A large segment of twitter seems, from I can tell, devoted to outrage pornography. Outrage pornography comes in many forms. You have the virtue signalers. You have the people who, I guess, enjoying witch hunts, dog piles, and running around trying to get others in trouble for perceived transgressions. And you have weird flexes (example: I don’t read classics! I guess a large portion of the functionally literate community applauds ignorance. Back in the 70s Philip K. Dick remarked his work is better received in France, noting a strong strain of anti-intellectualism infecting the states).
Generally speaking, discounting your zip code and overall luck, there are two ways of achieving your goals. You achieve it with integrity (which is hard), or by destroying others, in the process elevating yourself (fairly easy if you know the buzzwords and current zeitgeist). In the writing world, one could study the game, see what works (both for you and readers), then see if you can do better.
Personally, my goal when writing a short story is to be better than Denis Johnson and Amy Hempel. I’m not delusional. My work doesn’t hold a candle to theirs. Their work outshines mine by light years. Regardless, my aim isn’t to bring them down. My aim, if I’m lucky, is to be on their level. Do I succeed? Will I? I guess time will tell.
What does any of this have to do with Kafka?
Kafka’s The Trial taught me an important lesson in high school. One of my high school English teachers had us read several of Kafka’s short stories: The Hunger Artist, and In The Penal Colony. I loved em (people who know me well can attest to this).
The time came to do a book report of our choosing. I picked The Trial.
Spoilers for the book…
I loved book, but it all seemed so pointless. Why was this man arrested? Why was he charged? You never find out. I needed help understanding the book so I could write something meaningful about it.
After class I expressed my concerns to the teacher. I remember verbatim what he said:
“You could view The Trial as pointless, but that’s missing the point. We never find out the crimes because it doesn’t matter. We are all guilty of something. Some people delude themselves into thinking otherwise. Kafka is showing that even if we don’t know the crimes, we’re all guilty of something.”
BOOM! It all clicked. And not just for The Trial, but for its deeper message. We all have skeletons in our closets. We all live in glass houses.
This is why you won’t find me virtue signaling.
This is why you won’t find me waging my finger like fucking Foghorn Leghorn.
This is why I don’t run around like a prepubescent tattle tale trying to get people in trouble for perceived transgressions.
This is why I’ve never pretended to be a goodie goodie. Because I’m not. And guess what? Neither are you.
So yeah, I’m not perfect, but, again, neither are you. I’m well aware of all the things I’ve done that I’m not proud of. I could probably fill a book with my fuck ups. But I bet you could too.
It’s important to be honest about what’s going on upstairs in the locked room of your skull.
And this is the lesson I’ve learned from Kafka. And this is why I find so much of social media repulsive. And cycling back to a pervious post, when I see these witch-hunts, and dog piles, I can’t help ask: cue bono?
I guess I leave you with that. When you spot such behavior, recognize the cynicism inherent in it. And ask: who benefits? Is it not entirely self-serving?
I hate using religious language, but I can think of no other way to express the final line: Earth doesn’t grow saints, only sinners.
It's a well-known fact that criticism is easier than praise, and a LOT easier than building anything. It's the forever black stain of social media, that it made it so easy for mediocre people to express their mediocrity in anonymity.