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| In defense of my idiocy |
| 03.07.04 (3:37 pm) [edit] |
I'm interested--when I bother to give thought to the subject--in the inherent passive aggressiveness of these online journals, which is really the only reason why I'm writing this passive aggressive reply to a passive aggressive defense of a passive aggressive criticism I made earlier today regarding Someone Else's journal. What goes on on the Internet couldn't mean LESS to me a lot of the time; unless what I'm writing about in this blog is an actual personal issue of pressing concern, the feelings put into it are gone by the time I hit the submit button. I wouldn't dream of going up to the person in question and saying, "Hey, your journal comes off as really pretentious and elitist." Not because I'm a coward; because, in the grand scheme of things, I don't really care. I would imagine this person feels the same way about me, hence their online-only riposte in spite of the overpowering impression that they think I'm a huge asshole. The way I see it, passive aggressiveness in Blogland isn't to be criticized for its immaturity; it's the only way to deal with quasi-problems like these with even a semblance of maturity, because starting an actual real-life argument about this shit is just ridiculous. So this is my last word on the subject, and it's going here as opposed to in comment form on their blog, because let's face it: the only reason why we have these things is so we can all have a place where we always get the last word.
Obviously, whenever a person criticizes another person, there's a risk of hypocrisy. When one criticizes someone else for giving the impression that their thoughts are more important than another's, there's even more of a risk. I realize that complaining about somebody else's blog for being self-aggrandizing is kind of a bizarre paradox: that's another fascinating thing about these online journals, their solipsism. But it's really just this simple: I read some things that made me--at least in terms of my Internet Consciousness--pretty disturbed. I thought they were wrong, and I decided it would be an interesting thing to write about because this blog-writer isn't the only person who behaves this way. So I did. Maybe this was ill-advised given that online journals are a very public medium. Oh, well. When you begin your own journal with an opening salvo of condemnations of Everyone Else's Blogs, you really don't have much of a case to make against other people's criticisms in the first place.
Here's what I'm getting at: I'm not sorry for what I said. All the same, I understand your point. You think I talk too much about music (thanks for finding time to complain about this in between all those Camus quotes and literary references, by the way). I think a lot of what you write about is mean-spirited and even more one-sided than most journal writing. Are either of us making deep, personal observations about the other one's true character? Of course not. I don't know you, you don't know me; that's obvious, and I'd always assumed by the nature of our "relationship" that neither of us CARED to know the other any better. But are both of us free to think what we think? Yeah. That's the beauty of it. You're free to write about your embryonically-imbued great musical taste, your status as an unprivileged non-conformist, the ever-entertaining character flaws of your wannabe suitors and your apparently singular sense of charity; I'm free to write about my "ambiguous celebrities" (Um, Prince? Bowie? Or Antonio Banderas?) and my "songs no one really cares about" (because you're right, nobody cares about John Lennon, the most recent victim of my music-critic tendencies). Hey, I don't write this thing for you, I write it for me, and I imagine you would say the same.
But the real lesson to be learned is this: don't take too much offense when somebody holds you accountable for the things you say. Whether that somebody is being passive aggressive or not.
Listening to: Kate by Ben Folds Five
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