Coalition of the Sane: Why I Want 'Readers' And Not Followers

 

 

This particular article requires I share some of my personal history with the reader.

Those of you who are members of this coalition might be aware that I'm 'on the spectrum'. I wasn't officially diagnosed with what was then referred to as Asperger's until the mid-1990s. By that point I had been seeing multiple therapists for much of my childhood and was well into my teens. It was clear that one major problem I have was depression.

How much of this was feeding on being on the spectrum I don't think I'll ever know for sure. What I do know is that for my formative years and well into my twenties it was an ordeal, particularly as the vast array of antidepressants that are now available today were still being tested and figured out during this period. I've lost track of how many different medications I was on as my therapists and psychiatrist kept trying to find a combination that would work.

The absolute nadir of this period has to have been when I was in college.  I suffered from every variation of symptoms imaginable: lack of sleep, oversleeping, lashing out in anger at those closest to me, being paralyzed at the idea of reaching out to people, being irrationally mad or depressed when things didn't go my way. In hindsight I'm astonished that I not only managed to graduate college but did so with honors given how much of that period I was in such a dark place. At one point – I forget exactly when – I was in such a bleak place that I finally agreed to engage in a series of ECT treatments, something I'd been resisted for years. I had somewhere between half a dozen and ten sessions before it was agreed to end them because it was clear to everyone it wasn't helping my mood.

Now this took place between 1998 and 2002 when teachers were far less equipped then they are today to pick up on the signs of mental instability in their students. I suspect the reason none of my teachers picked up on it was because for their purposes I was very good at masking it. I wasn't a problem student. Indeed I never missed a single assignment when I was in college, never had an outburst in class that caused me to be called to the attention of a teacher, always participated in discussion and despite the fact that I was commuting rather than living on campus had a superb attendance record.

This was, in fact, no doubt part of how being on the spectrum may have helped masked my emotional problems even to those few people (and outside my parents, there really weren't that many people) who were close to me growing up. Like the majority of people on the spectrum I was a slave to the routine and school absolutely provided me with one. It helps matters that I've always loved learning and education and my curriculum had subjects that I was interested in. I knew I was lonely but I'm not sure at the time even I knew just how unhappy I was.

I didn't start to climb out of it until my mid-twenties and even then depression is one of those things where the cliches are true: you have good days and bad days. The reason I have more good days then bad days is because of a combination of finally getting the right kind of medication, finding the right therapist and psychopharmacologist and most of all, time. It took years, maybe even decades, to get to a point where I'm happy most of the time – even given how horrible the world is.

I think if there is a secret to mental health it's that tried but true standard known as the serenity prayer and I'll quote that's most relevant:

Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.

This advice is given to those who suffer from addiction but it's just as viable to those who have mental illnesses. And even though it sounds simple in theory, in practice it's incredibly difficult and it is something that I forget far more often then I remember it. But that's true of everything.

Now as we all know one of the major issues that so many people, particularly those who are young think is pressing, is mental health. As someone who spent his entire life struggling with it, I concur. And its worth remembering that much of my worst struggles came in a pre- 9/11 world as well as one where the internet was barely part of our daily lives much less social media.

And I've made no secret in previous articles about how the election of 2016 threw me off kilter emotionally. I spent November of 2016 until Biden's inauguration with this sense of vertigo that was omnipresent. It didn't have to do with what was on the news or the internet; just the fact of Trump as President did much to give these constant feeling in my stomach that the world as I knew it didn't make sense anymore.

I will get in a future article – perhaps not one related to this series – how I managed to adjust my life so that by the time of the 2024 election I was in a much better place emotionally and am functioning far better then I did during the first Trump Presidency. For the purposes of this article I will only say around this time I started writing for medium, exclusively in regard to television and not even in those reviews of shows that were on point to current events being incredibly vague about referring to it.

That didn't mean I wasn't aware of the majority of the political writers on this site at the time and who very likely still are writing for it. Because I was, like so many people, in a bleak spot I was drawn to their writing out of sympathy for their feelings if not always their views. I got it. But I assumed that once Biden had been elected, and in my somewhat naïve opinion at the time, order had been restored to the world I knew they would begin to modify their tone or they would change the subject. As I've written they never did.

Which brings to the reason why I prefer the term 'readers' to 'followers'. I've joked more than once that the latter term makes me feel like I'm the head of a cult. But there's a more serious underpinning and it has to do with what the majority of the political writers on this center-left site write: a term that many of them actually refer to as 'doomporn'.

I've noticed that it is the most prolific and darkest writers in that site that by far had the biggest following and many still do: I've seen some of the most depressing writers on any subject have anywhere from 50 to 100 thousand followers. And historically when the word 'doom' is used in conjunction with the word 'followers' it rarely has a happy ending for anybody, not the leader, not the followers, not society.

I'm being facetious again. I've also been facetious when I read so many articles and near worshipping comments in these same articles. I don't necessarily see the same writers over and over in each (I'm not the kind of person who keeps track) but it does seem like that. On more than one occasion I've referred to the echo chamber around so many of them as 'the largest, most depressing and ineffective group therapy session I've ever attended.' I was actually being more serious than my tone reflects.

I understand and sympathize with how so many people are upset with how the world is today, how it seems to have always been that way and how we seem to be heading to an inevitable apocalypse. Where I draw the line – and have a visceral contempt for those who work in this field – is the way so many of these writers seemed determined to write this exact same article which offers no hope for any of its readers and then basically asks you to either give a tip or agree to follow their work.

Many of the people who I've expressed hostility towards about this subject have said I've been too sensitive. In truth much of the time I've been keeping the gloves on. Because as someone who struggles with mental health on a regular basis I think there should be a special place in Hell for those who are actively contributed to making that of those around you on a daily basis. And I say that for anyone who does this regardless of what side of the political aisle they're a part of.

I need to be clear I'm more than aware about how much the right is contributing and how much work they've done to make a profit from it and trust me; they are on my shit list just as much. But the thing is, well before 2016, I expected this kind of horrible behavior from them as a matter of course. Well before the so-called 'manosphere' came along I knew just how good the right was at preying on those who were struggling and luring them in and exploiting them for financial and political gain. It's disgusting and its horrible.

I'm also aware that, by comparison, the left's efforts to do so are much smaller. But I'm also aware that there's a difference between 'fewer' and 'none'.  The people on this site or other social media sites are not I will concede as big a problem as those in the world of podcasters or cable news or other websites: I've seen firsthand how horrendous they are online. You'll get no dispute from me that they are by far the biggest problem.

I would argue that it is therefore imperative for all those who consider themselves on the side of the angels – and the left will be the first to tell you they are even if you don't ask – to do everything in their power not to contribute to this cesspool of despair that has seized so many people, particularly the young and those lost by society. I realize that this is difficult given the way the world is and how the right is, I agree, actively making things worse. And  I do understand why so many of those people feel the need for some kind of way to express their feelings on the subject. None of these in themselves are bad things or if they are done, necessarily, being done for the wrong reason.

But the difference between the right's echo chamber of despair and the left's is that the right's gives its followers something they can do to be proactive. You'll get no argument from me its horrible, bigoted and represents the worst aspect of our society but its far more than anyone I've ever seen who writes articles of the same tone ever suggest.

If the right's approach is to sell snake oil, the left won't even bother to do that. They have the same appearance of community but they offer nothing else. They'll tell you the right is selling a fake cure and then not bother to do the next step and offer a fake cure of their own.  It's the same sense of despair and hopelessness but you have nowhere to go with it. The right sells a lie disguised as a truth, the left tells you that they are selling you a lie – and that lie is that no one or nobody can solve the problems.

This understandably has never been a big seller in our society and I suspect its one of the reasons the far left has never been able to manage to take much of a hold in the political eco-system the same way the far right has.  The right, for all its very real lies and contempt, will tell its listeners who the enemy is and what they can do to stop it. The left, by contrast, argues the entire system itself is the enemy and it is so under the control of powerful people the individual or even the collective is hopeless against it. It doesn't matter whether the writer is African-American, LatinX, female or part of the LGBTQ+ community: the tone of futile despair penetrates all of them and rejects any effort to even try to change the system as a waste of time. And by the way read my next article when I tell you the same thing in different words.

Now if one takes all of this to its natural progression, the only thing you can take away from this is that there's nothing anybody can do to help us and we're all doomed. Essentially all these articles are a suicide note for mankind. But very few people on this blog or anywhere will take it to its natural progression. I don't think its because they care about the emotional well-being of others; I think they see their values entirely in their social media presence and the idea of losing even a single follower or being banned from a site because they stop dancing around what they've been implying is too much for them to bear. Oh and I suspect they're making enough money off them to not want to lose any of these readers. And as someone who struggles with his own personal issues with depression and darkness, I can't help but take what these people are saying and implying very personally.

I agree the world has problems. Big ones. But I'm pretty sure the people who write so many of these columns have no more interesting in solving them then the counterparts on the right who've done so much to cause them. Aaron Sorkin in a fictional piece basically said those on the right are interesting in two things: "Making you afraid of it. And telling you who's to blame for it. That is how you win elections."

Well the left is only interested in the second part of that statement. And according to they're writing everyone who isn't them or their readers is to blame for it. That may build a sense of social community but in a way that will solve the problems of today it's completely ineffective.

That is another reason why I eventually had to stop reading so many of the articles, posts and other comments by the left. Because at the end of the day, it's no more good for my mental health then if I were to watch Fox News or listen to Alex Jones. I have the same problems with the world that the left will point out and I have sympathy for those who feel that they are lost in it. But as someone who wants to actually solve the problems in these articles I can assure you that the 5000^th article on how capitalism is evil or how Newt Gingrich destroyed Congress or anything Trump breathed about will not do anything to make it better, nor will expressing comments saying how smart and wise the writer is for pointing out something they no doubt saw on TikTok or YouTube five minutes ago and that the rest of the world knew years ago. Yes the right is putting so much noise into the world it is hard to talk to each other. But your articles are just a different kind of noise to a different set of listeners. Noise is noise, no matter which person is shouting it. I'm not going to drink your Kool-Aid any more then theirs and its not just because I never liked Kool-Aid at all.