you’re not.
Happily, I now know you as more than a compressed computer graphic and a funny internet name, and that is good.
I am now going to string Christmas lights and stop arguing with people on the internet.
I hope everyone is okay with that.
Again. I cannot change it if you’re not.
Again, I’m fine with that.