Fatigue Fatigue

“It’s all so tiresome.”

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 I don’t know if it’s just my feed or what but it seems that Facebook is doing everything it can to have me burning with a genocidal hatred of African Americans, Latin American invaders, and verbally and physically abusive White women, a.k.a., “Karens.” True, Gab does allow for the n-word, the use of which would have one banned from Facebook, but Facebook, aside from the nostalgia pieces and tornado porn, features so many videos of these ethnographies behaving badly that one is inclined to make right wing death squads a thing again.

It’s a nice mix for a demoralization op, which most everything in the media, even social media, is. You see these Current Year videos of our obvious social decline against the 750-word essays describing the beauty and poise of a single mini-skirted actress who played on one episode of the original 1960s Star Trek. (These aren’t even Star Trek pages, all of which I’ve unfollowed. Yet I still get Star Trek nostalgia by the boatload. That algorithm won’t let go.) I’ll see similarly wordy, albeit well-written essays on 20th century films and their casts. You’re reminded that there was a world in which even a mid-tier serial guest-star actress on old TV shows had a natural beauty that today’s leading “stars” could never achieve. You’re reminded that our popular culture died with Y2k. And, looking at the rioters waving foreign flags as they ride motorcycles around burning cars in Los Angeles, that this is the world you live in now. Ugly. Foreign.

There is a generation in their mid-thirties to forties now who remember gathering at the Pizza Hut after a ball game or church outing. You see their memes about wandering the aisles at Blockbuster Video with their parents on a Friday or Saturday night. Or when going to hang out at the mall was fun…I take some encouragement in knowing it’s not just elderly old coots like me who mourn the world that once was. As one of my main themes goes, everything in the Good Old Days led up to the bad days now. But at least going to the mall was fun. Pizza Hut had it all, from the aesthetic to the game machines to the food. Our once-Great Cities had yet to totally sink into garbage-ridden Third World hellholes with mentally ill people defecating on the sidewalks.

Following a trend that began last year, homosexual “pride” month is all but canceled among the corporations which used to celebrate it. The most I’ve seen about are from people who complain about how much it’s in our faces, when it’s being clearly downplayed this year, even more so than last year. I read every now and then that, “Companies have learned the lesson of Bud Light!” when the truth of the matter is that Bug Light didn’t suffer all that much or for that long for having a transvestite promoting it a few years back. Bud Light—and the transvestite—are still around, if not promoting one another. That said, the irritation with six-colored rainbows everywhere is a real thing, and it’s good to see “pride month” dialed back. Sexual deviancy is nothing to be proud of, and we should be proud of our capacity to recognize and proclaim that fact.

In the glow of that little victory, let us review: we’ve got black fatigue, brown fatigue, homosexual/transvestite fatigue…what else?

For my part, I’m fatigued with being fatigued. I need social media to promote community events as part of my side gig but I really, really need to limit my time on it. It’s an ancient lament by now, I know. The easiest way to beat a demoralization psy-op is to decline participation.

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