Get off my grass you damned kids

I thought cancel culture meant trying to get people demonetized and deplatformed, which I am fine with, tbh, but this article has me confused:

A few weeks ago, Neelam, a high school senior, was sitting in class at her Catholic school in Chicago. After her teacher left the room, a classmate began playing “Bump N’ Grind,” an R. Kelly song.

Neelam, 17, had recently watched the documentary series “Surviving R. Kelly” with her mother. She said it had been “emotional to take in as a black woman.”

Neelam asked the boy and his cluster of friends to stop playing the track, but he shrugged off the request. “‘It’s just a song,’” she said he replied. “‘We understand he’s in jail and known for being a pedophile, but I still like his music.’”

She was appalled. They were in a class about social justice. They had spent the afternoon talking about Catholicism, the common good and morality. The song continued to play.

That classmate, who is white, had done things in the past that Neelam described as problematic, like casually using racist slurs — not name-calling — among friends. After class, she decided he was “canceled,” at least to her.

Her decision didn’t stay private; she told a friend that week that she had canceled him. She told her mother too. She said that this meant she would avoid speaking or engaging with him in the future, that she didn’t care to hear what he had to say, because he wouldn’t change his mind and was beyond reason.

“When it comes to cancel culture, it’s a way to take away someone’s power and call out the individual for being problematic in a situation,” Neelam said. “I don’t think it’s being sensitive. I think it’s just having a sense of being observant and aware of what’s going on around you.”

Isn’t this just ignoring someone who is a total dick and not subjecting yourself to deal with their bullshit? How is this any different from the number of people I have just written out of my life because they are useless trash, or any different from me avoiding NASCAR races like the plague?

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This twitter thread by Catherynne Valente gets it pretty much right:

Last night, Bill Maher went on a rant about comic books & those who love them & the generation (it rhymes with Schmelennials!) that uses words like #adulting & doesn’t want to give up the things they loved as kids or grow up

Well my name is Miss Valente & I got something to say

First of all, Mister Bill Maher, I’m not sure how smugly bloviating, smoking pot, and screwing people way too young for you is any more mature than reading comic books but okay buddy. Secondly, I’m not even going to get into the literary merit of comic books. Some are great art. Some are ridiculous trash. Kind of like every other genre & medium out there. It’s not worth discussing as it’s obvious on the face of it that adding pictures does not subtract value. I want to say this.

Do you know why millennials “refuse to grow up”?

Because we finally figured out that the whole idea is bullshit designed to suppress human joy enough to keep them grinding for an uncaring company for 50 years in unhappy marriages until death is a mercy. The reason my generation still plays in ball pits & reads comic books & plays dress up is that contemporary society has made most of the good parts of adult life financially unreachable: home, family, travel, even theater is $500 a ticket

All that’s left is the crushing despair! In the vacuum left by the loss of reachable life goals, we 80s kids kind of figured: fuck it.

Why the hell should we give up what is good & joyful & rich of the art & accoutrements of childhood in exchange for a yawning grey void? How was that ever considered a fair deal? What Maher and his peers cannot understand is that even their generation returned to the beautiful well of childhood—to share it with their own children.

The problem is, many in my generation cannot afford to have kids, or must wait until very late. You are not superior because you collect items from the Sharper Image catalogue rather than Comic Con. You have just allowed what others think of you to dictate a narrow range of joy you are allowed to experience.

Unless you really love $5000 massage chairs I guess. Adulthood has always been a trick played on the whole of humanity. Convincing us to give up magic & beauty & fun for their own sake in exchange for our labor & loyalty to whatever boss is going around

Only recently has society become decentralized enough to re-examine the terms

When complaining that millennials refuse to grow up, it might behoove the media to stop referring to 35 year olds as though they’re hapless children who don’t know what’s good for them. Companies will give us nothing but a company store. Governments sell out to each other and burn the planet. Markets offer no safety. There is almost nothing left of our parents’ world.

So read a fucking comic book if you want to, life is so heartbreakingly brief. Maybe, just maybe, consider the idea that the millennials got this one right.

It was always a bad deal that only benefitted the masters.

You get one life on this rock. Why in the hell would you give up something you love just because you got old enough to really appreciate it? Give us back the social contract, make the hallmarks of adulthood remotely reachable for us, and maybe we’ll consider putting down the comics.

Probably not, but we’ll have a house to read them in.

Boomers like Maher who reflexively dunk on the young, who have been fucked out of many of the social benefits that boomers take for granted, deserve this and more.

Doesn’t Mean That Much to Me to Mean That Much to YouPost + Comments (261)

Defying all odds, Lily and I both made it to 2019, for which I am very grateful. I actually went to bed at 9pm, because I am super cool, and Devon woke me up for the stroke of midnight. I kissed my dog, hugged my sister, posted on the blog, and feel like all my duties have been fulfilled and I can go back to bed.

Happy 2019.

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