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How To Do Nothing - Chapter 3 (Patreon)

Published:
2023-11-05 18:07:12
Edited:
2024-02-16 01:59:20
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

Content

[Pictured, Diogenes of Sinope in his gay little barrel]

Recapture your attention! But not by deleting your account?! Then how?!??!!! Unions, it seems

First "Fuck" of the book: page 68. I would've done it sooner.

btw! I appreciate people using imgur etc. to offer up their photos of books and annotations and locations they read as they go along. I feel they add a lot of warmth to these for me. I welcome u to continue doing that if you want to instead of holding out to the end and submitting Book Report pics exclusively through the survey.

onwarde

Third Eye Open & Shooting Lasers:

Third Spaces are introduced here, and I think it can use continual examples and angles, so if you have them, provide them.

Ellen and I were wondering where this term originated, as its proliferation on line seems a bit in debt to this book, but its also kind of curious how leftist philosophy kind of trickles down the pipeline till you're seeing blasé text posts about it on tumblr. It appears coined by Indian-British post-colonial scholar Homi K. Bhabha, currently a Harvard professor (shoutout to the indian british [me]). Seems like he's one of those filthy Lacanians

wiki:

that space where the oppressed plot their liberation: the whispering corners of the tavern or the bazaar

that space where oppressed and oppressor are able to come together,  free (maybe only momentarily) of oppression itself, embodied in their  particularity

This kind of reminds me of the Nick Riggle sociological theory of Awesomeness, those moments we break from our social scripts and experience each other as fully free self determining conscious beings.

Diogenes, Bartleby, YouTube.com:

I do try to emulate these guys on YouTube.com

"Will you or will you not participate as asked?"

... "I will participate, but not as asked." (68)

"There is no reason given, no reason given as to why no reason is given, and so on" (70)

I have always felt a little weird being an uhhh influencer and doing this medium and I have my doubts about it and I have resolved it with a little chaos and trying to be present while refusing vicissitudes and it has so far worked out for me and i hope its working out for everyone else. (The video'sactualy looking good lately)

I also feel like some of my YouTube activity has been an exercise in "overidentification". Isn't like, quiet quitting kind of over-identification?

It seems to make people uncomfortable and invigorated when I just do my job online and nothing  else. I was surprised when I started YouTube and Patreon that all of these conventions everyoen participates aren't mandatory or even necessary.

A lot of this is very Zizek-ian (also a filthy Lacanian), who also of course uses the Deleuzean Bartleby the Scrivener story. (cw sniffles and slslslslsLSSssHS)

In fact! In the Zizek v Peterson debate he does exactly the thing described. People wanted him to fight and add fuel to the fire of Peterson's ongoing run of controversies and slapfights and he instead told jokes the whole time and sharply veered into their shared areas of psychoanalysis and religion, charming the pants off of Jordan and all of his followers, which arguably was more damaging to Peterson's fearmongering of Marxists than if they just did a clickbaity confrontation. It revealed Jordan hadn't read any Marx and didn't know Lacan and didn't know Zizek and was kind of humourless and stubborn and reactionary, painting all Marxists with a very wide reductive brush, unprepared to name a single postmodern Neo-Marxist or say anythign original. All accomplished through refusal instead of force applied within the provided paradigm. Zizek admits to consciously choosing this strategy in the intro of Myth & Mayhem: A Leftist Critique of Jordan Peterson.

"The basic difference between us was so evident that there was no need in that context to reassert it violently."

Refuse to participate inside of the framework provided. You can't WIN against someone in a gladiator match, the blood is the point. Who else is rewatchign The Hunger Games movies obsessively

A Union of Originality:

Here is where the theorizing about Third Space and Diogenes with his stupid tub take traction and make a difference: when those who can hold that space open keep it open, and more people pile inside, and they link up in attention and values and time.

I really love the way Odell illustrates the analogue between individual conscious attention  vs. collective conscious attention.

If we think about what it means to "concentrate" or "pay attention" at an individual level, it implies alignment: different parts of the mind and even the body acting in concert and  oriented toward the same thing. To pay attention to one thing is to resist paying attention to other things; it means constantly denying and thwarting provocations outside the sphere of one's attention. We contrast this with distraction, in which the mind is disassembled, pointing in many different directions at once and preventing meaningful action. It seems the same is true on the collective level. Just as it takes alignment for someone to concentrate and act with intention, it requires alignment for a "movement" to move. Importantly, this is not a top-down formation, but rather a mutual agreement among individuals who pay intense attention tot he same things and to each other." (p. 81)

One of the my aspirations for my community is that is actually is about something. As I've mentioned elsewhere, I'm continually dismayed at so called public intellectuals that 1. no longer research their topic of expertise beyond twitter, podcasts and self help books, and 2. start a podcast that has no point to it except the vague notion of "ideas".

You can't just worship the topic of ideas. You have to focus on something. Have a point.

These types of people inevitably seem to me diffuse. I feel they and their community aren't paying attention to anythign in particular except the vague notion of "rationality", or more accurately more often, indignant inert political entertainment.

As per usual, I find it difficult to trust the words of people who never stop speaking. This is the space where mission statements, mottos, memes, limitations, and worldbuilding becomes essential to keeping a community focused and making meaningful movement.

Students:

I have always found resentment of leftists for being too radical or students for being too leftist silly when that obviously seems like thsi inevitable outcome of reality and necessary organically occurring trend of growing up. Like, no shit university campuses are doing left wing activism? Like, they always are, have been and will be forever? The circumstantial element of academia functioning for some as an in between area of responsibility/risk, or being (or is intended to be) a third space for people just reinforces this.

Also could not help laughign at the offhand mention that Odell's students get frustrated at the impracticality of her art classes. Oh i can imagine. "Professor how much is this assignment worth?" "Shhhh Jessica this is a third space. Listen to this bird call. Have you heard of the performance artist who planted trees in places that he knew they would die? He called it 'Defiant Hope.' It's about capitalism. Put your notebook away."

America: Are You Ok?

This is jsut a sidebar but I am on my last few books that I will allow myself to read before I permenantly swear off rewriting/rerecording even more sections of this Peterson / Pragmatism video essay, but one of them is The Metaphysical Club by Louis Menand which recaps a lot of American history from the civil war onward, and jesus fuckign christ holy shit the racism the sexism  the violence holy fucking shit

we forget how brutal things have been so recently, and how every single talking point against critical race theory and feminism and trans rights is just a repackaged version of something that was said previously that the overton window has since cast into the abyss of unacceptability. If I'm ever feeling politically conflicted i just need to read more history and inhale the Marxism back into my body [zizek sniff]

I mention because of Odell's glancing past the Taft Hartley Act. The federal government made illegal to strike in solidarity with another union??? They government told the populace what they can and cannot do voluntarily in cooporation with each other in defiance of corporations???? They FORCED ALL UNION MEMBERS TO SIGN SWORN STATEMENTS THAT THEY'RE NOT COMMUNISTS?!?! Don't Tell me what to DO you're going ot RADICALIZE Freedom of SPEECH and ASSEMBLY power to the PEOPLE WE WILL RISE AGAIN

For those mayeb still confused abotu my rants abotu economics and business and stuff watch this scene of the newsroom abotu the repealing of Glass-Steagall for a glimpse into why im dissatisfied with poeple ending their analysis at "capitalism bad" oooo i want a better future for us oooo Iwant it i want it

Keep love alive in your hearts

---------------

ok folks. what'd you think.

see you soon.

Files

Comments

Jasper

I keep listening to the audiobook while doing other things and thinking I'm missing the point. It's decidedly not about deleting Facebook but I still don't know what to do, you know? She swings wildly between abstraction and direct political action. Not a complaint per se, just find myself hoping for a call to burn it all down (I may be reading simultaneously with How to Blow Up a Pipeline)

ellen

after reading this chapter I went and looked up the 1934 general strike and the images you can find are incredibly powerful. two of my favourites ugly link tw: https://s.hdnux.com/photos/02/46/35/681842/0/960x540.jpg and https://storage.googleapis.com/clio-images/1296_GenStrike.jpg particularly (haha) striking to me is the vision of all those people moving in perfect silence. that type of en masse solidarity and magnitude of people usually comes along with noise and fierce laughter and chanting or at least conversation, but the implication I get from Odell here is that what made the memorial march so impactful is the lack of those things. voicelessness in that instance is exactly "refusing the terms of the question"--talking isn't getting us anywhere, let's do this instead. and it clearly worked. royce brier, the chronicle journalist Odell quotes david selvin as citing, is also a fascinating person. he won a Pulitzer for a piece he wrote about the lynching of two men who kidnapped somebody's son. the media museum of northern california writes: "Brier worked continuously for 16 hours in covering the lynching for his newspaper. Blinded by tear gas, menaced by flying bricks and manhandled by the mob which dragged the slayers of young Brooke L. Hart from the Santa Clara County Jail, Brier and four assistants telephoned a running story from a garage across the street. The mob threatened to “string up newspaper men alongside the kidnapers,” but Brier mingled with the crowd and obtained the details." (https://www.norcalmediamuseum.org/?page_id=266) my favourite quote from this chapter ties all these things and people together perfectly. from page 81--"just as it takes alignment for someone to concentrate and ask with intention, it requires alignment for a 'movement' to move. importantly, this is not a top-down formation, but rather a mutual agreement among individuals who pay intense attention to the same things and to each other." gorgeous. feels True. my favourite people on the world are those with intense attentions. and it's self evidently true in communities like this one just how binding and impactful shared priorities of intention are.

annabel_182

Diogenes is a court jester? What's that meme where it's like “the court jester can say and do anything he wants, including insulting the king, but he’s also cursed to never be taken seriously”? Idk if that’s even a real meme or if it’s like a combination of two memes? Anyway lol, I thought that he was an interesting example to bring up in this chapter. Before reading this, I hadn’t heard of him and honestly he kinda seems like a cryptid or something because of how outlandish his whole schtick sounds. Odell’s comparison/connection of him to performance art/Fluxus/Dada is something that I found helpful because thinking of his whole thing as like a framework in which performance art was born out of sort of takes him out of the abstract, dude-from-super-long-ago-does-political-performance-art and connects him with more modern examples. Basically, I think that Fluxus gives Diogenes some helpful context, and vice-versa. The way that Odell defined third spaces was kind of funny (idk if funny is the right word) to me because the only other time that I’ve heard the phrase “third spaces” used is in the context of urban planning. (Places like parks, churches, community centers etc would be third spaces. Basically any space that’s not your home or your workplace.) I’ve heard some talk about third spaces being mostly online now, and honestly it kinda makes my brain hurt to think about it for too long. I just wanted to bring it up because I felt like it’s relevant to this book. Bartleby is such a key reference when you’re talking about doing nothing/refusal – I read it when I was like 15 in my high school English class and I feel like I haven’t been the same since. Pointing out how Bartleby “preferred not to” do things instead of straight out refusing to do them and how that language “diffused” the situation by invalidating his boss’ requests… so good. I love language and the ways it can be used as a tool to shape our experience of the world! (This is me being sarcastic and genuine at the same time.) Love, love, love that Odell wrote a little about Stanford meme pages – communal commiserating in niche online communities is one of my many Roman Empires. There’s just something about people coming together to shitpost about random stuff to other people that get it. Maybe my time spent on an ED meme subreddit at its peak is making me biased towards seeing the good in communities like this, but idk, I still think it’s fun and interesting to think about like sociologically or whatever. I think what will be more interesting to people here is like 2020/2021 Instagram art-meme pages, which were accounts that posted memes about mental illness and shit but did so in a sort of artful way so that the whole account became like a portfolio of little digital collages. Accounts like @atmfiend, @hor_ney_outer_spa_ce_posting, @bridopest, etc, that over time, developed a “signature look”. Idk, I’ve been chronically online for like 12 years and I’m passionate about art and memes and shit lmao Anyway, I enjoyed reading this chapter. I think that the examples and topics that Odell wrote about were fun and engaging – I think I just like when she writes about art haha. I also think finishing it with the section about unions was a strong choice because there’s nothing like reading about some good, old fashioned, union history that fires up silly little leftists like us.

annabel_182
>>121506921

ooh, thank you for sharing those images! the second one especially is so good

benedict.m

okay this chapter was very interesting and validating to me, while at the same time somehow kind of feeling like more setup for the rest of the book. I'm doing my best to keep fully trusting where Odell is bringing us, but we're halfway through the book now and it feels like we're still mired in description and diagnostic work, which yes is very important and everything but I think a lot of us are kinda here for the prescriptive work!! at the same time as I feel that, I do suspect that the structure of the book is communicating that her main point or claim is less a "here's the things you need to do" and more of proposing nuanced collective attitudinal shift, which is harder but might be more valuable than "top 10 things YOU can do to FIGHT FACEBOOK." I'm glad this chapter digs in on labor movements, because it's becoming clearer and clearer how connected attention is to labor and production. it seems to me that the function/effect of the attention economy, aside from making lots of money off aggregating and selling data, IS to atomize people's attention so that everything else we could use our attention for (fighting for labor rights, human rights, prison abolition, etc) suffers. that might sound like a conspiracy theory to someone who doesn't fully get how systems of power work, but I don't mean it in the "shadowy cabal stopping labor movements" way, I mean it in the "the attention economy wouldn't be taking over the world & public discourse in the way it is if it didn't benefit those in power" way. the reason this chapter felt validating is because it helped me realize that a lot of the things I've been doing for years are acts of refusal in place. I've previously identified that quality as just being resistant to peer pressure, which is true, but in a larger sense, I give no inherent importance to law or social convention. a lot of them are practically useful, but at least as many of them are useless or actively harmful. but I also think that even for social conventions that ARE benign, it's still valuable to have people standing outside of them and pointing them out for what they are!! no matter how useful or benign a law or social norm is, it's still really important to recognize them as Constructed Societal Things, rather than as inherent facts of nature. it's kind of the court jester philosophy. there's a reason why that was a respected position for a long time: people in power needed someone at hand who didn't hold any of their ideas or traditions sacred and could point out their absurdity and arbitrary nature. we should reinstate court jesters. President, Vice Pres, Secretary of State or whatever, and then Presidential Jester. might not happen but we can at least all embrace the jester in the royal court of our minds. lastly I appreciate the part of this chapter that gets the most concrete with what Odell's proposing: "What is needed, then, is not a "once-and-for-all" type of quitting but ongoing training: the ability not just to withdraw attention, but to invest it somewhere else, to enlarge and proliferate it, to improve its acuity. We need to be able to think across time scales when the mediascape would have us think in twenty-four-hour (or shorter) cycles, to risk unpopularity by searching for context...to closely study the ways that media and advertising play upon our emotions, to understand the algorithmic versions of ourselves...and to know when we are being guilted, threatened, and gaslighted into reactions that come not from will and reflection but from fear and anxiety." ugh. like everything, the best answer seems to be the obvious one: put in the consistent, small, long effort to change what you can in yourself and your interaction with the world. this is probably why I'm occasionally finding myself frustrated by all this description and diagnosis with so little tangible prescription. there's no pill to take, it's as simple and as hard as just doing the work. i suspect a lot of us were to some extent drawn to this space by CJ's constant, visible resistance to the cultural norms of social media, so we know the potential of making art that resists in place. like they said about Diogenes, individual resistance can open up a pocket for other people to join in and align together. i fuck with it.

benedict.m
>>121508670

also here are like three little things I do to resist in place: 1) make your data hard to aggregate! anybody else use google rewards where they give you creepy surveys about where you've been in the last few days? well I do and I consistently answer their surveys completely randomly and nonsensically. this may functionally do nothing but it at least becomes a misleading data point in google's attempt to control everyone. 2) steal from big companies if you can! yes I may be a little bit of a kleptomaniac (I talk to therapists about it dw) but I also have never been able to convince myself of any single person who is harmed by my stealing something from wawa or cvs or target. even the companies themselves aren't really hurt by it because they assume a certain amount of theft, but if you can slightly benefit while only maybe hurting a massive company, I say go for it!! stealing from people is bad, but corporations aren't people. 3) be neurodivergent (openly if you can) and/or be close to neurodivergent ppl! I may not be the best person to make this point because I'm only PRETTY sure that I'm on the spectrum, but I am willing to bet that there's a very good autistic reading of Bartleby somewhere out there. part of the reason neurodivergent perspectives are so important is because they often stand a little outside social norms and can thus often see those social norms a lot more clearly than people who comfortably fit within them. I don't personally hold disdain for most social norms--a lot of them are really nice and help things go smoothly--but I'm very grateful that for whatever reason my brain does not treat norms as inherently valuable, and I enjoy resisting the stupid ones. 4) be critical of the media you consume! probably not a tip I need to give to anyone here, and I certainly get enjoyment from the occasional piece of media that's mindless or even conveys harmful ideas, but we should be examining EVERYTHING that enters our brains. art creates/reflects culture so do what you can to affect and change art.

BrEaNs

--- Diogenes and Quality --- An ongoing question/concern/something that keeps coming up for me is how you know something is "Quality." This question/concern/something reared its head for me this time in response to the Diogenes discussion. Diogenes is a figure that comes up a fair bit whenever Ancient Greece enters the conversation, but an unfortunate connection I now have to Diogenes comes from the Qanon documentary “Q: Into the Storm” (sidenote: this series is an oddly good historical document because the documentarian was extremely close to very important people in the Q world -- I recommend watching it if you want to know more about Qanon). That documentary covers 8chan owner/most-likely-candidate-for-authoring-many-Q-posts Ron Watkins, who, at one point, brings up the story of Diogenes taking a shit in public as an example of someone being coolly indifferent to what other (lesser) people think. It’s something that speaks to Ron’s wider ethos of chan cynicism. At one point, we watch Ron troll powerful Republican operatives over zoom even though he’s ostensibly on their side. Truly no one escapes his sense of weird, smug superiority. Anyways, Ron’s interpretation of Diogenes is obviously extremely different from Odell’s. Odell’s interpretation is also likely much much more well reasoned than Ron’s (who probably did the intellectual equivalent of reading a Snapple cap at some point). The fact that people can get to wildly different places using the same stories is concerning, even if we can vaguely gesture to “doing more research” as a possible solution. The Ron Watkins v. Jenny Odell analysis brought up some lingering feelings from Lila for me. In Lila, the character of Rigel critiques Phaedrus/Pirsig by saying “'You made a statement in your book that everyone knows and agrees to what ‘Quality’ is. Obviously everyone does not! You refused to define ‘Quality,’ thus preventing any argument on the subject” In my opinion, Phaedrus/Pirsig go on to almost kinda prove Rigel right by going on this racist rant near the end of the book, thus revealing that even Pirsig doesn’t quite know what Quality is. The book is ultimately salvaged for me due to Pirsig’s humanity, as seen in his discussions of insanity, but I still I viscerally feel like there is a hole in Pirsig’s work (sidenote: looking forward to the Quality video partly due to this reason). I feel like this tension is resolvable in some sense with more thought, but I don’t feel like doing that right now so bye. --- Unions --- The union thing felt very powerful to me because of chapter 2. There’s something about lingering on people’s failure to abandon the world that makes people showing up for something truly good more powerful. “Where did the people come from, where was San Francisco hiding them, in what factories, what docks, what are they doing there, marching, or standing and watching, not saying anything just watching?” Just a great image. “The ‘schizoid’ collective brain cannot act, only react blindly and in misaligned ways to a barrage of stimuli, mostly out of fear and anger” Captures a very visceral feeling I (and probably a lot of people here at the weekly KTI summit) feel about online discourse. Anyways, something I’ve often observed about myself in relation to the thought of protests is that I seem to be unable to meaningfully keep up with actual meaningful political action because I’m so wound up by random other stuff that I can’t keep focus on it. This observation sometimes comes with the feeling that becoming politically active would necessitate something like me suddenly “seeing through the matrix” and just suddenly knowing how to do everything or (failing that me being overtaken by something like God. The San Francisco quote is partly resonant to me because it implies that something Good really can overtake people. Or maybe that Good is readably findable somehow --- Mental Health Rambles --- An unavoidable tension I keep having with this book is my relation to my mental health. Among other things, I underwent a period of OCD-induced agoraphobia. So, when I hear things like Hseih’s “my mind was not in prison”, I can understand what is meant but I can’t help but to also think about times my mind was a prison. That is part of where the anxiety mentioned in the Quality section comes from. I’m not going to divulge more personal info in a patreon comment section (rn), but I think it’s good for me to note this as more than just a passing thought somewhere. The book is definitely somewhat therapeutic for me because it can act as a low stakes way for me to engage with certain aspects of my mental health. --- Other Observations --- I like the Trainee art piece. The observation that avoiding work is expected but that doing truly nothing is defiant is cool. “Sometimes it feels as if taking care of our own health is a guilty pleasure.” Unfortunately, I relate to this quote too much. Also saw this attitude in my own college’s Facebook meme page (Swampy Memes for TWAMPy Teens).

mia

this week’s section reminded me a lot of legacy russell’s idea of the glitch as refusal in their manifesto “glitch feminism”!! they describe it as a “sociocultural malware” to break down systems through strategic disruption and refusal, “...activating new architecture through malfunctions…”. although russell’s idea has more to do with utilizing the internet as a third space to refuse existing binaries, the core sentiment of nonperformance to propel change is the same(ish) i think…maybe... also the part discussing the culture of misery at universities stuck out to me since it’s something i see everyday, including the disaffected memes about said misery. i go to uc berkeley which she mentioned for the caption “when you get your summer internship and celebrate committing yourself to being yet another cog in a vast capitalist machine” which fits the bill for any college meme page tbh but did prompt instant disdain for the school. i understand wanting to acknowledge one’s suffering to make it appear like a choice (so it hurts less?) or girlbossify the sacrifices made for success, but the hopelessness of it all makes me sad i guess. it comes off very “yaaasss i hate what my life has become as we all do and will continue to!” (which my therapist told me to stop doing)

Ajey Pandey

The more Odell wrote about the privilege of being able to refuse, the more I lose sympathy—i especially have limited sympathy for the Stanford meme pages, because I DID go to engineering school! I was in those “lmao sleep” classes and now I literally live in an expensive-ass city! And my take has become: - C’s do actually get degrees - Most cities are FAR cheaper than SF/NYC/BOS/GTA, and even the pricey cities aren’t bad if you limit your drinking and ubering - You don’t have to do everything that the internet zeitgeist expects of someone like you I have found a lot of value of replacing the phases “I don’t have the time for…” and “I can’t afford…” with “I will not spend the time/money on…” That change in phrasing wrests my time/money/attention back into my sphere of agency I have time to read this book on the train to work because I took Hinge off my phone I can afford an apartment without a roommate because I don’t have a car Is my refusal to watch TV a based, pilled, and Diogenian civil disobedience? Kinda. It has derailed some conversations in funny ways. But also if I did watch TV, I wouldn’t have time to exercise I can’t really judge Talia Jane (the blogger who got fired from Yelp) because I’ve never needed to work service jobs to make ends meet, but I’m familiar enough with Stanford Duck Syndrome to know that if those students stopped playing League of Legends and only aimed for 75% on their homeworks, they’d have more time to sleep but also Odell undersells the capacity for interdependence enabling refusal. If you can’t take a stand against a shitty situation because you’re literally one paycheck away from eviction, then your entire social network has failed you. Where are your parents? Where is your extended family? Are literally ALL your friends and neighbors unable to help you even a little bit? Being able to rely on other people isn’t a privilege, it’s literally how humans are evolved, which is precisely why loneliness puts you under a life-shortening amount is stress

Chandler Sterling

Sorry to start this post with a flashbang, but the performance art of Pilvi Takala just kept making me think of Borat. Something about the intentional ignorance of social norms scratched a similar itch in my head. Can't apologize enough for bringing it up, I swear I am not one of those guys that does a Borat impression at a party whenever I run out of things to say; it was just sitting on my mind too much to leave unsaid. Time to try and salvage whatever might be left of my reputation. There is something incredibly cute about Diogenes praising a kid for outplaying him at his own game. "Once, seeing a child drinking from his hands, Diogenes threw away his cup and said, "A child has beaten me in the plainness of living." (pg. 66) That kind of thing just gets me every time. It's the perfect encapsulation of why I think people wring their hands about iPad kids, but I won't elaborate. Sidebar: I think the kids are fine actually, I just think our hopes have been too focused on going back to a pre-"smart"phone world when that was never going to be possible. If we want the next generation to make a change we can't tell them how to do it, that would just be current generation thinking. Also a big fan of Cicero's matter-of-factness. "For Cicero, there can be no ethics without free will, and that is enough to put an end to the question." (pg. 71) No further comment necessary, I just love it. The section about Stanford really hit home, especially, "He adds that even though Stanford emphasizes self-care in its new student orientation, 'it seems to have been lost on everyone here.'" (pg. 88) I'm currently working for a company that tries to emphasize how incredible their "work culture" is because we're in a sector that is notorious for constant turnover. The only problem is that they assume because they have added a couple of less traditional benefits, that makes the culture instantly healthier. They don't have to worry about actually changing the mindset of how the work should get done; as long as they provide the options, it's our fault if we don't take advantage of them. The more the culture is brought up at this point, the more clear it becomes that management just assumes that as long as they're seen saying that we have a "self-care culture" it makes it impossible to argue against when they set impossible deadlines. I'm, let's say, unpleased with how the idea of self-care has been warped into something that can be weaponized for more of the same with a new coat of paint. To cap this all off, I am somewhat grateful the Odell is not just building to "delete Facebook." I'm not against deleting social media if it works for you, but that won't stop everyone around you from sitting on their phones and showing you the cool Tiktoks they found. (This is coming from someone who, despite never having a Tiktok account, has seen many, many Tiktoks.) Without a collaborative action, like a digital strike, you haven't killed the attention economy, you've just outsourced it to your friends. Deleting Facebook is probably a good idea though if you can swing it. Even the 1930s strikes had to start with one group printing those papers. Keep Killing the Internet everyone!

margaret (formerly Samson)

(Draft reply to BrEaNs’ ch 1 comment: “Sorry, you had 8 HOURS of Internet that week??? I had 38 and 3/4- half was YouTube. I have it on while I work and all, but still. 😬😬😬I somehow mind it less when it's "phone time," but if I call it TV I feel a lot shittier about it.”) Three Anecdotes Re: Screen Time, Attention, and Parenting. Anecdote 1: When I was a kid, my mom would imply that she thought I was lazy for being so attached to the TV. That I was actively and directly choosing to do, as she put it, mediocre work in school. I wasn't sure why I couldn't get away from TV, why i couldn’t just do my homework, why I wasn’t interested in other things, why I didn't have a “hobby” or “passion”, like "normal people". I didn't understand myself, and was constantly just disappointed with my behavior but had no idea what was wrong or how to go about fixing it. My parents, I knew, had no help to give - they were out of their depth. And I'm somewhat confident that my adolescent struggle with Content Addiction was probably due to some undiagnosed autism and ADHD. I struggled to make friends, and even if I had them, suburban sprawl made that mostly impossible to act on, and my executive function ability had me in the path of least resistance pretty much all the time. But how much of that is just me making excuses? How much of that is my rat brain sensing an easy avoidance of responsibility and slamming that Neurodivergent button to try to avoid any sort of change? I didn't enjoy life, but isn't it my own fault for not building a life to enjoy? (Not that I knew how, but you know) Even today, as a whole ass adult with a functioning household and a decently diversified portfolio of ways I spend my time, I still can't really get myself to cut down my screen time. When I cut out TikTok earlier this year, YouTube moved in to fill the void pretty rapidly. The amount of time didn't change, although I do feel less shitty about the contents. I don't know how to walk away from it. I don't know how to not be constantly listening to something - a podcast, an essay, "The Fashion Epidemic", " Small Talk is Good Actually", Pride and Prejudice (2005), "Vampires and the Gays that Love Them". “Twitter Sins.” For one, my job is just not that engaging. I have to force myself to do it, so part of how I do is by pairing it with a background audio that is engaging enough that I won't get sidetracked by some other app the instant that a webpage takes more than 5 seconds to load. But also it's just a part of living for me anymore. That's how I forced myself to do homework in college. It's how I get myself to do anything that my brain isn't really interested in doing. And, even when it comes to doing something without Content around (like writing this comment), I have no idea how to force that focus to happen, no idea how to schedule it with any likelihood of follow-through. Getting into a Good Task like this takes so much of something that I don't seem to have. My willpower is so chronically tired - I have absolutely no idea how normal people do it. But is Content Crutch a valid strategy? Is that actually a reasonable thing to do in lieu of medication? Or did I fall down on the tilted floor and hit my head, and am now responsible for picking myself up and avoiding such a mistake again? Or was this inevitable, and I'm just suffering the consequences of our society? The dichotomy is almost certainly false. It's probably both - it's a valid strategy... that's also suboptimal, it's not my fault... but it is now my responsibility. But also I hate that. Was I just born without that extra layer to the brain that everyone else seems to have that allows them to get shit done? Or did I let it atrophy by enjoying SpongeBob and Fairly Oddparents when I was 12 and starting off a chain of dominoes? Anecdote 2: I’ve been watching a lot of Dr. K’s work this week. All hail the mighty algorithm for sending it my way, I guess? I’m specifically drawn to his lectures (i think that’s a fair name for what he does with those) about discipline, motivation, energy levels, attention, etc. And in learning from him, the general vibe that I get is basically the same as what CJ said in the Bo video - “we tilted the floor and sent babies down the slanted ground, and then called them selfish for hitting their heads on the pavement” (1:23:00ish.) But instead of “we” being facebook etc, “we” is the collective human decision to do a Western Civilization, and “Tilting the floor” also included “failing to value and pass on the knowledge that we may have had about how to take care of our inner emotional lives and cope with our existence.” Anecdote 3: After 6 months of waiting, i’m finally able to borrow Hunt, Gather, Parent from the library. HGP is about how Western people maybe need to shut the fuck up and listen to indigenous people and learn from them about how to parent, because we might actually be creating more anxiety and competitiveness by raising children the way we generally do. It’s a pop-parenting book, but i can hear echoes of this book club in there. Anecdote 4: My own fucking kid is addicted to the screens. She’s not even 3 yet, and she asks for bluey every time the opportunity presents itself. Jake and I are really unsure how to handle it, there doesnt seem to be any right answer. Also, all of that is my fault, no? I'm her parent, I'm her default parent, even - i'm more responsible than anyone for /that/. --------- Ch. 3 Thoughts Proper: This chapter didn’t really speak to me much. I listened to it twice - while ironing curtains for my bedroom (which i don’t really like TBH, too yellow for the space) – and i don’t feel the extra listen did much for me. https://photos.app.goo.gl/TzsykSNHnbtycpgs5 Except for the last couple of pages. When Odell starts talking about the foundational power of Attention, and how that basically opens up our ability to do literally anything else, that’s when i started to feel the Kill the Internet feeling. Especially in connection to my daughter. Odell says she is interested in “a mass movement of attention: what happens when people regain control over their attention and begin to direct it again, together.” (p. 93) I mean really, that’s it. The extent of my thoughts on this: Odell (in the last few pages) made a compelling argument as to why getting control of where we spend our attention should be the first priority. Prior to this chapter, i had been feeling a bit out of sync with the concept of “kill the internet”. It seemed too harsh, too extreme. I think now, i’m feeling some of the anger. Angry that, between my childhood and early adulthood, TV and the Internet have been a tilted floor upon which I have fallen. I sort of chose to stay on that floor when i first started watching Bob’s Burgers while doing homework back in college, and I now have to relearn how to exist without some sort of companionate content to take the edge off. And these corporations are also coming after Jo and her attention span and autonomy? Fuck that. Fuck them. I want to protect her. I have to protect myself too. I hate how much Dr. K’s work has been really useful in giving practical behaviors to practice to strengthen our control over our mind (often involving “don’t use your goddamn phone at all hours good god”). I was interested in it, in part because of BrEaNs’ ch1 comment, and in part because it was particularly relevant to my brain and job at the moment. But it actually feels like a good “further reading” kind of exercise - things like “eat mindfully, without watching something” or ‘don’t use your phone while you go to the bathroom” or “don’t use the phone for the first couple of hours of the day” - fucking simple shit that anyone could do if we only had some restraint. I can feel a part of my brain saying “no, it can’t be that practical, changing a couple of rules can’t change my brain”. I can feel myself avoiding the potential cure to an ailment that is, at least somewhat, self-inflicted– it would also come with the weight of having self inflicted in the first place. Admitting that vulnerability feels like a moral failure, a cosmically shitty decision, something I should be ashamed of. But that shame isn’t useful. I need to forgive my 8 year old self, who rewatched Cats (the musical) on VHS over and over, and my 13 year old self, who was lonely after her best friend moved away, and who didn’t have the social skills to rebuild. I need to forgive my 19 year old self, who was just trying to finish some calculus homework, and my 22 year old self, who was grinding away in a data-cleanup job, one step away from data entry, literally copy and pasting text for most of my day and watching Avengers movies on the side to keep from glazing over. I need to forgive my 26 year old self, pregnant and working from home during Covid, binge watching Binging with Babish, effortlessly doing the tasks assigned to me, struggling with the boredom. I need to forgive my 27 year old self for downloading tiktok at the recommendation of my sister, and my 29 year old self for relapsing in that addiction earlier this year even though she’d been the one to get off of that particular drug. (She’s up to 1 week with no dosing, btw.) And then (ugh) I need to actually do the work. To resist. To spend my attention wisely. Frustratingly, as with many healthy habits that i would want to do, i’m not really convinced that I have enough control over myself. I don’t trust myself to follow through with what I should do, want to do, need to do. I dont know if i’m up to the task, and yet it calls.

benedict.m
>>121507971

re: third spaces, I think that urban planning concept is usually called a "third place," so it's technically different I guess. but I do think they might be related concepts. third places like public libraries that are neutral environments, not home and not the workplace, belonging to everyone and no one (kinda), are probably conducive to the kind of "third space" thinking that Odell is talking about: "an almost magical exit to another frame of reference." idk that's my attempt to connect those concepts.

Xaris _

Is it alright if I ask how people are sharing photos? I’m new to this Patreon (joined for the book club) and I’d like to share as I go along too.

margaret (formerly Samson)
>>121538911

There are a couple who are sharing via imgur - I haven't been on there in years and don't know how to use it, so I've been using Google photos lol. (someone tell me if that's actually not working tho)

margaret (formerly Samson)
>>121523007

That last point, about our social networks failing us - I think that's actually exactly correct. If, for some reason, my husband and i couldn't pay for our home by ourselves anymore (and we have a mortgage - much more stable than renting) there are a couple of options we could theoretically have: 1) ask my parents for money (his don't have much extra to help) 2) ask our church friends for money 3) see if we can move in with someone in our city (and put our stuff in a storage locker indefinitely) 4) move to my mom's house in the suburbs of another city 5) try to quickly find a smaller, shittier house that costs less per month 6) I could see if selling feet pictures online actually gets you $. The problems with options 1 and 2 are the indefinite nature of the request for help (this month? Next month? How long?) and the size of the ask (half of Americans can't cover a surprise cost of like 600 bucks or something like that. We do personally know people who would be totally fine (ourselves included), but still.) Top that off with the "wait why did you spend money on other things, where is your financial wisdom?" question, and the situation becomes very awkward. A lot of our relationships now aren't practiced in handling that awkwardness. Option 3 would be theoretically fine... but again, it's a huge ask to make of a friend, and assumes they have space for a family of 3, and it's likely to be indefinite (which carries it's own relationship stress.) Living with someone can be an extremely stressful transition - I would be worried about the survival of the friendship. Option 4 is a nonstarter for us in particular. Husband has a contractor business here - he can't leave our city. So that situation would look like him having a 2 hour each way commute, or sleeping in his van on weeknights, while I act as a mostly single parent to my toddler while also working from home. My mom would be some help, but she has a job too. The days would be miserable for me, and the nights would be miserable for husband. So that leaves options 5 and 6, which are really just "do things our current system would incentivize and hope that the extra stress/worse living conditions aren't actually so bad. Obviously, your comment isn't specifically about the finer details of a social support system in action. It's striking to me though, that when you said "your social system should support you", my immediate thought was "that's not practical". It's like our culture has eroded not just our relationship ties to each other, but also our practical ties. The systems around us have taught us to be selfish, to save no extra in case someone we love is in need. We've lost the relational skills we would need if we were sharing large resources like shelter. I don't lay this at the feet of individuals. Not really. I am sure they have some part to play, but mostly I think it's just due to the broader Capitalism/White Supremacy/Patriarchy situation that's been brewing for centuries now. :/

Ajey Pandey
>>121533177

Dr. K has been SUPER helpful for me too! I’ve been thinking about the changes in my psychology as an upward spiral—it starts with a few small steps in the right direction, which make the next steps easier and easier until you look back and realize you’ve transformed your life in a year.

Xaris _

https://imgur.com/a/2ETjR8R Okay, all my comments and thoughts are in the descriptions of the pictures I posted. I took notes in the margins via post-it notes so that I wouldn't be limited by the amount of space in the margins. Don't worry, I transcribed what I wrote down so you don't have to attempt to read my handwriting. :)

valentin

Anatomy of a Refusal is a hard chapter title. Here's some scatterbrained thoughts on this chapter. 1. Diogenes of Sinope The Diogenes of Sinope talk is interesting. I've always thought of him more as a counter-cultural weird lil guy, but Odells description as an example of a refusal better/more useful. Also To refuse does not mean to disengage. To disagree you still have to answer. "Will you or will you not participate as asked?" "I will participate, but not as asked." (p.68) What is my answer/refusal? What is yours? I think what we're doing here is a refusal. It genuinely mends my soul to sit here and write down my thoughts once every week. We're enganging in long form conversation about a text. Reclaiming our attention. Discourse on the internet, but not on their (the mediums) terms. Which brings me to 2. Katniss Everdeen First, I will take credit for people (CJ) rewatching the Hunger Games series. Thank you and you're welcome. I'm writing an essay on the Hunger Games right now, doing a read on the series from the perspective of the Internet and Mediums of our age. The original inspiration for the Hunger Games was Television and its tendency to reduce subjects to Entertainment. (the Now This... principle that Postman talked about. Yes we are doing intersectional Book Clubbing now) Here's Suzanne Collins (Author of the Hunger Games series) on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MiVBAPg6TU As I'm writing, more and more information is revealed to me, so while im sort of slowly chipping at the Behemoth of a topic that the Hunger Games series is the scope is increasing constantly. There is lots to be said about this series and you will not hear me shut up about this anytime soon. https://imgur.com/YFgt9PA (annotation of me realizing this is literally the Hunger Games) 3. Rosa Parks "Rosa parks was "acting not reacting" when she refused to get up from her seat." (p.82) I think being *for something* and not *against something* is always better, especially when it comes to political action. I've been thinking about the Love & Fear dialectic a lot recently (it has come up in therapy) and ordering your action towards Love instead of away from Fear has been something I've been trying to do recently. Don't tear something down if you don't know what to build instead of it. 4. Jenny Odell Lastly, Odell and her writing style have grown on my over the last and this chapter. I was indifferent to it at first but I do consider her to be quite smart and charming now that I'm this far into the book. The part where she explains memes on page 89 is really funny and near and dear to my heart. Love this book. Love you guys. Remember to kiss a tree and hug a friend.

BrEaNs
>>121578450

This was really cool! Seeing the post-its themselves added something for me

Adison

oh hellloooo.. i’m late but not nearly as late as usual! i’m feeling called to call myself out and talk about distraction. “To pay attention to one thing is to resist paying attention to other things; it means constantly denying and thwarting provocations outside the sphere of one’s attention. We contrast this with distraction, in which the mind is disassembled, pointing in many different directions at once and preventing meaningful attention.” (81) she got me here. i’ve always kind of taken pride in having a brain that feels like it can branch out in hundreds of different directions, that feels like it can multitask into oblivion. But like, she’s right in the quote above, fragmentation and distraction can lead to an inability to put my full focus into anything. for a long time, the ability to fragment myself into pieces has felt like a superpower, a way to escape from whatever thought process feels too overwhelming to handle. As I’ve gotten older though, I find I have less desire to fragment myself…. I return to fragmentation in the body, the inability to control my muscles, to feel abandoned by my own brain. As I’ve allowed myself to space and time to learn how to give attention to my body, I’ve found greater community within myself. And I think that’s why I’m so drawn to killing the internet or whatever. For me, my relationship with the physical body (and my attention to it!) has allowed me to create space within myself; space to understand myself and the world. “That’s because attention undergirds every other kind of meaningful refusal: it allows us to reach Thoreau’s higher perspective, and forms the basis of a disciplined collective attention that we see in successful strikes and boycotts whose laser-like focus withstood all the attempts to disassemble them.” (90) so i guess going forward from here… i want to find more space with myself. Tonight as I’ve been writing this I’ve been eating my dinner in silence and purposely giving all my attention to writing this. Besides my cats distracting me, I’ve been able to give attention to myself and all of you! And it feels really nice!

ursula

Hiya, I'm here late but here nonetheless. I must admit I was unfamiliar with the notion of Third Spaces before encountering them in this chapter. I may have an angle on them to offer. In an article I read last year on ancient Greek religion, dress codes and identity-of-place (promise I won't go off on a tangent about the subject of the article itself), they cite an author named Yi-Fu Tuan: an influential "humanist geographer". One of his most pioneering works was a book called 'Space and Place. The Perspective of Experience'. In the book he explores the distinction between 'space' and 'place'. Tuan acknowledges that the boundaries between them are often blurred, but he proposes that "space" is essentially unfamiliar or "undifferentiated" space, and something only becomes a "place" when we experience it and gain familiarity with it. Here's a passage they quote from his book: "From the security and stability of place we are aware of the openness, freedom, and threat of space, and vice versa. Furthermore, if we think of space as that which allows movement, then place is pause; each pause in movement makes it possible for location to be transformed into place" (Tuan 1977, 6) This reminds me of Odell's emphasis on being able to retreat but always returning. Another similarity I'm seeing is how awareness of the characteristics of a 'place' requires moving into a 'space' to gain perspective on how it differs from the already-defined 'place' - much like Odell's suggestion that figures like Diogenes, Bartleby, and Pilvi Takala can facilitate heightened awareness of the often unspoken codes governing our behaviours, through their "standing apart" from societal convention. I'm not entirely sure where I'm going with these connections - but I've noticed them so I will offer them here for you. Hope I haven't drifted too far away or misunderstood Third Spaces. I climbed a tree to read this chapter - here are a few pics (feat. bonus moss patch on the tree): https://imgur.com/a/cOSa2fy

Halley

Reading spots: on my regular 20 min bus commute or in my hammock under the pear and walnut trees (last time I was reading here some woodpeckers and Eurasian jays visited so I had to stop and give them my attention) https://imgur.com/a/nmk9upt Attention and intention has been at the forefront of my mind. I started taking medication for something between 'attention deficit' and hyperactivity. Maybe it’s more about "misdirected" attention rather than a deficit. I'm trying to reach that equilibrium between my mind running too hot or too cold. It struck me that perhaps the wording of the diagnosis is trying to say something about where I need to focus my efforts. Awareness, directing attention, selective noticing. Like birdwatching- heightened awareness by limiting the focus. (I think the first episode of the new season of big city greens showed this in a really cute way) you are what you eat - what you consume - (media, art, experience) - it becomes part of you, your references, your lexicon- that which you give attention to The word pretention kept popping up in response to the performance art. It feels taboo to say it but I'm trying to pin down what it is that gives me a certain feeling I also associate with gentrification and cultural appropriation. I guess it seems condescending somehow, like a show of privilege to be able to blur the line between life and art. As if to say, when *you* do it its just life with all its consequences but when *I* do it, its art. The privilege is a safety net of providing context for being weird. I'm not necessarily against it, I think I'm mostly frustrated by the societal expectations that make it difficult or dangerous or impossible for the most of us to live our lives freely as our weird selves. I find myself filtering everything through a lens of neurodivergence now that I have the vocabulary and awareness of it. "when we teach children about racism, sexism, and imperialism throughout history, we should highlight how the oppressed were often branded as hysterical, paranoid, and insane. it's important that all people (neurodiverse and neurotypical alike) come to realize how narrow definitions of sanity and functioning are used to harm and dehumanize." (Unmasking Autism, Dr. Devon Price) This chapter reminded me of one of my professors from some social justice class telling me that there are basically three avenues to change- you can try to change the system from within, put pressure on it from outside, or - create an entirely new path, an alternative. Because I can't help myself I'm going to leave you with some Rollo May quotes that felt related to this chapter: "Wheras moral courage is the righting of wrongs, creative courage, by contrast, is the discovering of new forms, new symbols, new patterns on which a new society can be built. " "in religion, it is not the sycophants or those who cling most faithfully to the status quo who are ultimately praised. It is the insurgents. Recall how often in human history the saint and the rebel have been the same person... those we call saints rebelled against an outmoded and inadequate form of God on the basis of their new insights into divinity... they rebelled against God in the name of God beyond God. The continuous emergence of the God beyond God is the mark of creative courage in the religious sphere." "whatever sphere we may be in, there is a profound joy in the realization that we are helping to form the structure of the new world." I feel like the prescription this book is moving toward is building some kind of attention autonomy. first becoming aware of how our attention is being manipulated and then regaining control over it to be able to affect some kinds of personal and social change.

Halley
>>121708388

gorgeous reading spot! love the moss :) this section (+ yours + @annabel_182 's comments) gave me the push to watch this video on the loss of third places I'd seen floating around, I thought it was pretty interesting in the context of this discussion: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ku9csXhvJY&t=1269s&ab_channel=ElliotSang) I wanted to check what David Abrams had to say in relation to this distinction between place and space so I'm leaving here some quotes from The Spell of the Sensuous: "each place has its own dynamism, its own patterns of movement, and these patterns engage the senses and relate them in particular ways, instilling particular moods and modes of awareness... each place has its own mind, its own personality, its own intelligence." "so a cyclical mode of time does not readily distinguish itself from the spatial field in which oral persons find themselves experientially immersed. We must remember however that this experiential space is itself very different from the static, homogenous void that alphabetic civilization has come to call "space". Space, for an oral culture, is directly experienced as place or as places- as a differentiated realm containing diverse sites, each of which has its own power, its own way of organizing our senses and influencing our awareness."

Xaris _
>>121712089

I relate on how you feel about performance art. Like, I usually feel like they're turning to look at me in the crowd and being like "even when you're not doing anything in particular you're wrong". Not to mention how like, me doing things to accommodate my neurodivergence is often doing things out of the ordinary and noticeable. To them what is art is me just trying to do what is necessary. My dad as well was always doing something that made my mom socially anxious, but he wasn't doing anything on purpose, he was just being himself. I do like performance art, but it does point the finger at pretty much everyone else observing, "You aren't as different as me". If I start to think of radical self love as performance art, it helps me feel more okay with standing out for being myself. Wearing my weird clothes and doing my things to calm down and focus on what I want to focus on. But ideally, I want to be around people who don't make me feel like an odd sight.

Teralin

read this chapter a while ago...I'm catching up slowly but surely to the actual book club posts though. I don't remember a whole lot of what I specifically wanted to say about this chapter, but I do remember that after reading it, it sent me down a slight performance art rabbit hole which landed me back at "Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present" -- which is a performance art documentary that made me s o b. NOW YOU WANT TO TALK ABOUT DOING NOTHING?! imagine sitting in the met for 7 hours a day for 3 months staring at people. it does sort of bring me back to Odell in that the endurance that abramovic's work takes is a practice in the willful execution of attention. it takes work. I struggle sometimes with KTI because everyone here is so smart and has such well thought out comments on the chapter that my brain starts to hurt and I have to stop. not even hurt, just I'm reading and my insides start to scream "IT'S TIME TO DO SOMETHING ELSE NOW" so I do. ain't that a bitch. I'm working very hard on building that endurance/focus/attention muscle.

reva

this chapter was really fun. i loved reading about diogenes and hsieh and takala and their silly hijinks. when i'm in public i often want to just stop in the middle of a sidewalk and look at something or go lie down in the middle of a grassy area just to see what things look like from that perspective, but i worry what people will think of me. i want to learn to worry less about that and just do whatever the fuck i want! the description of the stanford duck syndrome made me very glad that i did not go to a prestigious university for undergrad. i always just got the vibe that the culture would be bad for me and i was absolutely right. that being said any college has kids getting burnt out and extremely stressed about grades and it's really upsetting that this is kind of just how it is for us. it feels like people simultaneously tell us not to worry too much about our grades while giving us failing grades on all of our exams and leaving us to worry all semester about whether the curve will let us pass or not. my personal hope is that everybody can benefit from training their attention, especially people with a smaller margin to do so. it is much harder to take any action when you are in a precarious financial situation, but i really do hope that even increasing the quality of your attention within your own mind can improve people's lives, in some small way. the impact attention can have for the most marginalized people feels like the most important part of this to me.

reva
>>122945665

ahhhhhhhh i just remembered while reading other comments that the mention of sleep being the last vestige of humanity that capitalism cannot appropriate reminded me strongly of a game called hypnospace outlaw. it's set in a version of 1999-2000 where they invented a version of the internet you can use while you're asleep, i haven't gotten super far into it yet but it definitely has something to say about capitalism. also a bitingly accurate portrayal of online communities. highly recommend

Jodediah Holems
>>124052327

oh okay mobile web patreon doesn't know how to do linebreaks. anyway this ch3 made me cry twice, once super hard. i have been doing an audio recording of the book, reading the whole thing aloud, so that's part of why I'm moving so slowly through it. i think the audio recording of me breaking down and continuing to read through tears is powerful because i was not conscious of the potential for an audience. it's genuine and it is raw. lmk if you want to hear it-- B.G.D.C.

E. LeStrange

Diogenes is my new hero. The over-identification stuff makes me think of "malicious compliance" although in this case I think it's more "mischievous compliance". The only way to win the game is to play it, just not as intended.

JustConnor

okie dokie part 3 this was a grand ol time, and a great chapter. diogenes and hsieh are so fun and awesome. this chapter really gifted me a greater appreciation for performative art. "thoreau's ultimate hope was that if enough individual people decided at once to exercise their moral judgement instead of continuing to play the game, then the game might actually change for once." ahh yess fucking changing the game is the goal. dont just quit, stay and unite and then boom. "it's even more important for anyone who does have a margin - even the tiniest one - to put it to use in opening up margins further down the line. Tiny spaces can open up small spaces, small spaces can open bigger spaces. If you can afford to pay a different kind of attention, you should." OKAY YES, lord Odell i will use my privileged ass to at least make some sort of a difference for something. now seriously i realize its important to take a step into a third place. its important for me to not embrace or "ugh captialism" my way into conformity. im genuinely hopeful for this generation, and i see collective attention shifting to this issue. i see more and more people take breaks and detoxes from social media. the disgust for shortform is growing. im genuinely excited and hopeful. tiny spaces are opening to massive spaces. shit sorry like half of that wasnt really take aways from the book but i couldnt resist the hopeful nature of these moments.

JustConnor
>>121589642

holy shit, im working on a video essay right now, and was reflecting on this book to try and fit into my piece, and this comment and the hunger games does fits so amazingly. thanks for this connection and i realize this was literally like almost a year ago, but thanks anyways haha.

phil e the theyby

I finished this chapter while lying in bed ruminating, unable to sleep (which is quite rare for me). It was…a bad time to do so! This chapter felt very powerful overall in its image of refusal, and it’s absolutely an image to hold onto. How do you continue to engage with the game but refuse its terms? That’s kind of the question I’m trying to figure out with my own life and work (which I think a lot of us are, but this chapter made it evident to me how much breathing room I have that other people don’t). This line was really simple, but really grounding for me: “If you can afford to pay a different kind of attention, you should.” (94) I think I do practice this a lot (I actually do use a lot of my privilege to not engage with a lot of the worst parts of the internet, particularly those aimed at more commercial gain), but I also think I have a long way to go. In trying times, I notice the colonization of my attention hitting particularly hard. And I need to push back against that, because I know that I can, while others can’t. The super long sentence on page 93 (“We need to be able to think across…not from will and reflection but from fear and anxiety”) was deeply resonant, but I also realize I have it easier than most in many of the things she listed because I’ve had the privilege to disengage in ways others can’t. This book, and this chapter in particular, requires me to maintain a constant mantra that “this isn’t about telling others how they should live, it’s about learning how to best live myself”). I do want to equip others as best I can, but I do that most effectively by living vibrantly, PUBLICLY, and WELL, connecting with others, and offering perspective and direction when others ask and are curious. I don’t have a positive impact on others by persuading them (or, just as uselessly, by thinking about how I WOULD persuade them but never actually talking to them about it). I have a positive impact on others by actually creating conditions in the world that make it easier to create wider margins (in Odell’s terminology) for others. In a weird way, this feels like our relationships with others feel like another manifestation of the attention economy. Either we’re expected to argue with others and try to change them (since that creates conflict and online engagement), or we’re supposed to distance ourselves from them and retreat to our algorithm bubbles (since that keeps us online more because we feel seen and connected to other folks who agree with us). But what if we did neither? What if we saw disagreements and misalignments and we moved towards them, and towards the people we disagree with, as opportunities to learn and to be changed ourselves? I don’t say this as a way anyone else should live. I don’t know anyone else’s circumstances, or what their “margins” are. But I know that, for myself, I have the space to move towards others who I disagree with (including in their attitudes on the things described in this book), and if and when I can afford to do so, I genuinely feel that I should.