Go to the gym
. . . And just be ugly
This was the message on a poster (an ad for a gym) I saw in a Korean TV show. It made me laugh. I can hear the walrus-like howls of the body ‘positivity’ movement from here.
A line from another Korean show was in a similar vein. A mother was asked whether she was worried that her daughter was alone with a man (good heavens, how could that possibly be allowed?). The mother replied : I’m not worried. Her face is her best defence.
Savage, cruel, biting humour. Love it.
Making these kinds of jokes in your workplace will instantaneously transform them from being warm and cosy, cuddly places of industry into nightmarish hellscapes of unspeakable danger. Beautiful rainbow-hued glitter-souls will shrivel and die in the face of this demonic onslaught on a once utopian place of wonder.
When did the world turn into such a huge therapy-fest?
This was the question daughter number 2 (the ‘spare’ one) asked me last night. It was the 2-year anniversary of my dad’s death yesterday and she phoned me to see if I was OK (bless her). We spent our usual 3 hours chatting away and dismantling the ideological excesses of today’s brave new world.
Both of us are a bit flummoxed. Not that there are disagreements between people as such, but that, generally speaking, these disagreements are accompanied with a level of bitterness and vituperation that is off the charts. Coupled with the alarming rise of crazy we’ve witnessed in just a few short years and we both decided to sign up for the first spaceship to go and colonize a new planet. One hopes they won’t put us on the ‘B’ Ark1.
We made a list of some of the things that, just a decade ago, would have been considered laughable and somewhat deranged.
That just saying one is a woman is sufficient to actually BE a woman
That if lesbians don’t like girl-cock they’re hateful bigots
That there are a zillion different ‘genders’ (God only knows how many He made for us to enjoy)
That the sex binary was invented by ‘white’ people a couple of centuries ago as a way to oppress the noble and multi-gendered POAH (persons of alternative hue)
That having the body mass of a battleship is actually a beautiful and healthy thing.
And, of course, so many more (add your own suggestions in the comments of things that would have been considered blisteringly stupid and crazy only just a decade ago, but are now widely supported and trumpeted).
The thing that ‘triggered’ all of this was the spare daughter’s account of the new Head Honcho at the place where she works. This new HH seemed to my daughter to approach the company-wide communications she has so far made as if it were some kind of therapy session, with all sorts of inappropriate (and just plain weird) personal detail.
It was all me, me, me, with a little touch of me thrown in for good measure.
Who knows? This HH might do a great job - but the over-sharing will probably not be a significant factor in that success.
When I was younger I had a dream. It was to meet a girl, fall in love, start a family, and grow old together, spending the time we had been graced devoted to one another and to our community of family, friends and neighbours.
Such an old-fashioned ideal I suppose.
It didn’t quite work out that way for me, but the dream, I think, isn’t too shabby.
I didn’t want to be special to everyone - just special to one, special, person. That would be enough for me.
A noticeable trend on social media these days is for people to expose themselves. Not in the physical sense (although there’s enough of that, too) but to lay bare, before the entire world, all of their innermost foibles and flaws. It seems like there’s a kind of competition to garner the most sympathy points and to carve out a little niche of specialness and uniqueness that the rest of the world fawns over.
It seems, at times, that we’re not living in Clown World, but in Therapy World.
The relentless, and ultimately futile, quest for external validation of some sort is very sad. It’s a kind of cancer that is eating away people’s souls. It’s a spirit parasite that will never be satiated.
No matter how much you feed this monster it will come back for more.
This has been amplified to unimaginable levels by the existence of social media. On the one hand it’s bloody wonderful to be able to interact with people all across the world from all walks of life. The problem is always the other hand.
On social media you will always be able to find some ‘community’ who will indulge your self-indulgencies. In the past you would have drawn strength and support from a much smaller and more immediate circle of family, friends and neighbours2. Social media today is a kind of virtual replacement for this. It’s not ‘real’ in the same sense3.
Social media is like any other tool. The idea of a tool is that you control it - and not vice versa.
For some social media is a lifeline but, in my view, for far too many it has become a tool to amplify and feed what are unhealthy and damaging patterns of behaviour - and to receive continual encouragement and validation of those unhealthy patterns.
It’s like a world-wide group therapy session
Only the ‘therapy’ isn’t working.
For one thing, my telephone sanitization skills are sadly lacking
Unless you’d been caught shagging a goat - then that support and understanding might not have been quite as forthcoming
It’s also not always a bad thing - if you’re outside of the ‘norm’ then it can be lonely, and finding others who could understand you was not as easy in the past. Social media has made it easier to find others who can give you support. But, as with everything, one can have far too much of a good thing. In most things there is a balance to be found. And being outside of the ‘norm’ isn’t always good either - membership of the Little Hampton Society of Axe-Wielding Psychopaths is probably not something we should celebrate.
At this point, being eaten by an enormous mutant star goat could only improve things.
I only just read the title and the first 2 lines to hit the ‘like’ heart button. (I’m going to finish reading it during my rests between my shoulder press sets. 😂)