Eagle-eyed reader Devon G. emailed me last night to tell me that Alex Dunn of UCSB’s Philosophy department was again throwing a Twitter fit about the fact that I exist. Devon remembered Dunn from his previous little spasm of getting mad that not literally everyone is a part of his weirdo Twitter koffee klatsch. I had actually forgotten until Devon reminded me; I just don’t have the brain space to let Alex Dunn and his hair run around in there. But when Devon told me, I checked it out, and indeed there he was, like literally making little frowny face emojis anytime someone mentioned my name. And a sensible chuckle was had by all.
People who act like this really do not understand the nature of narcissism. Honey! There’s no such thing as bad publicity!
The thing you have to understand is that I’ve been attracting this sort of attention since the very beginning of my writing online 6 years ago. I have never not had people developing these weird negative fixations. It’s something of a constant. And they all think they’re the one who really showed me. It seems like everyone I’ve ever gotten into a fight with sits around and cries a single tear about it, saying “I sure showed that jerk!” and feeling like they just lost an elementary school soccer game and didn’t get orange slices. Who wants to live that way? I’ve lost plenty of arguments online. It happens. You throw rocks at street signs for awhile and you move on. Fixating in this way is so strange, to me. And I couldn’t do it just for sheer volume. If I was still getting upset about every fight I had, I wouldn’t have the energy to breathe. Being a grownup means that you don’t like some people and they don’t like you, and to be honest I kind of got a head start on that. I’ve been a love it or hate it phenomenon my whole life, and that suits me. I’m sorry, Alex: this is not Mrs. Soanes’s 8th grade math class and I don’t pass notes anymore. I don’t have time to develop “enemies” online and if I did, you wouldn’t even make JV. Consider a hobby.
On the real, you guys: I get that for many of you, life on Twitter has become more important than life out here in the big grimy. And on a certain level, I get it. But sometimes you’ve really gotta close that laptop, do you feel me? It’s a big brilliant world out here, and Twitter is really small in many ways. The thing about Twitter is that you get to turn it off and go outside. And once you do you can go around and look at all the messy humans out there and say to yourself “look at that guy! He doesn’t know I exist!” and “that lady has no idea what #gamergate is” and “that person couldn’t pick Suey Park out of a lineup.” Then you can go to a bar or make a friend or eat Funyuns or do any number of things that are more intense and interesting than everything that has ever happened in the history of the internet combined. And that’s a good feel.
This dude is gonna read this post (because all of them are, inevitably, my closest, most passionate readers) and then he’s just going to seethe and seethe. Every time he sees my name on Twitter, he’ll get mad. Whereas I will click “close tab” and he will cease to exist. Which approach do you want to take yourself?