quote:

How many responses had he gotten? How well could he expect to do, being a man able to check off, without lying, boxes that certified that he made more than $150,000 a year, that he was six feet four inches tall, and that he was white? How well do you think he was going to do on that site where people disclosed what they really wanted out of life and also what they really didn’t want?

He had gotten six thousand responses in one night. The fact was that if there was something intriguing or beautiful about that man—and there’s something beautiful about us all, if you look deeply enough— someone was going to take the trouble to find it out, and they’d love him for that thing, not because he was 6 foot 4 inches tall, and not because he made more than $150,000 a year. You’d find out about his love of truth and poetry, to the extent that it existed, or at least his ability to make you laugh, or his own ability to laugh at things that made you laugh too—things on TV. You could watch TV together. Because the thing you wanted to do was to find true love and have that true love coincide with everything else that you wanted from life, so that you could have all the benefits of one kind of ease, and all the moral credit that others had to win by forgoing that kind of ease (but you could have it all, so why not?), and so you were going to put yourself in a position to do that. And you weren’t going to answer the ads of anyone with beady lugubrious eyes in a forlorn, brown-tinted face, and if that person wrote you a message, you weren’t going to write him back, and you’d probably even, if it seemed like it was necessary, block all further emails from that person. And you’d be right to do that. You’d be behaving in the way that any rational person in your situation would act. We all agree that the rational thing to do is to shut every trace of that person’s existence out of your view. The question, though, is—what if it’s not you shutting out the losers? What if you’re the loser whom everyone is shutting out? Of course, every loser is shutting out an even more wretched loser. But what if, as far as you know, you’re the lowest person at the lowest end of this hierarchy? What is your rational move then?

quote:

...There’s a familiar narrative we all know about high school losers. It’s the narrative of smart sitcoms and even edgy indie films. The high school loser grows up, fills out, goes to Brown or RISD, and becomes the ideal guy for every smart, sensitive, quirky-but-cute girl with glasses (who is, in turn, the female version of the loser made good). The traits that hindered him (or her) in one phase of life turn out to be a blessing in another, more enlightened phase, or else get cast aside. For many people, this is an accurate description of their experience—it is the experience of the writers and producers of these stories.

In the indie film version of Seung-Hui Cho’s life, the escort Cho hired a few weeks before his massacre wouldn’t have danced for him for fifteen minutes in a motel room and then shoved him away when he tried to touch her. Not every one of the girls he tried to talk to would have recoiled in horror from him. Something would have happened in that film to remind him, and us, of his incipient humanity—that horribly menaced and misshapen thing. He would have found a good-hearted person who had perhaps been touched in some way by the same hysteria—and don’t we all know something about it?—that had consumed Cho’s soul. And this good-hearted girl or boy would have known how to forgive Cho for what he couldn’t forgive himself—the unbearable, all- consuming shame of being ugly, weak, sick, poor, clumsy, and ungifted...

varo posted:

that is a really good essay

tylertfb posted:

does that essay really end at page 17, or is there more. it seems to end a bit abruptly (if a 17 page essay can be abrupt)

varo posted:

that is a really good essay

Spaceman Bill posted:

i have an essay published but it is not good at all so i encourage none of you to read it

CHARLES MANSION posted:

your own personal zine doesn't count

GBS. Very Funny. posted:

erm, i also had a rly terrible essay about revolutionary marxism in the planet of the apes series published, literally babys first attempt at marxist film theory. lets all write masturbatory essays about subjects were n00bs at that will haunt us foerver

GBS. Very Funny. posted:

erm, i also had a rly terrible essay about revolutionary marxism in the planet of the apes series published, literally babys first attempt at marxist film theory. lets all write masturbatory essays about subjects were n00bs at that will haunt us foerver

Mike_V posted:

linda williams film bodies: gender, genre, and excess

ChrisFarley posted:

all these fuckrs thinking they're using cf correctly. are they? nein

Gagamemnon posted:

HAI posted:

the essay in op just labours the point that this kid was socially dysfunctional (and it also obsess on his perceived ugliness in a pretty odd way) and really doesnt say anything that isnt obvious and definitely doesnt explore any psychological or socioeconomic conditions that would help us explain what happened - in essence, hes just masturbating about his own relative success in life imo. c.

CHARLES MANSION posted:

This is incredible lyle

Gagamemnon posted:

HAI posted:

the essay in op just labours the point that this kid was socially dysfunctional (and it also obsess on his perceived ugliness in a pretty odd way) and really doesnt say anything that isnt obvious and definitely doesnt explore any psychological or socioeconomic conditions that would help us explain what happened - in essence, hes just masturbating about his own relative success in life imo. c.

CHARLES MANSION posted:

close and goldmine

Dave Matthews posted:

ha ha, anime and deep ecology. very funny. havent seen those joke's befre

Gagamemnon posted:

this one just looks freaking cool imhoi should probably be hired as a graphic designer asap