October 11, 2020

😬

You too can get dragged thrice around the walls of Troy by clicking here!!!

For the last decade or so I’ve intermittently described my emotions as “regret.frescpg” (pronounced “regret dot fresk pig”) because I thought that once upon a time I saw a Tumblr post where that was the punchline, or perhaps one of a series of punchlines, which is what you tend to see on a website that is literally designed so that everyone can get in their own version of the last word. Separately, no wonder online is such an unbearable place to be these days. You train all of these people, many of whom first logged on as teenagers, that the only way to Win At Internet is to craft the reblog to end all reblogs — the post that everyone will look at and go, Yes, this needs no further improvement except perhaps an amusing .gif, like that one of Zooey Deschanel crying or Donald Glover carrying the pizza or any of eight trillion white people pointing upwards with the word “THIS” superimposed in 240-point Arial (I feel like some of these were from Golden Girls???) — and no wonder you end up with an online environment predicated on being the first AND last one to stab Caesar. Et me, Brute!!! Collect ten thousand notes and pass go!

For the record, I include myself in that number of people who first logged on as teens — I believe what actually happened was that, deep in the throes of pubescent mania, I typed “Doctor Who fanfiction???” into Google — but I did manage to sneak onto Livejournal before the great final purge, thank you very much, though that feels a bit gauche to say. Yes… I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe… the morning we woke up and Delicious had totally destroyed its own utility as a bookmarking service… the rise of Pinboard… the long-lost days of Missing e… all those moments will be lost in time, except the ones that web necromancers raised from the dead via Tampermonkey wizardry and so forth. Time to log off. Yes, grandpa, let’s get you to bed.

Anyway the point is that the other day I went looking for the original regret dot frescpg post and was totally unable to find it. I did find doubt dot frescpg! So what I’ve been doing for a cool decade now is generating my own personal alternate timeline parallel universe Berenstein/Berenstain Bears conspiracy theory of one. Very chill!! Very chill and fine.

The real point is: Here’s the original post, as it turns out. It still slaps. Do you want to reblog it? Are you one of the handful of people I know who have gotten back on Tumblr now that time is fake and the future has no meaning because it doesn’t exist in any meaningful sense? Good for you, honestly. You took all those years off to get stronger, like an ancient philosopher who goes to live in a cave and drink only rainwater and eat only the lichens they can find there, or maybe like one of the guys in those movies that are just named after their main character, first name only, all caps, who go to the railyards or whatever to whip girthy ropes around and to tip over enormous tractor tires that are inexplicably stacked all over the place so that their arms can get big and veiny enough to hold all their emotions. (And the weight of my gaze.) Now you’re back, stronger and faster and smarter and ready to Win, and I want to help by making sure you don’t spend a decade misquoting your frescpgs. Here’s a link! Please don’t assume that I spent any time vetting the blog I got this link from for their personal views. I am lightyears beyond that point. I barely read my own posts.

DOUBT.

Obviously it is also shit because of the Nazis.