[clever blog name]

Ok so roads are important infrastructure. A lot of stuff that's important happens on roads. Now, let's imagine that quadrillionaire Matt Stench has decided that the next big tech innovation is the Wide Car. It's a car that takes up six lanes despite seating only one passenger.

The Wide Car is supposed to be the future, and everyone's going to be driving Wide Cars, even though nobody who makes Wide Cars is turning a profit. Employers are offering Wide Cars as an employee benefit, and getting "nah." Some employers are going as far as demanding their employees drive Wide Cars, and the result is that people take time out of their workdays to get in the mandatory gas usage for their Wide Car before driving home in a regular car.

In spite of the fact that the Wide Car is clearly set to fail, there's an enormous push to expand to twelve-lane roads to accommodate a bunch of Wide Cars that simply will not materialize. This is not an organic response to demand, but a speculative investment that amplifies the existing issues with road development for no good reason.

“this isn’t true because the ex-friendship that traumatized me ended explosively after they were mad at me and never told me why” that’s not good. they shouldn’t be doing that

“i don’t think this is true because my current friend group is constantly icing me out until i figure out what ive done to upset them and properly apologized without being told” hey thats not good. they should not be doing that

then she started funnelling all her wizard book money into destroying the rights of my people and I resolved not to give her any more of my money

This month is the one year anniversary of posting my poem “Condolences” to TikTok and Instagram, where it amassed millions of likes and tens of thousands of comments.

Since, people have used the poem for adaptive art pieces, short plays, books, and class work. For your piece of art to be transformed into another…it’s difficult to describe.

After several rejections from poetry publications a decade ago, I decided to post my work online instead. The responses were overwhelming. I realized that an official publication doesn’t make you a poet. Writing poetry does, and bonus points if you manage to resonate with just one other soul who needed to hear what you needed to say.

I was utterly taken aback by the response to this piece. People have asked me many times to explain it, but from the response it was clear that the meaning can be explicated with a little time.

Some people who didn’t understand it until it was explained were angry when it came together. It wasn’t written for them.

I’m only grateful that it reached the people who needed it.

I feel that the imagery is part of the piece, but I know not everyone can or cares to listen to a video. Here is the poem:

———————

They buried a girl in my hometown today.

“A young woman, gone too soon, in the prime of her life,” they all said.

My friends and I all knew her. We grew up together.

We were in all the same classes and hobbies and we made up games together at recess.

But none of us went to her funeral. We weren’t invited, because the people planning it didn’t think we’d understand. They said it wasn’t our loss.

So we got together for drinks. We laughed all morning and played card games all day.

At 4 o’clock, we heard the church bells. We saw that long, sad procession of cars stretch like a creek through town, up the cemetery hill.

We heard strange rumors that night, that the casket was empty. That they put it hollow in the ground.

So we went to the plot first thing in the morning. They buried her empty box next to her dad, down the row from an estranged aunt she never really knew all that well.

There wouldn’t be a stone for months, but the little placard had my name on it. But not the one I go by these days.

“How strange,” we all said. “What a waste of good crying.”

All of this mourning for me, and I was down the street the whole time, laughing and drinking.

But some people will never understand. They’d rather plan a funeral than learn a new name.

My friend said she felt sorry for them, in some small way.

What a sad notion—to lose a daughter who never lived—

but it's an entirely new level of tragic when somebody you've actually spoken to gets turned into a bot account. it's like peeking at a zombie apocalypse through the window and realizing one of the shambling corpses was your friend.

and then the zombie catches sight of you, lurches up to your window, and shouts through the glass that they accidentally reported your account to tumblr and you'll be deactivated unless you click this link.

if you get something like this ↑ they're gonna follow up by instructing you to contact tumblr support on discord and give you contact info; or they're gonna link a website that looks sort of like tumblr support and say you have to email them; or any variety of "you must now contact tumblr, here is how you contact tumblr."

whatever they send you, it Does Not lead to tumblr. it leads to the master zombie that bit them and inducted them into the ranks of the undead, and will bite you the second they have your email and password. i might be confusing zombies and vampires. anyway,

it's easier to fall for these messages because the blog doesn't LOOK like a bot blog, because it ISN'T a bot blog. it's a normal person's blog that got accessed by a bot, meaning the blog's content CLEARLY looks like a real active user when you click on it. and yes—it might even be a blog you already know. sometimes bots like this go down a blog's DMs or reblogs and message people they've previously interacted with.

And it's that thing where you mentally place yourself as the second, auxiliary party to someone else that you consider to be "In Charge" of whatever space or occupation or responsibility you are assigned to

And when you are IN that mindset, it *feels* like you're being responsible. It *feels* like you're being respectful, and helpful, and contributing to the load.

But what you don't SEE- because it *feels* like deference- is that the other person who you're seeing as The Authority you report to- by being assigned that role, has also been assigned the invisible load of BEING YOUR MANAGER.

This is by FAR most commonly seen in husband-and-wife relationships, where the man says, "just tell me what I can do to HELP- you don't have to do it all by yourself, but it's like you won't even tell me when you NEED help. You just do everything and then get mad at me for not doing it first. I can help clean. I can help with the kids. I can help"

But I also see it- and am guilty myself of doing it- at work, at school, in public- that mental, "this is THEIR space, and i will be respectful and helpful to THEM"- without realizing that subservience in this manner isn't actually a good thing. That it actually shifts the burden of responsibility to the other person. That aspect was totally invisible to me.

I didn't understand that when I was told, "if you see something that needs to be done, just DO it", or, "take the initiative", what they ACTUALLY meant was, "I am not above you", or "you have equal say in what kind of environment you want to live or work in", or "I do not want full control over what happens here, I do not want to order you around, I do not want to be in charge, what I WANT is to co-command WITH you"

Being in The Assigned Authority position NOW, that is all so much clearer.

I am the senior member of my team at work, and now, every time I train a newbie, every time I finish catching them up to speed and giving them a list of everything that needs to be done, my next big hurdle seems to always be, "now take pride in the space when I'm not around". "Now don't assume I'll tell you when something is due or what orders to plan things in".

Now, having been on both sides of the struggle, I can appreciate the sticking points here

TO THE PERSON "IN CHARGE": The person deferring to you doesn't understand the invisible labor you're doing. They genuinely believe you know more, you WANT more, you see things they don't, and that they are being respectful and good by staying out of your way and waiting on your orders. THAT is the bit that's not clicking.

TO THE PERSON "WANTING TO HELP": "Help" implies that you are providing assistance to a problem that belongs to somebody else. Stop thinking like that. Understand that the problem belongs to BOTH of you equally, and consider what kind of shared space you BOTH want. What is your SHARED GOAL? Not THEIR goal, but a goal that belongs to you too. Own your space.

This is not a Commander-Lieutenant problem. This is a Partnership problem.

I just tested it, and if you turn on the Firefox VPN and set your location to United States, I Saw the TV Glow will play for free on Youtube :) If you already have an up-to-date version of (I assume PC, haven't tested mobile) Firefox installed, it should only take you a minute to get it going.

As a bonus, I think the browser extension uBlock origin will block youtube ads. Unless it's another extension I have but I'm pretty sure it's ublock doing that.

(it seem like there is also a separate, paid, Mozilla VPN - I'm only talking about the completely free in-built Firefox one)