#the idea that tumblr would change your sense of humor is false at least for me I believe.

[neverendingford]

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[crystalkleure]

It's the middle of the night and I've been thinking a lot about laughter. I have Many Somewhat-Disjointed Thoughts and Many Speculations and I wish I had a psychology degree, or someone with a psychology degree to bounce my Thoughts And Ideas off of, but I don't so I'm just going to kind of scrawl words into the void here on Tumblr dot com real quick.

Nobody can seem to agree on Exactly What Laughter Is And Why It Exists. Sometimes people laugh because something is true, and sometimes people laugh because it is not. And sometimes people laugh because something just doesn't make any fucking sense. What Is Funny seems arbitrary and contradictory and confusing and there are a million different Theories Of Humor that try to explain it [usually badly].

On the Science Side of the subject, laughing releases Be Happy And Relax chemicals in your brain, and also in the brains of others around you bc laughter is socially contagious like yawning. Other people will feel the urge to start chuckling if someone around them is. Laughter creates and shares endorphins. It can also even lessen physical pain.

One theory of Why We Find Things Funny goes like this: Something bonks someone on the head. For a moment, everyone else is worried about that guy, wondering if he's hurt, but then it becomes apparent he is fine. And THEN everyone laughs it off. It's funny because no one actually got hurt! Or, at least, not hurt in any sort of serious way -- just a minor bruise or scrape. They're not maimed or dead. So it's theorized that one function of laughter is to disengage our Alarm Mode once it becomes apparent that no actual threat is present, and it turns out there's no need for everyone to stay so worked up and thus they ought to calm down and get rid of the stress. Laughter is the signal to do that.

So, one reason something might be funny is because it's clear that no one is getting seriously hurt. The potentially-harmful situation is just silly, or even outrageous/unrealistic...and safe. There's an initial moment of Wondering "is this okay?" that is very quickly quelled by something affirming that yes, the situation is quite okay, and that is what makes the situation humorous. That’s the Recipe For Funny.

So, laughter is meant to soothe stress.

I suspect that "laughing at something because it's true" actually also has the same root cause as "laughing at something because it turned out to be a false alarm". Have you ever chuckled bitterly at something, thinking "Yep, that's a thing and it sure does suck lol"? Maybe a meme about some health problem you've suffered from?

If we look at laughter through the lens of catharsis, under the assumption that the point of laughing is to soothe, I think it actually makes sense for bitter truths to be sardonically humorous. I'd imagine it can be very cathartic to hear someone else convey "Yep, this is a thing that sucks!" when you've had experience with that sucky thing, because that means that someone understands. They're affirming your experiences as being real and shitty. That would elicit a warm smile of Vindication And Validation, and the affirmation being delivered in the form of a silly meme or something would elicit a laugh, for double the Cathartic Soothing Power.

Gallows-type humor might not always work for some people though, if they're being too affected by the shitty thing to be able to laugh it off. If the shitty thing is so painful that just thinking about it is very upsetting, then trying to joke about it might actually just make the hurt worse. Wound's too fresh.

Therefore, senses of humor are very individualistic, and also situational, explaining why different people might have very different reactions to a single joke, and those same people might even have very different reactions to it at different times. They could be 1. indifferent, because they don't Get the situation being joked about enough to understand why it might be harmful, so there's no moment of suspense before the laugh-inducing "it's fine!" punchline [or, alternatively, they don’t understand how the “it’s fine!” punchline is actually supposed to quell the initial suspense], or 2. angry, because they're currently so negatively affected by the situation being joked about that the "it's fine!" is a lie to them, because it's not fine and it really does hurt so it's not funny, or 3. amused, because the joke has successfully validated/soothed them! Or their reaction could change from 1 to 2, or 1 to 3, or 2 to 3 over time.

TL;DR: The cause of laughter appears to be the thought process "Something is wrong/dangerous and thus stressful, but now it's correct/safe so the stress is unwarranted and can be released!", with laughter itself then being the social signal that says "Everything's fine now, everyone relax!"

Laughter actually soothing low-level physical pain also lines up perfectly with all of this; that's ideally complementary to soothing stress. Stress itself can actually amplify or even outright cause physical symptoms. Stress causes pain, and pain causes stress. Laughter wants to help you to stop hurting so you can return to business as normal.

[inkanspider]

The situation about rev on AO3

So, I think some of you guys who follow the oumota tag have at some point heard or seen something of a person named Rev. Rev is an author and oumota fan, and one of my closest friends. A few days ago, a person on Twitter posted a really nasty tweet about them. And today, I saw a post here on Tumblr on how another person replied to Rev’s original post about this entire thing.

I’m hopefully not going to make an entire essay about this thing, but there are a lot of things these two are totally lying about. Rev was kind enough to not mention the Twitter user by name, but I can’t promise that I will be just as kind, because this person is horrible and someone I hope you never have to meet.

Just like Rev, I too joined a server about oumota a number of months ago, a while before Christmas last year. I don’t remember if I joined before Rev, but I remember I adored their writing and I loved being in this server. The people liked my stuff and soon I had people who wanted to talk to me. Around and right after Christmas, I had a group of friends I talked to almost daily. And Rev was one of them, even if our timezones made stuff difficult XD

But then one day, I started to notice that the entire atmosphere in the server changed. People started to break some of the rules daily, including two of the mods (the Twitter-user and the other peron here on Tumblr). One rule was to not post character hate, which was very logical and good. But soon enough, people started to post lots of hate posts about Kiyo, saying all kinds of horrible stuff. One of my friends is a big Kiyo-fan, and she was really bothered by this. Another thing I personally together with Rev was put down for was the heterophobia (and yes Auz, it is a really thing and you guys need to quit with your bullshit about it). It was apparently okay to personally ship F/M, but not post anything about it. But yuri and yaoi ships was 100% okay for some reason (sounds like the shit homophobes say: it’s okay to ge gay, as long as you don’t show it)... One of these things was that accoring to them, Ouma and Kaito are 100% gay. But nowhere in the game is that stated. Yes, it’s IMPLIED that Ouma might like guys, but we don’t know for sure. Which is why some people ship him with females, same with Kaito.

The last straw about this was when I was personally attacked for liking Junko. I and another friend mentioned in one convo how we liked Junko. I was personally told by THE NEW SERVER OWNER, that he was going to squeeze me to death just like he would to Junko. Auz and company said it was supposed to be a joke, but the server owner never apologized or said anything himself to clarify this. I was never close to him, so I had no idea what kind of humor he has, and he should have known it. My friend was also semi-attacked for defending me, which was what made us thinking about leaving the server entirely.

The reason these people are attacking Rev is purely because they don’t like them. Rev was different from them, liked different things than them. Rev has NEVER done anything to harm anyone, and you guys who actually read their works or even properly talked to them can see that for yourself. Yes, it’s one thing to write something and another to like it outside of the internet. But Rev is nothing but a supporting and caring person. Auz and the Twitter-user claim that Rev is both homophobic and transphobic, but that’s the total opposite of what Rev are.

And about how we were going to spam with art of “triggering” stuff (aka stuff they didn’t like, they are easily triggered), that is without any context, which is something they apparently didn’t care about when they banned us. So for the rest of you guys, I’ll tell you:

We who were banned, before it happened, had done a server just for us to vent and have fun like we couldn’t do in the oumota server. We talked about how we all wanted to leave the server, but we also joked about how we should make a raid as we leave. Keyword here is JOKED. You got words of this, but instead of talking to us you instead banned us without any warning. You had no context for this, which gave you false signals. You banned us on false grounds!

So for you guys who might be reading this, please listen to me: these people are lying about Rev. They somehow also claim that genderbends are somehow transphobic, which I have really hard imagening. Like, genderbends is just that they are opposite of their canon gender, while trans is that they don’t identify with the body they are born in. If you really are grossed about genderbends, simply ignore it. People don’t like the same thing, and you are able to just scroll past stuff you don’t like or agree with.

And listen here Auz (yes I’m calling you out now): it’s totally okay that you don’t like what we like and post. But don’t you DARE threaten Rev or any of us others. We have been nice enough to ignore you guys for the last few months. And what do you guys do? You lie and call Rev something they are not. Simply for drama, which was also supposed to not be okay in your server according to your own rules (but it looks like they never mattered anyway). You banned us yeah, but you could have at least been kind enough to let us be. Returning the favor, what’s that? And for that part about Rev being homophobic:

I DARE YOU TO DM ME AND GIVE ME PROPER EVIDENCE ON HOW REV WAS HOMOPHOBIC. But I think you won’t... Because you probably don’t even care about the truth, but only what you believe in.

And if trans hc in the nsfw-channel wasn’t okay, then you should have banned others too, but one of your mods comes especially to mind. 

You are also supposed to be an adult too, yet you never acted like one. You didn’t stop and thought of what maybe made us act the way we did. You never stopped the server owner from harrassing me and my friends. And you never stopped him from from postign that discusting thing on Twitter. If anything, you made it worse... Hope you are happy with yourself, because I will never tell people to join you guys or even visit you. I hope people come to their senses and realize you guys are toxic and not worth being with.

Sorry for the ranting guys, but I couldn’t stand people lying about this. Rev is too important to me and my friends, and we can’t have people going around and lying freely like this...

[onlinelingo]

SOCIOLINGUISTICS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE: CHARACTERISTICS OF “INTERNET ENGLISH”- PART ONE: THE MEME

We would at first like to more closely observe the widespread phenomenon of the meme. The term was first coined by Richard Dawkins in his book “The Selfish Gene”:

 We need a name for the new replicator, a noun that conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation. 'Mimeme' comes from a suitable Greek root, but I want a monosyllable that sounds a bit like 'gene'. I hope my classicist friends will forgive me if I abbreviate mimeme to meme. If it is any consolation, it could alternatively be thought of as being related to 'memory', or to the French word même. It should be pronounced to rhyme with 'cream'. [DAWKINS, 1976]

 While it is highly doubtful that Dawkins intended for this term to become so popular, it is not by definition far from what the famous internet memes are. Nevertheless, it is possible that they are simply called memes due to the French word (not unlikely, given the “relatable” factor that goes into memes), and the above study has simply been connected to it due to its more academic roots.

One way or the other, one could without much effort conclude that a meme is a piece carrying cultural reference, be it old or new. It is oftentimes said that the internet meme is the Web Community’s “inside joke”. Once that thought is given consideration, the definition of a meme as an inside joke makes the most sense of all.

The understanding of memes requires understanding of context, or at least of the fact that this or that piece of culture has acquired this status. Given the internet’s fast-paced world, some memes fall into oblivion fairly quickly, while some remain strong in the internet’s subconscious. Because of that, it is fairly easier to point out which have had a long lasting effect, and are here to stay- at least online.  

Interestingly enough, the ephemerons nature of the internet meme has prompted the creation of several website dedicated to keeping track of them, be it widespread or extremely obscure.  

Website knowyourmeme.com relies on search engines, collocation examples and history of memes online. There, one can easily look for memes that have directly affected speech patterns of teenagers, both online and between one another. Here are some characteristics shared by most memes that rely on language, a category which includes incessant repetition of seemingly random phrases, words or symbols; interaction between two texts, and a slight change in definition of commonplace expressions.

1.

 FLEXIBILITY

 Having apparently come from a faux celebrity twitter account, the sentence “I came out to have a good time and I’m honestly feeling so attacked right now” soon exploded online- and, since then, it’s been adapted into numerous situations and different contexts. Here are some examples:

                                 Source: http://i3.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/785/428/2d3.jpg Visited in 14/03/2017.

Source: http://i1.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/785/423/466.jpg Visited in 14/03/2017

Source: http://i2.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/796/293/bb5.pngVisited in 14/03/2017

From looking at these images, one can conclude that this specific phrase has been separated from its original source and applied to numerous contexts familiar to the intended audience. The humor, then, is in the challenge of applying this phrase to any situation. It is, above all, an exercise of reference crossing and inter-textual thinking.

What one can see from examples A, B and C is the common use of elements from pop-culture, historical relevance, and contemporary matters. It is fairly easy to understand their referencing to, respectively, the Harry Potter series, the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and the demotion of Pluto’s status as a planet (which has, since then, been reestablished).

 2.

 META-LANGUAGE

In early 2016, a meme featuring everyday words carrying trademark symbols emerged online and instantly came into everyday use. The popularity of the meme seems to have arisen from the way it takes advantage of the ™ symbol to suggest a corporatization of the word to which it is added. Because it usually stands for a brand, adding ™ to the end of words or concepts gives it a sense of false authority, or, in some cases, of someone or something acting exactly how it is expected of them (stereotypically speaking); so much that it has become a concept to be patented and sold.

E.g.:

Source: http://life-goes-on25.tumblr.com/post/143350223380/alexthefuckingfeminist-bug-free-season-is-over Access on March 19th, 2017

Source: https://www.tumblr.com/blog/onlinelingo. Access on March 19th , 2017  

 From both these instances, one can visualize a pattern. In the first example, the trademark used after “Bug-free” accentuates its functional nature, as if winter- the season they are referring to- was brought to us as a courtesy of Bug-free™.

Now, on the second example, the uses of the trademark are stretched even further when a clear parallel is drawn between straight people and what the OP calls a particular brand of straight people who feel the need to advertise and promote their heterosexuality. It is also interesting to note the use of capitalization, which separates people who are straight from Straight People, the brand.

The third commenter seems to illustrate this difference with the use of “the” as a marker. By referring to a particular brand of white gay people as the White Gays, the user is talking about a group of gay people that has “whiteness” as its primary qualifier, and to which the subject is attached. “White people who are gay”, or “Gay people who are white”, on the other hand, are sentences whose build suggest an afterthought, therefore forming, as opposed to subjects, predicates.

What is interesting in this whole linguistic process is how much words can challenge and tear meaning apart in the online world. The addition of the trademark symbol is more than playful mockery; it is an open criticism of the empty status some words seem to have acquired. The fact that we need a marker to tell the empty brand from the serious meaning of a word must indicate something about our society- although, this is not something we should be getting into.

Ultimately, the point seems to be that ™ indicates irony at its fiercest form- the word has been through various states, from subtle and airy to icy, but it has finally come full circle and completed a 360. All in all, the word seems to be the same, and yet we know it just came straight from being ressublimated, lighter and not quite as meaningful as before.

This is why we have pointed out meta-language as one of the most frequent and, dare I say, essential characteristics of the word-based meme. Whoever uses this newfound resource of irony is actively exercising meta-language even if through one word, for this word is aware of itself and the context in which it’s situated, and the word itself is a parody of the meaning which it conveys. If intertextuality needs meta-language in order to work, meta-language needs only a self-aware text which allows for “intra”- textuality.

It’s been said that memes like proverbs become clichés after a while, but the point of a meme has always been to become a cliché. A successful meme is, effectively, one that is repeated, imitated- mostly, due to the logic consistently present in its absurdity.

While it does seem like a ridiculous thing to write, memes are transcendental in that which makes the meme completely aware of its absurd nature, so that mockingly we shelter it in language.

 3.

METAPHORICAL SWITCHING

 Metaphorical switching, according to Fishman, is a sudden shift in variety in the middle of a conversation. This can be in order to create emphatic irony, confusion, or simply emphasis. In late 2015, a meme on Tumblr took advantage of the humorous potential of this phenomenon- by creating the "me, an intellectual" meme (here’s a compilation our team has organized).

Not only does this meme aim to point out the dissonance between high and low prestige varieties, it also works, inadvertently, as a means of social criticism. In its most realized, the "me, an intellectual" meme mocks academic jargon and Oxford English by insinuating that elitism. Let us take a look at some examples now.

  I1

You: chill, bro

Me, an intellectual: please allow your core body temperature to decrease, my sibling.

 I2

You: What's new scooby doo

Me, an intellectual: what is currently occurring scoobert doobert

 I3

You: Burger King

Me, an intellectual: sandwich monarch

 In I1, we can observe the metaphorical switching of an informal phrase, "chill", meaning to "cool off" (temper-related). By switching to "decrease your core body temperature", OP is taking an idiom which does rely on some level on real life scientific facts (cool off=calm down), and resublimating it to the descriptive literalism of scientific terms, along with an exaggerated academic vocabulary. Observe how the "intellectual" speech is riddled with latin derived words. That is because for two centuries French was the only language allowed to be officially spoken in England, which led to other French- related varieties of already existing words. These varieties were descendant from Latin and were more associated with noblemen and higher classes, whereas the common people went on using the words derived from Old English (descendant from the Anglo-Saxon). This divide remains even nowadays, which explains why Latin sounding words are more academic and everyday vocabulary is still mostly originated from Anglo-Saxon. See, for instance, the similarities of the English word "hound" and the German word "Hund". More abstract concepts, however, like "example", derive from the French "Exemple". In German, this word is completely different (one would say "Zum Beispiel").

In I2, the dissonance between the first and second sentences relies on a Pop Culture reference- namely, to the song in the opening credits of the Scooby Doo cartoon. When OP changes that recognizable reference, it makes absolutely no sense. This occurs mostly due to the phrase's symbolic weight and the subsequent disregard the second one has for it.

Likewise, in I3, one would have to understand the reference to fast food chain Burger King- hence, why it would be ridiculous to refer to it as "Sandwich Monarch". This might be the most critical of the three instances, because it reaches an entirely new level of elitist absurdity. 

-------------------------

Part (2)

Part  (3)

Read the full series: O

[theletterunread]

Protest

This story follows Flame and precedes Beliefs.

“Those are nice shoes,” I said to Fia while we waited for the light at Eighth Street. I spoke mildly, deliberately not using that annoying inflection adults often employ when they talk to kids – “I love your shooooes!” – because I remembered from my own youth that children always pick up and resent being talked down to, and I had the sense that Fia was somebody whose respect I wanted to keep.

“Thank you,” she said, obviously trained in manners for she added, “I like your shoes too,” even though mine were just ratty sneakers.

“It’s so exhausting for me to walk around these days,” I explained, “so I just wear these comfortable shoes instead of…” I corrected course, realizing how on guard you have to be for opportunities to teach kids well or poorly. “Not that I need to have an apologetic reason for wearing whatever I want. I can wear whatever shoes, whenever. And so could you.” Clumsy, maybe, but at least I’d passed on the right lesson.

“Would you wear those even if you weren’t exhausted?”

“Oh, I have no idea.” I looked back and forth before we jaywalked over Ninth. “I’ve never liked picking out shoes. Or wearing them. Or the attention on them.” This is true, and I’m gratified for the chance to say so, since I said as much to the fashion reporter for New York magazine, only to find he’d cut it from the final profile. I’m not affecting a false effortlessness, claiming that I happen to dress as well as I do; I do select my wardrobe conscientiously. (Go ahead and read that profile if you want a more thorough explanation of my fragile, minimalist style, though honestly, it still astounds me that, given what I did for this city, my attire would be a primary subject of interest for anyone. But I suppose that’s New York City – or at least, that’s New York magazine.) But I never developed an eye for footwear. At whatever point I was supposed to integrate that knowledge into the rest of it, I zoned out.

However, the more plain my shoes, the less attention I suffer from foot fetishists. Half of my readers don’t need to be told, but to the men reading this: once you know to look for it, you will see foot obsessives everywhere. If a woman takes a walk around the block in anything more revealing than combat boots, ten guys will hesitate and pass a happy moment gawking before she gets back to her front door. At least one will surreptitiously snap photos. During the summer, when it’s a city of sandals, you can see the erotic overload almost exploding heads.

“Are you tired because of the weather?” asked Fia as we cut down Tenth Street. “I get really tired when it’s too hot out.”

“No, but that’s a good guess. I feel the same when it’s the deep summer. I’m tired because I’m pregnant, so I’m…” I realized that I didn’t know how much a ten-year-old knows or is supposed to know about the details of pregnancy. “I’m carrying more weight. It’s like walking with a 12-pound…” I didn’t even know what noun a kid would best register. “…backpack. On your front.”

Fia didn’t say anything because we had turned onto University Place and her attention was taken by a group of protestors marching up towards Union Square. It’s hard (at least, it’s hard for me) to really remember how thick and fast the protests were coming in those days. Now that that president is gone – and gone in such a spectacular, maximally gratifying way – the relief is so great that it’s obviated all sharpness from my memories of how trying it was to have that waxhead running the country, dominating our experiences and thoughts and conversations. But we were still in the middle of it this weekend.

Fia craned her neck to look at the protest signs all around us.“‘Girls just want to have fundamental rights.’ What does that mean?”

“Well, it’s a reference to a song, ‘Girls Just Want to Have Fun.’ Fundamental rights are…well, do you know what either of those words means?”

“Yeah, both,” said Fia, already on to the next sign. “‘Nasty woman.’”

“That’s something the president said once. So that person is flipping it around on him.”

“That one has a picture of Garfield. And it says ‘grabs back.’”

“Yeah…same thing. It’s something the president said and they’re using it against him.” I’d like to think that if it was my own daughter, I’d have been more thorough with my explanation, but you never know the rules other people’s parents have set down about what words or concepts are out of bounds. When I was a kid, my mom got in trouble with our neighbors for recounting in front of their son a scene where Bugs Bunny drops an anvil on Marvin the Martian. “Negative conflict resolution,” was their issue with it.

“What’s a ‘glass ceiling?’” asked Fia. It was another challenging concept to explain, so I just pretended not to have heard, pretended to be reading the other signs myself. Having been in plenty of protests, I had seen most of these slogans before, but Fia was experiencing them for the first time, and her fascination with the determination of the amassed people was obvious and renewed my populist sentiments. I was then immediately dinged by one of the more wearying aspects of a protest.

A blue-haired clippie had fallen in step with us. At a break in my remarks to Fia, she turned to me and said, “You’re such a great example for your daughter.”

I said, “Okay.”

“Taking her out to just feel and breath the change we’re gonna make.”

“I guess so.”

“But at the same time you’re somebody who wants to take concrete action and to be part of a community that’s setting up real solutions today.” She handed me her clipboard, which carried one page of manifesto and an optimistic ten pages of sign-up sheets. “Words of Insurrection isn’t just a bookshop. It’s a salon for new, effective action.”

The documents explained that Words of Insurrection was looking for small donations to finance research for the development of alternative energy sources to "break the petro-fascist hold on democracy,” to produce campaign literature for the bookshop’s own independent candidate for governor, and to buy an air conditioner, as public readings in the store were getting too stuffy. I agreed with their tenets, but I still put down a fake email address. This is why the revolution is stalled, I suppose, but I do feel bad about it, and if anyone from the bookstore is reading, please get in touch with my publisher, and they’ll give you the right email address.

I handed back the clipboard, took Fia’s hand, and we slipped through the crowd to the southern end of Union Square. Up the steps, somebody was speaking on a dais. I could barely see over the heads of everyone else, and Fia was really struggling. She wanted to be picked up, but was too polite to ask. Being unable to lift her, I suggested that she hop up on a flowerbed wall and gave her my phone, set to record, so she could periscope over the protesters. For those of you who are just reading this book to check off plot points leading to my triumph at the Strand, you should make a note of this moment.

I sat on the wall and read more of the handmade signs around me. I preferred the angry ones to the humorous ones. In the taxonomy of political comedy, liberal protest signs are leagues above the clumsiness and bile of conservative comedy, and markedly less aggravating than the libertarianism-disguised-as-common-sense musings of old-media columnists who style themselves “humorists” – seriously, has there ever been a funny “humorist?” – but we’re still dealing with the one-celled organism stage of comedy.

My eye was drawn to sign reading “Hands Off” around an illustration of a woman throwing a punch. I recognized the picture: it was an illustration of a friend of mine, done by her husband, from the webcomic he draws about their relationship. I’m not a big fan of his cartooning style. It’s a little too manic, a little too much sweat flying off the brow. But his love for his wife comes through, so she always looks good. I was glad to see her being used for such a message, so I introduced myself to the woman holding the sign and asked her where she got the image.

“From the internet,” said Sarah. “I follow a lot of other artists on Tumblr, and I saw this image pop up, and I was like, ‘Yep, that’s it.’ Plus, I didn’t want to use one of my own drawings, because this isn’t really the right time to be self-promoting.”

“I think it would have been fine,” I shrugged. “But this is a good sign anyway. And it stands out among all the pictures of you-know-who.”

“Yeah. I mean, officially, it’s a protest about him. So I get it, I’m kind of off-brand. But, you know, it’s all tied together. We gotta get this message out, too.”

“Sure. And it’s not like he’s not also guilty of that.”

“I hate to give him credit for anything, even accidentally,” said Sarah, “but at least he got people out into the streets.”

“Maybe,” I said, “but I think we were headed in this direction anyway.” I told her that about five years before, I had learned that a beloved novelist I won’t bother naming had been known to make comments like, “the smell of cunt is in the air,” when walking through college campuses. He said book tours were good for getting “audience pussy,” and wondered aloud if his time on earth was best used “to put my penis in as many vaginas as possible.” You could come up with worse remarks easily, for sure, but pretty negative stuff nonetheless. When I brought this up to people back in 2012, though, I was pooh-poohed and scolded for being insufficiently sex-positive.

“So, you’re saying…what?” asked Sarah when I finished. “That we used to let things slide so we wouldn’t seem like prudes…but now we’re shifting things back?”

I felt awkward hearing my own ideas articulated back to me. I don’t think of myself as having any necessary insight into cultural issues. “Shifting back isn’t really what I want to say. More just finding a more refined level.”

I didn’t really like how that came out. The phrase “refined level,” sounded like something to be followed with excuses. In those months, I, and everyone I knew, had had many conversations about the wave of reckonings coming for shitty men. And even among likeminded people, the subject generally got hot. Everyone could agree on the general premises, but specific stories caused debate. Parsing the details of an assault or an encounter or a remark gave infinite opportunities for dispute, and people’s emotional attachments to celebrities who’d been spotlighted were another hurdle to get over. (For whatever it’s worth, I actually had the opposite problem: while I never let my existing admiration for a celebrity lead me to make excuses for him, I admit that sometimes I got happy when a man I didn’t like for other reasons got popped for being a pig.)

The problem, as I saw it, came from our societal sense that there are “good people,” and “bad people.” Take your pick as to where this comes from – history books that oversimplify conflicts, a steady diet of moronic movies and TV shows with antagonists so flat and featureless that it’s easiest to just remember them as “the bad guy” – but it does us no good. I always argued that there are no “good people” or “bad people” (though admittedly, many of the later events of this day tested my theory). There are good and bad actions, and just plain people who set them in motion, people motivated by impulses and ideas and desires and influences and self-images too manifold to be summed up in one-syllable adjectives.

A trusted and smart friend told me this was a sterile and cold and emotionless way of looking at things, and maybe a lot of readers will agree with her. But I think it helps me to keep a generic sense of goodwill and empathy for humanity in general, while keeping me off the road of waving away specific, real-time crimes just because I’ve been fond of the perpetrator.

While something like these thoughts was going through my head, Sarah was reflecting on my last remark and giving me a squinty stare. I had either blown her mind or she was preparing to tear my argument apart. I changed the subject. “I noticed your sign because I actually know the guy who drew that picture.”


“Really? Me too.”

“Well, I know his wife. So I’m more of a friend of a friend.”

Sarah smiled. “Yeah, he seems like somebody who has more ‘friends of friends’ than ‘friends.’ That’s how I met him, and why I follow him on Tumblr.”

“What’s your connection?” I asked.

“I’m friends with a guy he went to high school with. Actually, though we’re – Kyle and I, that is. The guy he went to high school with and me – we’re not really ‘friends,’ exactly. We’ve hooked up and dated and broken up and been friends and collaborators and tried…all kinds of different ways of being.”

“Okay.”

“I don’t know what the right word is. ‘Lover,’ maybe, if it wasn’t so stupid sounding. I think of us as magnets. If there’s something in the way, we're separated. But when there’s no obstacles, we’re always – click! – drawn back together.”

“Sure.” I said. “I know about that.”

“It’s not always like that, though, I guess. Like two weeks ago, I reached out to him to ask him to take a look at these opening pages I’d drawn…fuck. That opened a whole bag of worms.”

I smiled, because I always like it when people mix up their idioms.

“He told me that he didn’t want to look at them, and reminded me that six months ago he tried to get me to read part of this script he was writing…he’s a filmmaker, right? And I just sat on the pages and never responded. But it wasn’t because I didn’t want to read them, or was trying to put him in his place…I mean, there was a little of that, maybe. Because right around when he sent the script, I had seen him raving about some-person-he-knows’ album on Facebook. And he’s never hyped me up like that. Right? Maybe I was mad about that, subconsciously?”

“It’s hard to know with subconscious things,” I said.

“Well…so, he let me know he was mad at me about that, because the script was something really personal and he trusted only me to read it…and I kind of knew he would say all this when I reached out to him…I was probably provoking a reaction by asking him for his notes. Well, not ‘provoking’ him, but…you know, I wanted to talk about how I felt when he sent me the script, so I was setting up this conversation that could get us there.”

I “yeah”ed and “mm-hmm”ed through this.

“But it’s not totally phony. I really did want his thoughts on my pages. It was the first thing I’d been able to draw in months. I’m so crunched for time now, and I can’t devote the headspace to get into my work. And it freaks me out because, if I’m not drawing, it’s like, what’s the point of me? I used to be turn out so much work, and maybe it wasn’t great, but I was getting better. Now…I mean, I am better, when I can get the work done…but I want to do more. I don’t want to just draw for my own satisfaction anymore. I want to get it out there. But that’s selfish, right? I should be happy to do creative stuff at all.”

“No,” I said, “that’s an okay feeling to have.” I was referring to her whole speech. This happens a lot, and at first I thought it was just me, that I had some kind of blank demeanor that encouraged people to spill their guts, knowing I would listen without editorial comment. But it turns out to just be a feature of American life: every stranger you meet is pent up, dying to give you her prepared admissions. At first I thought this trend was depressing, but now I’m starting to see it as hopeful. If we’re all secretly aching, we’ve all got something in common. Which is one less thing to ache about.

“I don’t think it’s greedy to want to be seen,” I went on. “I’m not a creative person, but I imagine it’s frustrating to keep finishing work you like and putting it right into a dark drawer.”

“I send stuff out all the time…not saying I’m better than everything that gets published. But I know I’m at least as good. And sometimes better. But I can’t even get a courtesy read.”

It shames me to tell you she said that, given that only weeks later did publishers come pounding down my door making all kinds of offers to put out this book – before there was even any book to speak of. “Maybe it’s not about quality. You have to tick some other box for the company. They’re not publishing the work, they’re publishing you. They’re just looking for a certain person – or a certain kind of person – at a certain time,” I said (with dramatic irony, it turns out). “Maybe it’s just all political.”

“Yeah, and I’ve tried to be political. I can do caricatures of the president if that’s what people want to see. Still can’t get any traction. And if everyone’s doing political material today, maybe my only chance is to stand out going the other way.”

I started to say that wasn’t what I meant, but the crowd around us had fallen into a hush, and my voice sounded very loud to me. Everyone was standing reverentially, and a few people had their hands over their hearts. Up on the dais, a woman was singing “America the Beautiful,” which happens at a lot of protests in the city to preempt any accusations that “liberals hate America.”

All those songs give me a sinking feeling in my stomach, because they remind me of being 16 and letting my popularity go a little too much to my head and volunteering to sing the national anthem at a high school basketball game. When I got to “O’er the land of the free,” my voice squeaked and I lost the pitch. Looking back, the crowd probably would have let me get out “and the home of the brave,” but I was embarrassed and certain I’d lost them, so I just trailed off and left. I can’t remember whether I got any pity applause or just a considered silence as the whole gym watched me take the long walk off the basketball court.

In the middle of “America the Beautiful,” an older protester whipped around angrily. “Who’s humming?” she demanded to know, like a math teacher snapping during a quiet study session. “She’s up there singing a song for us. Who’s making that noise?”

It was Fia, and she looked so scared and guilty (that combination you only get when you’re a kid “in trouble”) that I got in the older woman’s face. “You can’t be out in the world if you’re gonna be screaming at people,” I said. “So either watch the stage or move along.”

She looked over my shoulder at Fia and pouted a bit. “Oh, okay. I didn’t realize it was a kid.”

“It doesn’t matter how old anyone is. You can’t be that rude.”

“That’s just how I am. My family’s Greek, that’s how we talk.”

“Yeah, I don’t accept that, though. I have Greek friends with manners. And there’s a whole array of people who will attribute being rude to being Israeli or Colombian or French or…it doesn’t matter what their background is, they just won’t own up to having no manners.”

Sarah broke in with a “Hey, hey! It’s okay, relax, we’re all here on the same side.” I stepped back, a little astonished at how quickly I’d got worked up. Already I was feeling very protective of Fia.

“Sorry,” I said, adding for credibility, “it must be referred frustration from all this.” I waved my arms in every direction, suggesting the targets of the protest.

The older woman introduced herself as Eleni and told me she understood, having been to a lot of protests in her life. “I know how easy it is to get hot at one of these. I know your emotions are running high. I’ve been there. Once you’re older, though, you learn that’s not actually the right answer.” I won’t quote her at length, because you’ve heard variations on this theme throughout your youth: somebody with more age and more experience assuring you that your sentiments are worthy of a pat on the head, but that in time you’ll grow out of them.

“Take a look at some of these signs,” she said, pointing to Sarah’s. “We want to make a change, but we don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater.” She pointed to my stomach. “I’m sure you’d agree.”

“Saying that the president shouldn’t grab women by the pussy, that’s washing the baby in the bathtub?” said Sarah, forgetting her seconds-ago attempt to calm me down, and getting worked up herself. There was an amazingly needling quality to Eleni’s speech, in content and tone.

“No, no, obviously not,” soothed Eleni. “That’s wrong, I’m not here to defend assault. I’m just saying let’s keep in mind what’s assault and what’s just rudeness. Actually grabbing somebody is a problem. If it’s just talking about it, if somebody’s just saying it to you…maybe it’s crass, but it’s something you just have to deal with. And a lot of it is just men being men. A lot of things, you have to remember – or maybe you have to learn – are biological.”

Then followed another familiar argument I won’t bother relaying in full. There were lots of exhortations to “look to the animals,” and phrases like “genetically dominant and genetically submissive.” I know very little about the ins-and-outs of any branch of science, so I’m unarmed for these arguments. But appeals to nature are down there with appeals to heritage in my list of least acceptable defenses.

I thought that Sarah would punch back at this, but there was just silence, and when I looked over I saw that she was glazed. A moment later she came to. “That just reminded me of something Kyle said. We were talking about exes and he was saying that no relationship he was in ever lasted more than a year.”

I didn’t know that that was unusual, since that was my record, too. “Yeah?”

“He said that he figured it was biological. A year was just enough time to get somebody pregnant and stick around long enough to protect her and the newborn.” She threw up her hands like tiger paws. “Rawr! Like that, that’s exactly what he did with his hands when explaining it…anyway, I’m not an idiot, I know he was saying this as a prelude to ‘We’re never going to last.’ But I so didn’t want to have that conversation. At least not then. So I just went off on his paws gesture and used that to talk about big cats. Stories about going to the zoo, talking about The Lion King…just forced him onto this huge tangent and would not let him get back to his point. Just tiring him out.”

Eleni looked impatient for us to start listening to her again. “Well, he was right, there is a natural calendar of–”

“Not to be glib,” I interrupted. “Sorry Eleni. Not to be glib, but that’s great material, Sarah. You could put that in a comic and it would be wonderful.”

The crowd cheered, and it was clear that somebody big was getting on stage. Everyone was jumping up and down, so I couldn’t see the speaker. “Fia, would you take a picture for me?” She held my phone up high, snapped a shot, and handed it back to me.

“Oh, weird,” I said, showing the photo to Eleni and Sarah. “It’s Anne Wysie.”

“Wysie?” repeated Sarah.

“I was just reading her…” I twisted around to pull the book out of my bag, which kept swinging out of my grasp. “See? That’s funny.”

Eleni looked at the book, then looked at me. “Are you okay?” she asked.

“Huh?”

“Are you okay?” she said again.

I didn’t know what the fuck she was talking about. One thing that I hope will become clear by the end of this book is how, despite concocting an amazingly elaborate plan, the conspirators were incredibly stupid, and their use of “Are you okay?” as a code phrase is part of that. Any phrase even slightly less generic would have be better.

“Uh, yeah,” I said. “I’m just trying to show you this book.”

“Ugh, I’m so tired of that bitch,” said Sarah, looking from the stage to the book. “She needs to just shut the fuck up and retire already.”

Eleni slapped Sarah’s cheek. “You need to have more respect.” She was smiling, and I think she would have defended her slap as “light,” or even “playful,” but there really isn’t such a thing.

Sarah grabbed Eleni’s still outstretched arm at the wrist, and said, “Don’t touch me,” or something to that effect. It was hard to hear over Eleni’s squealing. She was really freaked to be stood up to, and she squirmed and thrashed to get out of Sarah’s grip. She wrenched herself away and fell to the sidewalk, wailing in what I thought was a pretty theatrical way.

The protestors around us turned to look and help her up, asking what happened. “She threw me down,” said Eleni at the same time that Sarah said, “She slapped me.” People started to form ranks with both women, and it was self-preservation, or intuition, or just a happy coincidence, but at that moment, I remembered that I still had a doctor’s appointment to keep. I scooped Fia off of her perch and hustled out of the crowd.

The violence that broke out at the protest, sparked by that initial confrontation, was soon overshadowed by the rest of what happened that day, and it’s been completely forgotten now. But people were hurt, so I have to take responsibility for my part in it: I introduced Anne Wysie into a conversation between two unstable parties and left without even trying to cool them down.

An earlier draft of this part of the story went past my editor who said it was silly for me to insist on taking blame for a few fractures and chipped teeth, that it would muddy the image of me as a hero, and that it was nothing compared to the lives I wound up saving. But come on. “What are you? An accountant?” Besides, there are already enough stories out there that deal in black and white, in good guys and bad guys.