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arcticdementor · 3 years

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There are three kinds of dissidents: (a) anons, (b) pundits who still care what people think, and (c) outsiders who DGAF. All these groups are great; real greatness can be achieved in any of them; and good friends I have in each. But each has its problems.

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The problem with (b) is that you are always policing yourself. Not only do your readers never really know what you really believe—you never really know yourself. In practice, it is much easier to police your own thoughts than your own words. When choosing between two ideas, the temptation to prefer the safer one is almost irresistible. This is a source of cognitive distortion which the anons and outsiders do not experience. (Though anons do suffer something of the opposite, a reflex to provoke.)

As a pundit, you sense this stress in every bone of your body; you can never show it to your readers. This creates a deep dishonesty in the parasocial relationship between writer and reader—like a marriage that can never escape some foolish first-date fib. The falsity, like the blue in blue cheese, flows through and flavors every particle of your content. Neither you nor your readers can ever be sure whether you are speaking the truth, lying to them, or lying to yourself—but you are constantly doing all three. You may still be very entertaining—enlightening, even. All your work is ephemeral, and once you die only your relatives will remember you. And it’s not even your fault.

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From my perspective, both the anonymous and official dissidents exhibit a kind of unserious frivolity, but a very different kind. The frivolity of the anon is imaginative, surreal and playful at best, merely puerile at worst. The frivolity of the pundit has no upside; in every paragraph he is breaking Koestler’s rule, and he knows it; the best he can do is to shut up selectively about the things he cannot write about.

And his mens rea, too, is awful. He is selling hope. He is selling answers. Pity the man whose life has brought him to the position of selling answers in which he does not believe, or which he is forced to believe, or which he must force himself to believe. However sophisticated and erudite he may be, he is just a high-end grifter. His little magazine is a Macedonian troll-farm with a PhD. He is lucky if his eloquent essays about the common good don’t appear above a popup bar peddling penis pills—and in fact, I know more than one brilliant scholar in precisely this bathetic position. The frame defines the picture; the context sets the price of the text. Sad!

Worst still must be the reality that bad punditry is worse than useless—since useless strategies for escaping from a real problem are traps. When you lead your readers toward an attractive but ineffective solution, you lead them away from the opposite.

You got into this business to change the world for the better. You cannot avoid the realization that you are changing it for the worse—because your objective function is that of Chaim Rumkowski, the Lodz Ghetto’s “King of the Jews.”

You exist to convince your own followers that they neither can nor should do anything effective. The easiest way to do this is to convince them that ineffective strategies are effective. And this, as we’ll see, is exactly what you cannot avoid doing, dear pundit.

Moreover, from our present position of profound unreality, where the official narrative shared and studied by all normal intelligent people and all prestigious institutions can only be described as a state of venomous delirium, the opportunities to play Judas goat are almost unlimited. Cows, remember: there does not have to be only one Judas goat.

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A particular favorite of the pundit is the error that AI philosophers call the “first-step fallacy.” It turns out that the first monkey to climb to the top of a tree was taking the first step toward landing on the moon:

First-step thinking has the idea of a successful last step built in. Limited early success, however, is not a valid basis for predicting the ultimate success of one’s project. Climbing a hill should not give one any assurance that if he keeps going he will reach the sky.

When a vendor sells you the moon and ships you a rope-ladder, you’ve been defrauded. Time for that one-star review.

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Today we’ll chart the edges of the legitimate possible by looking at three recent pundit essays which have done a fine job of exploring those edges, and maybe even expanding them: Richard Hanania’s “Why is Everything Liberal?”, Scott Alexander’s “The New Sultan”, and Tanner Greer’s “The Problem of the New Right.”

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After reading Hanania’s essay, a fourth pundit (who is out as a radical conservative) asked me: why does the right always lose? “Narcissistic delusions,” I replied.

Which was far from what he expected to hear, or what most readers will take from the essay. All three of these essays are good and true; but their inability to go far enough leaves them pointing their audience in precisely the wrong direction.

Most readers will emerge feeling that conservatives need more and better narcissistic delusions. Indeed, both pundit and politician are right there with just such a product. This meretricious frivolity, posing as seriousness, is too egregious to leave unmocked; yet the right reason to mock it is to challenge it to assume its final, truly-serious form.

Richard Hanania and the loser right

Hanania’s true point—backed up with a ream of unnecessary, PhD-worthy evidence—is that the libs always win because they just care more:

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Since the rebirth of conservatism after the revolutionary monoculture of World War II, all conservative punditry has consisted of attempts to create more excitement around policies and values which effectively resist the power of the prestigious institutions—giving “normal people” as much to care about as their fanatical, aristocratic enemies.

Sensibly, this tends to involve raising “issues” which actually seem to affect their lives, but which also run counter to aristocratic power. Over decades, the substance of these issues changes and even reverses; the opposite stance becomes the useful stance; and “conservative values” have no choice but to change to reflect this. (If this seems like a liberal way to rag on conservatives—the cons learned it from the libs.)

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“New Right” is not Greer’s term, but as a label I can barely imagine a worse self-own. It promises something ephemeral and irrelevant. So far as I can tell, this same cursed label has been used in every generation of conservatism to mean something different. When it inevitably fails and dies, people forget about it, and the next generation, stuck in the eternal present of a Korsakoff-syndrome movement, can reinvent it.

Who reads the conservative pundits of the ‘80s? Even those who remember them have to throw them under the bus. Every generation of National Review twinks, solemnly intoning what they conceive to be the immortal philosophy of our hallowed founders, is horrified by its predecessor, and horrifies its successor—a truly bathetic spectacle. And of course, each such generation would utterly horrify the actual founders.

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Greer then goes deep into David Hackett Fischer territory to explain the obvious, yet important, fact that this “New Right” consists of upper-class intellectuals (inherently the heirs of the Puritans, since America’s upper-class tradition is the Puritan tradition) trying to lead middle-class yokels (the heirs of the Scotch-Irish crackers, and (though Greer does not mention this) Irish, Slavs, and other post-Albionic “white ethnic” trash, today even including many Hispanics. He even gives us a clever historical bon mot:

Pity the Whig who wishes to lead the Jackson masses!

Uh, yeah, dude, that would be called “Abraham Lincoln.”

But the point stands. Not just the “New Right” with its new statist ideology, but the whole postwar American Right, is a weird army with a general staff of philosophers and a fighting infantry of ignorant yokels. How can this stay together? How can the philosophers bring forth a mythology that creates passionate intensity in the yokels?

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There is wisdom in this madness, of course—the problem is caused by aristocrats whose minds are wholly given over to narcissistic delusions. Doesn’t it take fire to fight fire? Doesn’t it take passionate intensity? Isn’t passionate intensity generated only by myths, dreams, poems and religions, not autistic formulas for tax policy? So the answer is clear: we need more and better narcissistic delusions. Ie, shams.

After all, any “founding mythology” is a narcissistic delusion. The flintlock farmers and mechanic mobs of the 1770s, and the Plymouth Puritans of the 1620s, have one thing in common: none of these people even remotely resembles the megachurch grill-and-minivan conservative of the 2020s. None of them even remotely resembles you.

They did live in the same places, and speak sort of the same language. Otherwise you probably have more in common with the average Indonesian housewife—at least she watches the same superhero movies.

To Narcissus, everything is a mirror; in everything and everyone, he sees himself. No field is riper for narcissism than history, since the dead past cannot even laugh at the present’s appropriations of a human reality it could not even start to comprehend.

And fighting fire with fire is one thing, but fighting the shark in the water is another. For the aristocrat, transcending reality is a core competence. The essence of leftism—always and everywhere an aristocratic trope, however vast its ignorant serf-armies—is James Spader in Pretty in Pink: “If I cared about money, would I treat my father’s house this way?” Mere peasants can never develop this kind of wild energy: that’s the point.

Yet Hanania remains right about the amount of energy that a rational, Kantian agenda for productive collective action motivated by collective self-interest, or even collective self-defense, can generate. The grill-American suburbicon is like Maistre’s Frenchman under the late Jacobins: he has defined deviancy down to rock-bottom. “He feels that he is well-governed, so long as he himself is not being killed.”

O, what to do? When you are solving an engineering problem and see the answer at last, it hits you like a thunderbolt. The conservatives, the normal people, the grill-Americans, must accept their own low energy. They must cease their futile reaching for passionate intensity, whether achieved through Kantian collective realism or Jaffaite founding mythology. They must fight the shark on land.

Conservatives don’t care—at least not enough. Yet they want to matter. Yet they live in a political system where mattering is a function of caring—not just voting. Therefore, there are two potential solutions: (a) make them care more; (b) make systems that let them matter more, without caring more.

Conservatives have low energy. They want high impact—at this point, they need high impact. After all, once you yourself are being killed, it’s kind of too late. Any engineer would tell you that there are two paths to high impact: more energy, or more efficiency.

Conservatives vote but don’t care. If we don’t have a viable way to make conservatives care more—meaning orders of magnitude more—effective strategies and structures must generate power by voting, not caring. They must maximize power per vote.

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Interference means voters who are on the same team are working against each other. Impedance means voters resist delegating their complete consent to the team.

Interference is like a bunch of ants pulling the breadcrumb in different directions. To eliminate interference, point all your votes at one structurally cohesive entity which never works against itself.

Impedance is like getting married for a limited trial period, so long as your wife stays hot and keeps liking the stuff you like. As Burke pointed out in his famous speech to the electors of Bristol, the fundamental nature of electoral consent is unconditional:

To deliver an opinion, is the right of all men; that of Constituents is a weighty and respectable opinion, which a Representative ought always to rejoice to hear; and which he ought always most seriously to consider.

But authoritative Instructions; Mandates issued, which the Member is bound blindly and implicitly to obey, to vote, and to argue for, though contrary to the clearest conviction of his judgement and conscience; these are things utterly unknown to the laws of this land, and which arise from a fundamental Mistake of the whole order and tenor of our Constitution.

The cause of electoral impedance in the modern world is the conventional concept of “agendas” or “platforms” or “issues.” When you vote not for a cohesive entity, but for a list of instructions you are giving to that entity, you are not voting your full power. You are voting for Burke’s opponent, who felt “his Will ought to be subservient to yours.” In effect, you are voting for yourself. Narcissism once again rears its ugly head.

When you vote an agenda, you are granting limited consent to your representative. You say: I vote for you, for a limited time, so long as you stay fit and cook tasty dinners. I am actually not voting for you! I am voting for “reforms for conservatives” (Hanania). I am voting for “a broad set of shared attitudes and policy prescriptions” (Greer). Dear, I am not marrying you. I am marrying hot sex, regular cleaning and delicious meals—till ten extra pounds, or maybe at most fifteen, do us part.

You implicitly withhold your consent for anything not on your jejune list of bullet points. Then, you wonder why your representatives have no power and are constantly mocked, disobeyed, tricked and destroyed by people who are legally their employees. This is not political sex. This is political masturbation. You voted for yourself. And instead of a baby, all you got was a wad of tissues. Nice way to “drain the swamp.”

Your vote does not work because you are not voting, delegating, or granting consent. You are like an archer with one arrow who, afraid of losing it, refuses to let go of it. Without releasing his dart, all he can do is run up to the enemy and try to stab.

So if conservatives want to maximize the impact of their votes, all they have to do is the opposite of what they’re doing. Instead of voting for the okonomi a-la-carte stupid little political menus of hundreds of unconnected candidates and their staffs, they can all vote for the omakase prix-fixe chef’s-choice of a single cohesive governing entity.

Such a power, elected, has the voters’ mandate not just to “govern,” but to rule. When no other private or public force enjoys any such consent, no other force can resist. We are certainly well beyond “rule of law” at this point! On the inaugural podium, the new President announces a state of emergency. He declares himself the Living Constitution. In six months no one will even remember “the swamp.”

Wow! What a simple, clear idea! The engineer, when he comes across so compelling and obvious a design, knows there’s a catch: he won’t get the patent. Someone else must have invented it before. People may be stupid—but they’re not that stupid.

Indeed we have just reasoned our way to reinventing the oldest, most common, and most successful form of government: monarchy. And we are setting it against the second most common form, the institutional rule of power-obsessed elites: oligarchy. And to install our monarchy, we are using the collective action of a large number of people who each perform one small act: democracy.

The alliance of monarchy and democracy (king and people) against oligarchy (church and/or nobles) is the oldest political strategy in the book. The suburban conservative, who just wants to grill, either has no idea this ancient and trivial solution exists, or regards it as the worst thing in the world—even worse, possibly, than his sixth-grader’s mandatory sex change.

And why? Ask your friendly local Judas goat, the pundit. Even the “new right” pundit—who only differs in his policies and issues. Which are, true, slightly less useless. As the top of the tree is slightly closer to the moon.

The 20th century even came up with a handy pejorative for a newborn monarchy. We call it fascism. No word on whether Cromwell, Caesar, or Charlemagne, let alone Louis XIV, Frederick II and Elizabeth I, were fascists.

But, to borrow Scott Alexander’s charming term, also not his own invention, they were certainly strongmen. TLDR: if you want to be strong, elect one strongman. If you prefer to be weak, elect a whole bunch of weakmen. Do you prefer to be weak? “If the rule you followed brought you to this place—of what use was the rule?”

The pundit reassures you that you don’t need a strongman to be strong—you’ll do fine with weakmen—so long as those weakmen have the right “shared attitudes and policy prescriptions.” By the way, here are some attitudes I’m happy to share with you. Click now to accept cookies. Did I mention that I have policy prescriptions, too? Skip ad in 5 seconds. Congratulations, you’ve been automatically subscribed! Check the box to opt out of most emails—void where prohibited by law—terms and conditions may apply…

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An odd sort of pundit, who remains only nominally anonymous but has always very much GAF, Scott Alexander does not have Hanania’s cagey diplomatic noncommittal. As a “rationalist,” he is deeply committed to his own class status, and to oligarchy itself—which, like most, he misidentifies as “democracy.”

While the whole raison d’etre of the rationalist is the irrationality of our oligarchy, as displayed in genius moves like refusing to cancel regularly-scheduled airline flights to stop a Holocaust-tier pandemic, the rationalist’s dream is a rational oligarchy—using Bayes’ rule, which given infinite computing power will become infinitely intelligent—in Carlyle’s immortal phrase, “a government carried out by steam.”

Obviously, this is not just logical—it immunizes the rationalists from the scurrilous charge of “fascism,” or worse. And they were right about stopping the flights. So was my 9-year-old. Sadly, in a world of universal delusional delirium, rationality can get quite pleased with itself by clearing quite a low bar.

My view is that no government can be or ever has been carried out by steam—only by human beings—a species the same today as in the Old Kingdom of Egypt, if possibly a little dumber on average—and this will remain the case until some computational or genetic singularity occurs. For neither of which events will I hold my breath. This is why I find it easy to picture 21st-century America under the phronetic monarchy of an experienced and capable President-CEO, and almost hilariously impossible to picture it under a Bayesian bureaucracy of polyamorous smart-contracts.

Alexander disagrees. Here is his analysis—the same text that Hanania quotes. Let’s go through it thought by thought, and see if we can’t turn it into some delicious carnitas.

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Let’s get back to those “elites.” Alexander conflates three quite orthogonal concepts in his use of the word “elite”: biology, institutions, and culture.

Elite biology is high IQ, which is genetic. Elite institutions are any centers of organized collective power—Harvard, the Komsomol, the Mafia, etc. Elite culture is whatever ideas flourish within elite institutions.

Destroying biology is genocide—specifically, aristocide. Destroying institutions is… paperwork. Who hasn’t worked for a company that went out of business? Same deal. And if the culture is the consequence of the institutions, different institutions (with the same human biology) will inevitably nurture different ideas.

The SS was anything but a low-IQ institution, yet it propagated a very different culture than Harvard. 21st-century Germany is anything but a low-IQ country, but the ideas of Kurt Eggers do not flourish in it. It seems that high-IQ institutions can be destroyed—and the new “elite culture” will be the culture of the institutions that replace them.

So the only target is the institutions. There is nothing “nasty” about closing an office. In the worst possible scenario, the police need to clear the building, lock the doors, and impound the servers. Such tasks are well within their core competence, and can be performed with calm professionalism. They will probably not even need their zip-ties.

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For democracy to be effective in such a situation, it must know its own limitations. It can seize the reins—but only to hand them to some effective power. This power must have one of three forms: an existing oligarchy, a new monarchy, or a foreign power.

Also, there are three classes in an advanced society, not just two: nobles, commoners, and clients. Since clients support their patrons by definition, once nobles plus clients outnumber commoners, the commoners have permanently lost the numbers game. This is why importing client voters is a recipe for either civil war or eternal tyranny—if not both.

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Yes. This is what happened in denazification, except with monarchy and oligarchy reversed. For example, all German media firms today are descendants of institutions created, or at least certified, by AMGOT. Nothing “organic” about it.

The essential problem with Alexander’s picture of this process is that, since like most smart people today he inhabits Cicero’s great quote about history and children, he simply cannot imagine replacing one kind of elite institution with another. Nor can he imagine high-IQ elites—human beings as smart as him—which are as loyal to a new sane monarchy as today’s elites are loyal, slavishly loyal, to our old insane oligarchy. Does he think that Elizabeth’s London had no elites? Caesar’s Rome?

If Alexander was analyzing the Soviet Union in the same way, he would conclude that elites are inherently devoted to building socialism for the workers and peasants. Since the present world he lives in is all of history for him, he cannot see the general theory which predicts this special case: elites like to get ahead. To genuinely change the world, change what it takes for elites to get ahead.

If the elites are poets and their only way to get ahead is to write interminable reams of “race opera,” as my late wife liked to put it, the floodgates of race opera will open. If the elites are poets and their only way to get ahead is to write interminable reams of Stalin hagiography, Stalin will be praised to the skies in beautiful and clever rhymes.

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There are two big strawmen here. Let’s turn them into steelmen.

First, “the populace uses the government” is non-Burkean. The populace (not all of it, just the middle class) installs the government. Then it goes back to grilling. So long as the commoners have to be in charge of the regime, and the commoners are weak, the regime will be weak. They need to “fire and forget.” Otherwise, they just lose.

Second, Alexander has clearly never heard of the atelier movement. No, this is not the same thing as your grandma in front of the TV copying Bob Ross.

What happens is this: every (oligarchic) art school and art critic no longer exists. Not that they are killed, of course. Just that their employers are liquidated (not with a bullet in the neck, just with a letter from the bank). They exist physically, not professionally. They were already bureaucrats—they had careers, not passions. Who gets fired, but keeps doing his job just for fun? Certainly not a bureaucrat.

And every (oligarchic) artist no longer exists—not that they are killed, of course. Just that the rich socialites who used to buy their stuff got letters from the bank, too. Libs sometimes talk about a wealth tax—a one-time wealth cap, perhaps at a modest level like $20 mil, will concentrate the rich man’s mind wonderfully on actual necessities.

Elites like to get ahead. The people who got ahead in the oligarchic art scene can no longer get ahead by doing shitty, bureaucratic, 20th-century conceptual art. Because there were so many of them, and because the demand for this product has dropped by at least one order of magnitude if not two, elite ambition is replaced by elite revulsion.

The enormous supply-and-demand imbalance for both art and artists in 20th-century styles leaves these styles about as fashionable as disco in 1996. “Paintings” that used to sell for eight figures will be stacked next to the dumpster. “Artists” once celebrated in the Times will be teaching kindergarten, tying trout flies, or cooking delicious dinners.

Inevitably, some of these people have real artistic talent. (The first modern artists had real talent—Picasso was an excellent draftsman.) They can go to an atelier and learn to draw. They will—because now, acquiring real artistic skill is a way to get ahead in art. And again, elites like to get ahead.

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There is nothing “normal” or “natural” or “organic” about oligarchy. Does Alexander think “uncured” bacon is “organic” because, instead of evil chemical nitrates, it uses healthy, natural celery powder? He sure is easy to fool. But who isn’t?

Culture and academia is already yoked to the will of government in a “heavy-handed manner”—yoked not by the positive pressure of power, but the negative attraction of power. When the formal government defers to institutions that are formally outside the government, it leaks power into them and makes them de facto state agencies.

Power leakage, like a pig lagoon spilling into an alpine lake, poisons the marketplace of ideas with delicious nutrients. Ideas that make the institutions more powerful grow wildly. Eventually these ideas evolve carnivory and learn to positively repress their competitors, which is how our free press and our independent universities have turned our regime into Czechoslovakia in 1971, and our conversation into a Hutu Power after-school special. PS: Black lives matter.

The paradox of “authoritarianism” is that a regime strong enough to implement Frederick the Great’s idea of “free speech”—“they say what they want, I do what I want”—can actually create a free and unbiased marketplace of ideas, which neither represses seditious ideas nor rewards carnivorous ideas. But it takes a lot of power to reach this level of strength—and it requires liquidating all competing powers.

I have never been able to explain this simple idea to anyone, even rationalists with 150+ IQs who can grok quantum computing before breakfast, who didn’t want to understand it. Ultimately it reduces to the painful realization that sovereignty is conserved—that the power of man over man is a human universal. (Also, we all die.)

No surprise that nerds who think of power as Chad shoving them into a locker can’t handle the truth. PS: I went to a public high school as a 12-year-old sophomore, was bullied every day for three years, and graduated college as a virgin. Whoever you are, dear reader, you are not beyond hope. You can handle the truth.

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And yet: Alexander’s post is about Erdoğan—and his description of Erdoğan is spot on. It also is a perfect description of Orban in Hungary; it applies to Putin in Russia and Xi in China; and it is even pretty accurate for Hitler, Mussolini and friends.

What all these “strongmen” have in common is that they are provincial. Turkey is not exactly the center of the world. Even 20th-century Germany was nowhere near the center of the world, though it could at least imagine becoming that center. If Turkey just disappeared tomorrow, no one would have any reason to care except the Turks. Who needs Turkey for anything? What would collapse—the dried-apricot market?

Erdoğan’s problem is that he cannot vaporize the oligarchy, because the institutions that matter are not in Turkey. The provincial strongman has no choice but to follow the “populist” playbook that Alexander describes so well.

Orban can kick Soros’s university out of Hungary; he cannot do anything at all to Soros, let alone to the global institutions of which Soros is only a small part. He is indeed “arrayed against” these institutions, to which his Hungarian elites (who speak nearly-perfect English) will always be loyal. The contest is unequal and has only one possible winner, though it can last indefinitely long. Even Xi, whose country can quite easily imagine becoming the economic center of the world, is a provincial strongman—in fact, he sent his daughter to Harvard. Sad!

In a global century, the only way for these provincial strongmen to develop genuine local sovereignty is to go full juche. This is simply not possible for Hungary or Turkey, both of which are firmly attached to the cultural, economic, and military teat of the Global American Empire. Indeed it is barely possible for North Korea, a marsupial nation still in China’s pouch. So Alexander is right: these “strongmen” cannot win. Their regimes will all go the way of Franco’s. It’s impressive that they even survive.

Erdoğan simply has no way to attach his best citizens to his own regime. They are citizens of the world. Elites always like to get ahead. If you’re a world-class talent in anything, why would you try to get ahead in Istanbul? Suppose you want to make a name as the world’s greatest Turkish writer. Succeed in New York, then come home. Turkey is a province; provinces are provincial.

Yet I am not a Turk or a Hungarian, and neither is Scott Alexander. The greater any empire, the more essential that its fall begin at the center. The Soviet empire did not fall from the outside in; it was not brought down from Budapest or Prague; it fell from Moscow out.

And the American empire will fall from Washington out—though that may not happen in the lives of those now living. And although nature abhors a vacuum and no empire can be replaced by nothing—and oligarchy, in the modern world, can only be replaced by monarchy—the “strongman” of this monarchy will not look anything like these mere provincial dictators.

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The result of Alexander’s perceptive calculations, which are only wrong because their only input data is the present, is simply that our present incompetent tyranny is and must be permanent. Of course, every sovereign regime defines itself as permanent. Yet when we look at the past and not just the present, we see that no empire is forever.

Some grim things are happening in America today. These grim things have a silver lining: they expose the gleaming steel jaws of the traps that the aristocracy sets for its commoners. They remind the cattle that a goat is not a cow and a baa is not a moo.

Every pundit is a Cicero. And amidst all the greatness of his rhetoric, Cicero could not imagine a world that had no use for Ciceros—a world governed by competence, not rhetoric. By the time Caesar crossed the Rubicon, nothing had failed more completely than the whole Roman idea of governance by rhetoric—an idea many centuries old, an idea whose execution had beaten all competitors to capture the whole civilized world, but an idea that was past its sell-by date. Rome herself was no longer suited to it. The republican aristocracy of Rome no longer meant Regulus and Scipio and Cincinnatus; it meant Milo and Clodius and Catiline. Its factional conflict was the choice between Hutu Power and Das Schwarze Korps. Caesar was not a disaster; Caesar was a miracle.

In the death of the American republic, every detail is different. The story is the same. The contrast in capacity between SpaceX and the Pentagon, Moderna and the CDC, Apple and Minneapolis—between our monarchical corporations, and our oligarchical institutions—is a dead ringer for the contrast between the legions and the Senate.

The sooner we stop pretending that this isn’t happening to us, the better results we can get. Wouldn’t it be nice to get to Caesar, Augustus and Marcus Aurelius, without passing through Sulla and Marius, Crassus and Spartacus? Alas, from here and now it seems unlikely. But I can’t see why every serious person wouldn’t want to try.

#curtis yarvin #substack #long #moldbug #well worth the read #monarchy #oligarchy #scott alexander #richard hanania #tanner greer #those who just want to grill #strongman #pundits #i'm reminded at several points of jim donald's arguments about how holiness spirals are ended

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wellknownwolf · 4 years

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I want to move into a new phase in my relationship with fandom, as I mature with new experiences. I'm not sure what exactly that looks like though. What is your take on the parasocial affection inherent in an RPF like Rhett & Link? Or even the deep attachments that can form with fictional characters? Or a desire to emulate fantasy worlds? I'm sorry if I've made you uncomfortable with all this, it's just that it's been a long time coming, and once I got started I couldn't stop. - Natasha (5)

First, let me post the full question, since it came in 5 parts:

Hey, it's me again. Your 'mystery inquirer', as you so adorably dubbed me. You're right, I had forgotten I'd sent in that ask. Just now, I couldn't help but think about a scene from Life After, as I am wont to on a frightfully regular basis, which is what got me back here. When you said you pondered over my seemingly simple, banal question for a good while, and wrote out a beautifully thoughtful answer like you always do, it made me happy.

Your narrative voice is similar to my own, and it made my chest ache in a certain way to have gotten such a response to what felt like a random shout out into the abyss (though it obviously wasn't, I sent it directly to you, I guess it's more what it felt like taking a chance on a conversation with a random stranger online). And now I'm cringing a bit at how melodramatic all sounds. But I'm committing to it, anyway. That's the beauty of anon, eh?

Wolfie (is it presumptuous to call you that? Please do forgive me the liberty I'm taking), I must admit. I'm quite envious of this community you have with @missingparentheses, @lunar-winterlude, and other wonderful people. Since childhood, I've been head over heels in love with fandom. Not a specific fandom, I've been a traveller through dozens, but fandom in general. I've read probably thousands of fanfics, spent countless hours daydreaming about beloved characters and their stories.

To the point where, in my most recent and worst depressive episode, it may have been for the worse, if I'm honest. Escapism and yearning to the point of impairment, engendering a sense of constant bereavement. But it's taught me so much about life and its wonders, I can't write it off as just some damaging habit. It's such an integral part of who I am, a deeply curious soul (shout out to my Enneagram Type 5-ers out there!). But I don't anyone to share it with, and it can get quite lonely.

.....................................................................

Thank you for giving me so much to respond to, Natasha. Thank you for continuing to reach out. I accidentally wrote something like a paper in response to your thoughtful question. I even conducted a little research and cited a source. ENGLISH TEACHER, ACTIVATE!

Also, for what it’s worth, I feel at times that I communicate exclusively through shouts into the abyss, so it’s a language with which I am at home. In fact, it is this very technique, this experiment with intense vulnerability at the hands of a virtual stranger, that earned me one of my absolutely most-treasured friends: @missingparentheses. I have poured out a great deal of my own melodrama to her, and she has received it and reciprocated it in a way that, three years later, continues to teach me how to be a better friend. In short, I’m a firm believer in diving straight in when it comes to new friends. Cringe not; I’m on board.

So let’s dive.

R&L is really only the second “fandom” with which I’ve been involved. Third, if we count my preteen obsession with ‘N Sync (and considering how much wall space I dedicated to their posters and self-printed photos, we probably should). My point is, while I don’t have much experience with the community facet of fandom, I do relate to your feeling of near-obsession. Or clear obsession.

I know the feeling of escapism you’re describing, and I know the yearning and melancholy that can come on our worst days, where we feel like “real life” will never measure up to the color and brilliance of the worlds we spend so much time considering. These worlds, these characters and their relationships, their challenges, victories, and defeats all seem so purposeful: they’re the plot points we use to craft the stories in our heads (regardless of whether we’re writers at all). It can be much harder to view ourselves as protagonists worth analyzing, viewing and reviewing through new lenses, perhaps because we’re warned against navel-gazing, perhaps because our self-perception just won’t allow for it. Maybe a little of both.

But yes! It teaches us! We DO learn about life, other people, love, risk, all kinds of things through what we consume in these fandoms, so I would never classify it as a “bad” thing. We hone our imaginations and learn to pay attention to our own emotions as we recognize feelings from our favorite shows, games, books, and characters arising in ourselves.

I used to be a little afraid of the fact that I was always telling myself stories, internally imagining myself as someone else, a player in the worlds I often loved more than my own. I suspected that someday, somehow, I would be caught playing pretend all the time in my own little ways. I was a bright and ambitious young woman, so why would I give so much of my mental energy to such frivolous pursuits?

In my first semester of graduate school, though, I learned from a Lit. Theory professor who intimidated the hell out of me that we all do this. We’re all telling ourselves stories all the time, some of which are true and close to objective reality, some of which are more subjective to whatever fantastical (or fandom) material we last consumed. I’ve whispered my own dialogue in the shower, but so have you whispered yours in your head (if not also out loud in your shower!). And through this act, however it is performed, I have made those worlds part of my own. So have you. In this way, they are real, and I no longer feel fearful of being “found out.”

When we have those moments of doubt, though, when we wonder whether we’re going too far, it probably stems, at least partially, from the “us v. them” divide between fandom and mainstream society. We love our little worlds, but we also feel that twinge of anxiety that we might be bordering on obsession, that our guilty pleasure might be discovered and we will be socially punished for it, namely, as Joli Jensen writes in “Fandom as Pathology: The Consequences of Characterization,” because “the fan is characterized as (at least potentially) an obsessed loner, suffering from a disease of isolation, or a frenzied crowd member, suffering from a disease of contagion. In either case, the fan is seen as being irrational, out of control, and prey to a number of external forces” (13). According the consistent covert (and overt, at times) messages of the mainstream, “[f]andom is conceived of as a chronic attempt to compensate for a perceived personal lack of autonomy, absence of community, incomplete identity, lack of power and lack of recognition” (Jensen 17). Yikes. That doesn’t feel good to admit about ourselves, does it?

Luckily, it’s bullshit.

Treating “fans” as others (outsiders, people who can’t form relationships or find fulfillment in the “real world”) “risks denigrating them in ways that are insulting and absurd” (Jensen 25). Those who take this stance, who see fans as victims of hysteria or desperate loners, do so in order to “develop and defend a self-serving moral landscape. That terrain cultivates in us a dishonorable moral stance of superiority, because it makes other into examples of extrinsic forces, while implying that we [members solely of the mainstream] somehow remain pure, autonomous, ad unafflicted” (Jensen 25). In short, that us/them thinking just makes people feel better about themselves by pointing out an easily-identifiable “other.”

I have also grappled with the concept of parasocial affection, particularly with R&L. I was well into writing my first Rhink fic when the thought crossed my mind, “Oh my god, what if I actually met these people someday? How would I look them in the eye? I’d feel like a crazy person (again)!” From the safety of the Midwest, I laughed off the thought. And then a year or so later, they were announcing their first tour. And I was still writing, here and there, still deep in my affection for them, sometimes wrestling with the thought that I’ve devoted so much energy to people who would never know I exist.

It doesn’t matter that the attachment was in the most obvious, tangible ways only one-sided. As an adult who is ever-learning how to navigate the worlds of her own creation and the ones over which she has far less control, I view my intense attachment to characters both real and fictional with deep fondness. And while I may not receive affection or attention directly from the sources (R&L, fictional characters, sports teams, who/whatever we build fandoms around), I am still earning some very real rewards for my involvement: Because of them, I found my way to a participatory culture in which I was supported and encouraged to express my creativity. This gave me the push and interest that I needed to hone skills that have not only made me a better writer, but also a better teacher and mentor. With fandom comes the ability to immediately strike up a conversation over shared interests. With fandom comes a sense of belonging in what we have proven is an awfully divisive world.

Right now, I’m consuming far less fandom-related material than I did a few years ago. I don’t really watch GMM anymore and I’m on a break from Ear Biscuits (though I still love it), Gotham ended over a year ago and I’m not in the habit of reading fics right now, and I can’t yet play the remade Final Fantasy 7, so that’s out for me, too (though I know I will fall deep into that well once the game is in my hot little hands). This all happened by itself. I never consciously moved away from these sources; I just floated on to other interests and other levels of interest, knowing that if and when I wanted to dig back in, I could always come back.

I used to feel quite sad at the thought of someday “moving on” from these intense interests. I couldn’t fathom somehow falling out of love with those bands, actors, or video games. But for me, the transition into wherever I am now has not been painful in the least. I’m glad I knew the intensity that I did, and I’m happy with the distance I have now. And there’s a good chance I’ll be fanatic about something else someday. I’m looking forward to it!

Here are some responses that I couldn’t organically fit into my essay:

Yes, you can call me Wolfie if you’d like. That name started with @missingparentheses (her second appearance in this answer!), and quickly became a reminder to not take myself too seriously.

Second, I don’t think I know any other Type 5s! I’m a type 8.

Also, here’s my MLA formatted citation for the Jensen source:

Jensen, Joli. “Fandom as Pathology: The Consequences of Characterization.” The Adoring Audience: Fan Culture and Popular Media, Routledge, 1992, pp. 9-29.

#ask me anything #fandom meta-discourse #bc I always said I wouldn't get involved in fandom discourse #oh no I'm us/them-ing in my tags!#shame on me!

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parasocialpod · 4 years

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Conversation Cards! - Transcript

Follow along with the episode here if you’d like to!

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[Intro music]

Alex: Hi, I'm Alex.

Nick: And I'm Nick.

Alex: And this is Ice Cream Parasocial, a podcast that covers as many different topics as there are flavors of ice cream.

Nick: And today I wanted to start out by kind of slapping myself on the wrist and slapping Alex on the wrist too.

Alex: [laughs]

Nick: Because we never talked about our pronouns.

Alex: Yeah, we've been bad queers.

Nick: We are bad queers.

Alex: [laughs]

Nick: But so I use he/him pronouns. Um, I've been kind of thinking about throwing "they" in there lately, but that's a topic for another day. Right now, it's just he/him.

Alex: Yeah, and I use they/them pronouns. And Nick has a he/him pass for me that other people don't really get, except I don't know, maybe like my mom. [laughs]

Nick: Right.

Alex: And it's weird. I've been using he/him pronouns for a really long time and then transitioned over to they/them super recently. And it's one of those things where it feels kind of weird to have Nick not use he/him pronouns for me. Um, so like, I guess I just also wanted to clarify a little bit, that like, if you see him use he/him pronouns for me on like social media or here or whatever that's not him being a dick. That's like my preference also. Um, but also they/them is very cool. [chuckles]

Nick: Alright. Cool. We finally got that out of the way. I-

Alex: We've done it.

Nick: I feel so bad that it took three episodes.

Alex: I know, I can't believe us. [laughs]

Nick: I- I just didn't think about it. I got so excited about doing the podcast and, you know, getting these episodes out, that like. We never really introduced ourselves. [laughs]

Alex: Yeah.

Nick: Like genuinely. I guess I never really expected that anyone outside of our very close friend circle, would ever actually listen to it. But now- and I also didn't really expect that we would ever do more than one episode. [laughs] But here we are recording episode three and I know that it's still mostly friends and family that are listening, but I have hope that we'll get new people in, too.

Alex: Like at some point, at least.

Nick: Yeah, at some point.

Alex: And they should know our pronouns.

Nick: And they should know our pronouns. And if our pronouns ever change, I've got them up on the Twitter and Instagram, as well as on our personal Twitter and Instagram profiles, we usually will have those up to too.

Alex: Yes. And by usually that's pretty much like always-

Nick: Yeah. I don't-

Alex: -all the time.

Nick: -know why I said usually. Those, those will usually be correct.

[laugh]

I guess. But they will always be up. It's very important to not just assume someone's pronouns.

Alex: Yes.

Nick: So I wanted to throw that in as a quick little, uh, aside of what our pronouns are.

Alex: Mhmm!

So Nick and I used to, um, back when we lived in Indiana, we used to go to like the cutest little ice cream shop called BRICS. If you live in Indianapolis, you should really go check it out at some point that probably isn't like, you know, like a global pandemic. Um, because they are absolutely adorable. We'll have to post on Instagram a picture of our dog Winston.

Nick: Yeah, that's my favorite picture in the world!

Alex: Yeah, it continues to be the best picture that exists of Winston, uh, at their like outdoor ice cream window ordering himself a dog ice cream. But they're the cutest little, like local ice cream place. And they have these little conversation cards and every time that Nick and I would go on dates there we'd do like conversation cards with each other. Like literally, even after we've been married. We just think it's really fun to always be finding out things about each other, because stuff always changes, and sometimes you don't even know about that. So we made a conversation card episode.

Nick: Yeah, I pulled together- uh, I said up at the top about 30 and it ended up being 33. I highly doubt that we're going to get through all of them. So what I'm gonna do is I've got a random number generator pulled up and we'll just kind of do that to answer, uh, questions. And if you want to play along at home, feel free to send us some of your favorite questions and answers to said Twitter and Instagram, or even comment on the YouTube video some of the answers that you have to the questions that we ask, because I would love to have more conversations with people about what we do on this podcast.

Alex: [Chuckles] Yeah!

Nick: Let's start with question number 25.

Alex: All right. Number 25 is: "Who do you feel like you know, even though you've never met them?" Oh, this is perfect for this podcast.

Both: [Laughing]

Nick: Yeah. So, uh, basically what this is, is the definition of a parasocial relationship, which is the point of this podcast is to build a parasocial relationship with people.

Both: [Laughing]

Nick: And kind of, I guess, also rip on parasocial relationships that people have with people that they've never met.

Alex: This is so ironic, taking something from an ice cream shop that we used to go to and our first question immediately being about parasocial relationships. Truly.

Nick: That's the podcast! That's the name!

Alex: The- they said it! They said Ice Cream Parasocial!

Both: [Laughing]

Nick: Oh I just hit my microphone with my glasses. Oh God. But yeah. So, who do you have parasocial relationships with, Alex?

Alex: Ooh that is a really hard one. Oh my gosh. Do you have an answer off the top of your head?

Nick: I did when I wrote the question down, but... God. I.. Shit.

So, I have-- Goddammit I don't want to talk about my bad memory in every single episode.

Alex: [Chuckles]

Nick: Um... but of course now I can't remember anybody's names. But there's definitely a lot of people in the disability community on Twitter and Instagram that I have really intense parasocial relationships with that I've never even spoken to at all, but I'm just like wow, I'm so proud of them. They seem like such genuine-

Alex: My best friend...

Nick: Right.

Alex: Yeah I feel like it tends to happen to me a lot with um I feel like... niche creators? Not necessarily quite as much with big big creators like YouTubers and podcasters and things like that. I never really have a moment where I'm just like, you know, [laughs] This is really telling on myself that I'm just like big celebrities I'm just like Oh yeah fuckin' Alex Goldman from Reply All did something and I just think that he is so cool and he's my best friend. [laughs]

Nick: Right.

Alex: You know? Like I feel like I don't have as parasocial a relationship with people that are like big big creators but then even if it's like 1 million or under followers or so I'm just like yes I am one of their million best friends.

Nick: Right, yeah and I mean in this day and age under a million is small. Which is so funny or even you know be- having around a million subscribers on YouTube or something is small. There's so many people that have like 20, 30 million at this point that just like ah, 1 million is not that big. It's not that big of a deal.

Alex: Yeah...

Nick: One of mine, probably one of my biggest ones that like I feel like I know her so well but like I don't even interact with her on anything, typically. Every once in a while I will, but um, Annika Victoria.

Alex: Ooh! Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah.

Nick: Um, and if you don't know who that is, she does crafting videos and sewing videos on YouTube and also does a lot of stuff about disability. I can't remember what, um, what exactly her disability is, but it- A lot of the things that she goes through are very similar to a lot of things that I go to-go through and so it's very much just kind of like "Oh we're both wearing our migraine glasses today!"

Alex: Twins!

Nick: Right. [laughs] Hashtag twinning! You know and she'll make these posts about dealing with disability and dealing with chronic illness and I'll just be like "Oh me too, man." And I'm just like yeah I know so much about you but I don't. [Laughs]

Alex: Yeah... I feel like um, I feel like I finally have one too which is definitely a kind of commentary slash a little bit like leftuber. Quinton Reviews is definitely probably my biggest parasocial relationship person. Um, and I feel like it's very similar it's also like somebody that's very open about like his mental health stuff that he's going through is a big thing, and like life changes and stuff like that which I think is like a really good thing to do and I find that super admirable. But it's stuff that's very identifiable for me so I'm just like alright time to go hang out with my pal [laughs] and I'm just like "Oh wow yeah, we're both going through mental health things at the same time" or like I dunno, job changes or general disillusionment. It's so easy to just kind of have those things build up.

Nick: Yeah, I think that I definitely had more parasocial relationships when I was a teenager because now I'm really scared to kind of interact with people not just people that you know seem like they're celebrities but just in general I'm really worried about coming off as like creepy or weird. And so I just don't but when I was a teenager I didn't really think about it at all, I'd just you know hop into the Twitter replies with my favorite author and we would just have a little chat but now I'm like, I'll have something to say I'll type it out and I'll delete it and I'll walk away.

Both: [chuckling]

Nick: And then so I feel like that kind of demolished a lot of the relationships that I otherwise would have, I guess.

Alex: Yeah and it definitely is really interesting sort of figuring out the like delineation between like a parasocial relationship and what isn't in the age of like, when you can like talk to creators just sort of whenever? Um, depending on who the creator is, and how open they are with their audience or like what their boundaries are I guess.

Nick: Mmhmm.

Alex: Um, and it's just super interesting figuring out that kind of thing, especially when it comes to people that have Discords, or people that do like Twitch streams where it's just like... I feel like part of the reason why I had to have this such a second thinking about the question is that it's just like, does it count as parasocial if like, we're mutuals on Twitter? Or like, if we interact in like their Discord all of the time? Like, I don't know! Like, ahh! Like, I mean I've met them like they know who I am. [laughs]

Nick: Right.

Alex: You know? And then it's just like, oh well I guess, somebody that I haven't met that we've interacted like a couple of times but very tangential would be Quinton Reviews.

Nick: Mhmm.

Alex: Um. But it's so weird even figuring out like, the lines of I don't know if that's like defined that way anymore.

Nick: Right. Yeah, I think that we talked that one to death enough.

Alex: Oh yeah for sure.

Both: [Laughing]

Nick: We're really not even that far in, but I'm just like okay it's time to move on, there's 33 questions. Number nine.

Alex: All right, number nine! If you were reborn in a new life, would you rather be alive in the past or the future?

Nick: Future.

Alex: Future.

Nick: Are you fucking kidding me?

Alex: Yeah. Yeah yeah yeah yeah. Get me out of here.

Nick: My fucking disabled queer ass? Yeah no.

Alex: Right!

Nick: I'm gonna to go to the future and hope that it's ... [sighs] marginally better.

Alex: Right! Absolutely. Yeah, like I want to go... 100 percent the future, like, my disabled queer ass?

Nick: Right.

Alex: Let me out, dude.

Nick: Right. Like, I want to be in the time where like, I have access to things. [Laughs]

Alex: Right, I would love to be in the time where people have rights and shit. [Laughs]

Nick: Right. W-well... [chuckles] yeah. Hopefully in the future that happens.

Alex: Yeah, at some point.

Nick: Always moving forward! Hopefully...

Alex: Eh...

Nick: Hopefully.

Alex: Hopefully.

Nick: Anyways! Moving on to number 27! Um.

Alex: [Laughs]

Nick: What's the grossest food that you just can't get enough of?

[Laughs]

That will hopefully become like, the only food in the future.

Alex: Oh my God. Oh that's tough, I love nasty shit.

Nick: You love disgusting shit.

Alex: I love the worst things. Um, do you want to go first so I can pick which nasty shit?

Nick: I don't really like a lot of gross foods. Like, I have such a limited diet because a.) I eat like a child, and b.) I'm vegan. And so like, it's just a lot of vegan chicken nuggets and mac and cheese. Like...

Alex: You've expanded out a lot, you can give yourself credit.

Nick: Yeah I've expanded out quite a bit.

Alex: Like it's not gross, but you've expanded out.

Right.

Nick: I think that the grossest food that I couldn't get enough of was Taco Bell, and I'm so glad that like I know that they have some vegan options and like technically you can order stuff to make it vegan, but I am so glad that they don't have a lot, because otherwise I'd be in a lot of trouble. [Chuckles]

Alex: Oh yeah absolutely. I feel like the grossest food that I can't get enough of... if I'm going like, for genuine like other people probably would be like "ugh," [laughs] like "why would you... why would you put that in there", I would probably have to say... for some reason lately, since we've been vegan, I cannot stop eating soft pretzels. Because I found out that the um microwaveable soft pretzels that you can buy are vegan, and so I just cook them all the time. And I just like season them in a bunch of different ways, and I'll just eat them with like soup, because it's bread [laughs]. And so you'll like, walk in on me at like two in the morning and I'll just be eating like soft pretzels like a little goblin in the nighttime. For grossest food in the sense of just like... you know, um, God has abandoned us but I don't particularly care, uh, but I feel like a lot of--

Both: [Laughing]

Alex: But I feel like a lot of people would probably really enjoy this if they knew it existed. So, another little local restaurant shout out. In Portland there's a restaurant, that is probably my favorite restaurant, that's called The Homegrown Smoker. And they have a lot of bullshit that I love. Just peak vegan bullshit. And they have this uh, this thing [laughs]. It's like, a burrito... like, wrap-type thing, that's called "mac no cheeto", and it's smoked soy curls with barbecue sauce, grilled peppers and onions, mac and cheese-- uh, like vegan mac and cheese-- barbecued beans and like, a flour tortilla. And again, God has abandoned us, but honestly I'm fine with it, I made my choice.

Both: [Laughing]

Alex: Anyway Homegrown Smoker is open for takeout. So like.

Both: [Laughing]

Nick: That's so funny.

Alex: They have a lot of really good vegan comfort food and I really recommend them.

Nick: Oh, they do. They're-- they're really, really good. Um... Number 14, "what social stigma does society need to get over?"

Alex: [Laughs]

Nick: Uh institutionalized racism, perhaps?

Alex: Yes, absolutely, good God.

Nick: Don't know if that's a stigma, but like, can we just fucking stop that shit?

Alex: Right! Literally. I feel like another social stigma is like, acting like being called out on something, or like being corrected on something, means that like you're a bad person.

Nick: Absolutely.

Alex: Or I guess, just like acting like, you know, calling someone out on something that they did means that they're like, irredeemable. Cause like, I always kind of have this attitude about it where it's like, if somebody criticizes you on something or like give us constructive criticism, then that means that they think you can change.

Nick: Mhmm.

Alex: And I think that that's kind of.. I don't want to say a compliment, but it's kind of, you know, them putting faith in you to like, listen to them. And I think that you know, there's this whole stigma around it where it's just like, "Oh you said that I said something racist, and that just means that you think I'm a bad person." And it's like, no you know a lot of the time that means that they think that you're capable of changing and like not doing harm anymore. Um.

Nick: Right. They believe that you can get better.

Alex: Yeah! And so it's just like, I would love for people to be able to get over the social stigma of like, that kind of... um... defensiveness?

Nick: Right. Yeah. Cause it's like, there definitely is a big issue with internet culture right now, with "cancel culture"--

Alex: TM.

Nick: TM. But a lot of the time, what people are calling "cancel culture" is really just people asking for people in more power to do better, because we believe that they can do better.

Alex: Yeah. And like, for accountability.

Nick: Yeah.

Alex: And it's just like, things would be overall so much better if the attitude towards that was more of just like a "Oh shit. Thanks for letting me know. Now I can like, go be better, uh, and do less harm, and like, thanks for like, believing in me I guess."

Nick: Right. Absolutely. All right, let's see if we get a, uh, not as heavy one. [laughs]

Alex: I know. [ laughs]

Nick: Oh God. Number two: "what makes you the angriest?" [

Laughs]

Oh shit. [laughing] Oh no. Oh no.

Oh okay. I...

Alex: I kind of want to go for current, just because overwhelmingly, like, just overarchingly feels like a lot.

Nick: Mhmm.

Alex: Oh man. Current is also very hard.

Nick: Right now what makes me the angriest is when people refuse to wear face masks, and they have literally no reason to not wear one. Like just fucking wear one. It's not that difficult.

Alex: Right. Like, that's what I was gonna say too. [Laughs]

Nick: Right. It's just it's really, really frustrating having... so here's what happened to me. Right As everything was starting to kind of get shut down, and everything was like "oh yeah we're just going to be closing our place for two weeks, so that like things can kind of die down," all the way back in March, my job closed down permanently. We all got laid off. The place got completely shut down. Since that day I have not left my apartment except to take my dogs outside. I have not gone anywhere, I have not risked it. I have asthma. I... you know, I... until very very recently I didn't have health insurance. I just didn't want to risk it. I have been in my apartment since March. It is now September. If I go out, if I start having to go out and do things and I get sick because some asshole decides not to wear a mask I will find them and I will kill them. That is a fact. I will be so pissed If I have spent almost all of 2020 just holed up in my apartment just for somebody that is slightly uncomfortable with wearing a mask to get me sick.

Alex: Right?

Nick: You know?

Alex: Yeah.

Nick: Like, oh that's really cool that you got really sick of being in your apartment after a month. I've been here for like six now? Uh? [Laughs]

Alex: Right! Literally! And it's just like, that's something else that really gets me about it is that it's like, people act like... I don't know, as somebody that has dealt with a lot of mental health stuff for a super long time, it's so irritating like seeing people just be like "oh well I got sad, so I decided to go to a party with a hundred other people because I was sad." And it's just like that's when you see a therapist. Like, it's like, I know that access is hard, but it's just so frustrating. And I don't know. Just the whole mask thing too is so frustrating, because it's like, there's so many like intersections at which you know, COVID affects people? And it's like it's so very much like... you know, it's like a race issue, and a disability issue, and a class issue. And like people just sort of like, ignore all of that? Like, you know, it's like an ageism issue as well. And it's so upsetting when people just sort of act like it's like, one bad thing. Um.

Nick: Mhmm.

Alex: Like just like, one singular bad action. And it's just like, ugh. I just especially don't like it when people that try and act really socially conscious are like, "oh like it's just like one time like it's just like this one time."

Nick: Right. Like the thing that I... I'm not gonna name names, because I don't want people to go in and cancel them but mmm. A lot of big creators I had to just go through and unfollow them on everything because I kept seeing this trend of like, people posting pictures and then at the very bottom of the caption being like "mask removal was allowed for photos!" And I'm just like... cool. Uh. [Laughs]

Alex: Just cause it's allowed doesn't mean you should.

Nick: Right. Just cause it's allowed doesn't mean you should, and also like, if you can't take a good picture outside while wearing a mask like that's your fucking issue.

Alex: Get good? [laughs]

Nick: Get good! Like I just-- just get a cute mask! I have-- I have two that I really really love, one that's like got constellations on it and one that's got dinosaurs on it, and they're both glow in the dark, and they are so fucking cool! You know?

Alex: It's fucking dope! Like I don't understand that shit. And it's like, the perfect little like... post-apocalyptic vibe. Like you can get masks that match like, every vibe under the sun at this point. Like there's no-- you can get masks that match like, bandanas for your dog!

Nick: Right!

Alex: Like? [Laughs] No excuse.

Nick: Yeah. And if you're having issues with breathing with a mask on, there's a lot of different things that you can do. There's this one... there's this silicone piece that you can put on your mouth, and I'll link it in wherever I can, that helps keep the fabric away from your mouth that Alex uses a lot. And I don't like the feeling of it on me as much, but you know, that can really help with getting airflow and keeping the fabric off of your face If you don't like having the fabric on your face, and you know, there's-- I super super do not recommend buying any masks from any store. Because those ones we've had huge issues with, but then buying them from Etsy, y'know, getting them handmade, they're better quality. They're a lot more breathable. They're a lot more comfortable. And if all else fails, a lot of stores online now have the disposable masks that are super breathable now, you know. Like all of that stuff has kind of caught back up.

Alex: Yeah.

Nick: So, you've got options. You-- it doesn't have to just be that you've got this, you know, 20 layer piece of shit taped to your face. You know? [Laughs]

Alex: Right! Literally! And it's like, you know, it's another one of those things that, kind of like with vaccines, like there are a small percentage of people who like, you know, for whatever reason whether it's like access issues or like some sort of like medical thing like... can't? And it's like, you know because of that small percentage of people, like, you should extra extra be wearing a mask.

Nick: Mhmm.

Alex: And it's just so frustrating to me to see like, people that have the money that like are able bodied um just like... not doing it? It is so frustrating.

Nick: Right.

Alex: Cause it's like, you know, there's people that are like... that like, don't have a way to like wash fabric masks or like buy disposable masks, and it's just like so that those people don't get sick then you should extra be wearing a mask. Like. Aah. You know what I mean?

Nick: Right.

Alex: So many feelings about masks! [Laughs]

Nick: And it's also-- something that I had to do when I first started wearing them even, y'know, just to take the dogs out, is wear it for 30 seconds, take it off, and then... you know, and work on getting the length of time that you can wear it up. Cause when I first started wearing masks-- granted I was wearing these like really cheap shitty ones that we got from Whole Foods or something-- and I couldn't. I could not wear it for more than 30 seconds. And so then, you know, the next time that I wore it I would put it on, I'd wear it for 45 seconds. And over time that started to grow. And then buying a mask that was handmade. And then I will also link to the store that made my favorite masks in the description, in shownotes and stuff. That, y'know, that made it so much better. They were so much more breathable, and so much more comfortable. You know, so test out different masks. If you're having a lot of issues with one, try out a different style, try out a different company. Like, try getting the little like, silicone muzzle I guess, you know, that you can put under it to keep it away from your face, and build up that time. You know?

Alex: Yeah! There's a lot less difference in price than I thought there was going to be--

Nick: Mhmm.

Alex: Um, like, to get the fabric masks that are like accordion-style that I've found a lot more comfortable, and like breathable, then the um other ones that we'd been using that were more like fast fashion. It was like, I don't know, I think they were like eightish dollars? Something like that?

Nick: Yeah. They were still under $10.

Alex: They're still under ten, which I think was around or below the price of the uh like masks that we'd gotten from Whole Foods that are a lot less breathable.

Nick: Yeah.

Alex: Um. But that's just my little take. Like the ones from Target are real shitty.

Nick: Ah yeah.

Alex: Um, and they were less expensive, but again it's like, do you want to wear something that doesn't fit super well and is awful to breathe in and as maybe like $2 cheaper? But again I don't know. That's just a little onion.

Nick: Just wear a mask, like, please. This thing isn't over just because you want it to be over. I want it to be over.

Alex: So bad.

Nick: I haven't left my apartment at all in six months. I would love so much to leave my apartment.

Alex: I just want to go thrifting.

Nick: Right? I just want to go to a thrift store and like not buy anything and just look at it all. You know, like?

Alex: God.

Nick: Anyways.

Alex: Anyways.

Nick: Wear a mask. Next question.

Alex: Next question.

Nick: Number 33. [Chuckles] What profession doesn't get enough credit or respect?

Alex: Oh God. [Laughs]

Nick: Teachers. [Laughs]

Alex: Ooh that's a good one. That is a good one. Oh this is hard. Cause I feel like there are a ton. Um. Fuckin'...

Nick: I can also put in here a profession that gets too much credit and too much respect!

Alex: [Laughing] Uh...

Nick: Cops!

Alex: For-- Definitely agree with that one!

Nick: [Laughs]

Alex: Um... for not enough respect I would definitely agree with teachers, and I would also throw in any sort of like, frontline like customer service, food service, like, retail workers.

Nick: Oh yeah!

Alex: Um... that's one of those things that I have so many feelings about, because I feel like that is the peak example of like transferable job skills that like, everyone is just like "oh that's like an unskilled job." And I'm just like, as someone that sort of, like, transferred those job skills into like healthcare, fucking... deescalation, man! [Laughs]

Nick: Right. Deescalation is a huge one.

Alex: Multitasking, oh my God.

Nick: Yeah.

Alex: Multitasking and deescalation. Like?

Nick: Being able to keep your cool in a high pressure situation.

Alex: Right? Like shout out! And like for absolutely no pay. Like. Ahhhh.

Nick: Yeah, like going back to uh, the whole wearing a mask thing, there was this video-- I didn't watch the whole thing, because it made me anxious to watch-- But there was this guy who was refusing to wear a mask and he was going into a grocery store, and the-- there were like five people that worked there that, God I hope were upper management type people, but um-- he was screaming, and he was in their face, and he was cussing at them, and they were all so calm. Like, the one person that was taking the video was not being calm, but I don't know if they worked there. But the people that, like, were in the video that clearly worked there were so calm and just "have a good day sir. Have a good day sir. Mhmm. Yeah, you have a good day. Okay. Bye bye. Have a good day." And I'm just like, I... oh, I would have broken down. [Laughs]

Alex: Right. Absolutely.

Nick: And just like, I know for a fact that those people did not get paid enough to deal with that bullshit. [Laughs]

Alex: For sure! My God.

Nick: And that's something that I've seen before. Like at my very first job actually, where like this dude was going off about something, and my manager just pulled that like "alright. Yep. You have you have a nice night, sir."

Both: [Chuckling]

Nick: And yet, for the most part, we as a society... um... we'll sit there, and be like "yeah those people, like, they don't really do anything. They just ring stuff up, and they don't deserve to have a whole like-- you know. If they actually needed money or if they were real adults, they would have real adult jobs!" And I'm just like, you expect a teenager... [Laughs]

Alex: Right?

Nick: To do that shit?

Alex: Right? Or even just like people who have such a lack of awareness where they'll just be like, "Oh yeah they should have like a real adult job. Like all of the jobs that require a bachelor's degree but still pay $12 an hour for some reason."

Nick: Right.

Alex: Even though to get a bachelor's degree, half the time you have to drop tens of thousands-- if not more-- of dollars that many people don't have. [Laughs]

Nick: Right. Just to then work a shitty job for the rest of your life that has nothing to do with that degree so that you can pay off that degree.

Alex: Right. Woo!

Nick: It's great. It's fun. Anyways, uh everybody needs to be paid more, except for cops who need to be defunded.

Alex: Yes.

Nick: Fact.

Alex: Absolutely. Except cops, who should be defunded and also quit their jobs.

Nick: Yeah 100%.

Okay, now a genuinely fun one.

I kept I kept hoping that the next one would be like a fun one, and then it's just like Oh No, no, no, no, no we're gonna fight today. [laughs]

Alex: It's time to fight!

Nick: Uh, if you were a superhero what powers would you have?

Alex: [laughs] Oh my God. That's so funny Uhmm I feel like If I were a superhero I would love to be able to shape shift.

Nick: Mm Shapeshift is a really good one.

Alex: My fucking nonbinary ass, are you kidding me? [

Nick: Especially if you can shape shift into things that aren't real.

Alex: Yeah!

Nick: Or even if you can shape shift into things that are real, you know? Being able to like turn into a bird and fly. Yeah, shape-shifting is mine too 'cause I feel like my first thing that I want to say is to be able to fly 'cause I've always wanted to fly, but also thinking about my chronic illness I would never be able to because I can barely walk. How am I supposed to- [laughs]

Alex: Oh...

Nick: You know? [laughs]

How I supposed to go out and fly around and have fun with fibromyalgia? Like all I'm thinking now about that is that my wings would be in pain too.

Alex: Oh God! [ chuckles]

Nick: And that's just ugh. But if I could shape shift, maybe I could shape shift into somebody with a working body! [laughs]

Alex: Yeah that's what I was thinkin' if it's real cold out maybe I could shape shift into someone who's joints are functional [laughs]

Nick: Right!

Alex: Or you know whatever.

Nick: No kidding! Okay Well that was a fast one. Let's see what number 19 is.

Alex: In the past people were buried with the items that they would need in the afterlife. What would you want to be buried with so that you could use it in the afterlife?

Nick: Hmm... My dog? [laughs]

Alex: Awwwww

Nick: I want my dog. I would like my puppy, please.

Alex: Oh that's really cute. That's a nice one.

Nick: It like all I can think of 'cause I'm like... I don't know, it depends on what the afterlife is like, you know?

I guess he's not- my dog's not an item.

Alex: Yeah that's true. Like what does the afterlife have already? 'Cause I wouldn't want to like show up to the afterlife with my laptop and then it was like "no wifi in the afterlife."

Nick: Right. I guess uh, my mobility aids would be great?

Alex: Just in case.

Nick: Like, I just honestly I love them so much, that like even if in the afterlife none of that exists, I almost feel naked without them. And I feel like I would feel naked there too, so it's just like I'd like to have my cane just so I can-

Alex: Just in case!

Nick: Just to hold on to it.

Alex: Just to have.

Nick: And then also it's a weapon so I can beat the shit out of any demons that are trying to-

Alex: [laughing] Assuming that you go to hell?

Nick: Listen. [laughs]

Alex: [laughing] Oh my god. My brain just keeps getting fixated on like the Nintendo switch, so I guess I'm taking the Nintendo switch.

Nick: Just hope to God that there's power.

Alex: Yeah, just hope that there's electricity in the afterlife.

Both: [laughing]

Nick: Alright Let's try... Oh! Number 10: Would you rather be the funniest person in the room or the most intelligent?

[ I'd rather be the funniest. I don't-I don't want to be smart I want to be- I want to be a himbo! [laughs at his own joke like he's funny]

Alex: Right! I would also rather be funny, because I feel like you can always become more intelligent but I feel like to be funny like that is such a hard thing to learn. And also [quietly] intelligence is kind of an ableist concept.

Both: [laughing]

Nick: Intelligence is a hundred percent an ableist concept. You're absolutely right.

Alex: You know, and also being the most intelligent I feel like would kind of more alienate people um depending on how you express yourself as a person. 'Cause either like you just know a bunch of stuff and you don't want to talk down to people so you just don't really do anything with it Um or you like I guess you could like teach people things which is something that I guess could be worthwhile but I don't know if you're like the funniest person that you can have a lot of friends and just hang out and learn things from each other. And I think that that's neat, just being able to like bond people and bring people together I would love that.

Nick: Yeah, that's a really, really good sentiment.

Uh, let's see what number 29 has! What's the most recent show you've binge-watched? Korra.

Alex: Oh yeah! I wouldn't really call it binge

Nick: We're watching like an episode a night.

Alex: Yeah.

Nick: The last one that we binged was The Umbrella Academy.

Alex: Yes!

Nick: Season two.

Alex: Which I cannot physically stop thinking about.

Both: [laughing]

Nick: Yeah We've been able to pace ourselves a lot more with Korra, but with The Umbrella Academy it was like two or three episodes a day. [laughs]

Alex: Exactly. It's yet another example of the thing where Nick tries to get me into something for a really long time and I'm like "Oh yeah, I'll-I'll check that out. Like, yeah we can check that out soon." And then we finally check it out and then he instantly regrets getting me into it. [laughs]

Yeah.

Then it's just like a giant alarm goes off in the middle of the apartment and it's just like special interest alert!

Both: [laughing]

Alex: Then I just don't shut up for like four months [laughs]

Nick: Right, oh man.

Um we

Alex: had a bigger fan base I feel like by like episode five or so someone could have a 15 minute compilation That's just me talking about The Umbrella Academy.

Both: [laughing]

Alex: But that's for another day.

Nick: Um Moving on to number 30: What outdated slang do you use on a regular basis?

Alex: Oh that one's hard because I feel like outdated is a difficult term in the internet era. [laughs]

Nick: Yeah, 'cause things get outdated almost immediately.

Alex: Things get outdated almost immediately, and also I- as like a counter argument I feel like nothing is outdated because of irony.

Nick: Yeah, that's very fair. So I guess what did you start saying ironically that now you can't stop?

Alex: Ooh... oh that's hard. That is really hard, I feel like um, probably [chuckles] the thing that I started saying ironically that now I can't stop is definitely "What's up gamers!?"

Nick: Oh, yeah!

Alex: I say that way too much. I say it to the pets all the time.

Nick: [loudly] What's up gamers?!?

Both: [laughing]

Alex: Like, especially when I'm really tired I'll go like pet one of the dogs and I'll be like "What's up gamer?" [laughs]

Nick: Yeah, that is- that is uh, true. I've seen it so many times.

I feel like it's definitely something that I say more to the pets, anytime that I say something ironically, and I can't- now I can't remember anything that I say to them. I never speak to them.

Alex: You never address them.

Nick: Me and the dogs, me and the cats, we are not on speaking terms.

Alex: [laughs] Not since the incident.

Nick: Not since the incident.

Alex: [laughing] Oh God.

Nick: Not since the knife incident.

Alex: Oh God!

Nick: Which will hear about in a future episode where we discuss our pets Oh, Um, Yeah I don't know I- I feel like I started calling everyone man which is kind of outdated slang?

Alex: Yeah.

Nick: Even though like I don't know why I started saying it but I was just like "Listen, man."

Alex: Yeah I feel like you say a lot of kind of like seventies, eighties hippy shit

Nick: Yeah I love

Alex: it.

Nick: That's Because I am a hippie from the seventies, eighties.

Alex: Yeah, I feel like you watch a lot of like van tours on YouTube-

Nick: That, yeah.

Alex: Of People that are definitely older hippies and I think you kinda like pick up on the slang sometimes, and I love that.

Nick: Yeah I- that is very, very accurate.

God now the number generator is starting to pick up the same ones over and over again. Okay Here's What should- maybe will be a quick one. Uh, which way should toilet paper hang? Over or under?

Alex: Um I have never had an opinion on this I don't know why it's so important. [laughs]

Nick: [laughing]

Alex: I'm the

same.

[laughing] And that's why we work as a couple!

Nick: Like, I guess over? This is going to be the first thing we get canceled about!

Alex: I know right?

Nick: Is putting out our toilet paper-

Alex: I know.

Nick: -opinions

Alex: Putting our shit out here.

Nick: 'Cause the genuine answer is it doesn't fucking matter.

But I guess my preference is over?

Alex: Yeah Like I guess technically...

Nick: 'Cause it's easier to pull?

Alex: Yeah Like I never really noticed. I guess over, because it's harder for the cat to reach.

Nick: Yeah. Anyways, uh...

Both: [laughing]

Nick: Oh, number 20: Where do you get most of the decorations for your home? Thrift stores.

Alex: Thrift stores.

100% thrift stores.

Nick: Yeah, or given to us for free.

Alex: Thrift stores, given to us for free by friends, and sometimes like Halloween Stores.

Nick: Yeah, our oldest and most treasured decoration is from a Halloween store. Because when we first moved in together, it was early November years ago.

Alex: Yeah.

Nick: And that was something that you brought was our eat drink and be scary sign.

Alex: Yeah!

Nick: And everywhere that we've lived that has gone into the kitchen, and it will go into the next one.

Alex: Absolutely.

Nick: I'll go ahead and lead that into another one without doing the random number generator. What would your dream house be like?

Alex: [chuckles]

Nick: Mine is a van.

Alex: [laughs]

Nick: I'm not even play around. I like, before... it-it's one of those really frustrating things where like I don't know if I actually learned about something before it became a trend or if I was just like getting swept up in it with everyone else but feeling like I wasn't, you know? But for the last year and a half we've been talking a lot about buying a van and traveling around. And the more that I look into it the more I'm just like yeah this is all I want.

Alex: Mhmm!

Nick: And you know I guess like my dream house house would definitely be a tiny house where I can reach everything that I need to reach from one spot.

Alex: Yeah I would definitely agree with the van thing and the house thing. Um, so that I can have a unique answer, I would definitely say dream house would be just a nice little commune I just want to have like a timy- tiny house commune with a bunch of cool people just kind of out in nowhere and totally self-sufficient, not bothered by anybody. 'Cause I'm the- very much the type of person where I am more of like an I guess like when we're like living somewhere stationary tend to be more of like an urban person but not by choice more by virtue of just being reliant on the city. Like I feel like that if everything was cool, I would very much be more of a country non-binary. [laughs] But just because of like social stigma and everything it's just like "Yeah fine, I guess I'll just go with be with all the other gays." So I've always thought that it would be so cool to just have like a nice little plot of land with a bunch of other people, and we're all just chill. [

Nick: That definitely is like My Ultimate Dream for if we ever do want to kind of stop moving again. And I mean at this point being stuck in the apartment for six months all I want is to move and never stop moving. Um, which is why I'm so in love with the idea of getting a van. But you know if and when we decide to settle down that is my ultimate dream is to have a really accessible really queer tiny house commune.

Alex: Yes!

Nick: I just think that that would be so nice. I definitely really miss having roommates. I really miss having our last roommates, especially with us being able to be separated a little bit. And so I'm just like man, all I want is to just have like this huge, huge plot of land where everybody gets to have their own little little house, little space, and you know we can get together if we want to. We don't have to.

Alex: Right We all just like... ugh so nice.

Nick: Everybody has got like things that they need to do that You know they get to pick out the thing that-

Alex: is like accessible to them and like that they kind of enjoy doing and just love it just love- you love to see it. We all maybe have a bunch of dogs, and I just love

Nick: There's just too

Alex: many

Nick: dogs.

Alex: [laughs]

Nick: Okay This generator literally just keeps picking the same things.

Is there- is there one that you want to answer?

Alex: Let's see.. Oh sure, um let's do 24 maybe, which is: what's the most creative use of emojis you've ever seen?

Nick: Oh my God! She-ra, the creator of She-ra, Noelle Stevenson, every single season... Whenever a new season of She-ra would come out , She would tell the story of the season on Twitter just using emojis. And it was so cool to go through and watch that season and go through the emojis and be like "Oh that's what that meant, and that's what this meant!" It was

Alex: Oh like trying to infer what would happen next is like the best!

Nick: Yeah, like seeing a little claw emoji and being like Oh something's going to happen with Scorpia!

Alex: Yeah, Oh my God. That's what I was gonna say too If you didn't. I was just like I really want to get a chance to talk about that for a second, 'cause I love that shit.

Nick: It was so good. Um Let me see let me see let me see let me see... Let's do a couple of quick fire ones that are right in a row. Summer or winter?

Alex: Uhh, winter.

Nick: Really?

Alex: Um depends on where.

Nick: Ah, that's fair. Winter here in Portland is really nice, winter in Indiana is not nice.

Alex: Winter in Indiana can go kick rocks.

Both: [laughing]

Alex: Made of solid ice.

Nick: Mhmm.

Alex: But summer is- I don't do well with heat.

Nick: Yeah that's fair. I think it's really funny because I was born in August, and also with school always having summer off I have this idea in my head that summer is so much better. That's when my birthday is, that's when I don't have anything that I have to do, but like as an adult that's just not true.

Alex: Right! It's so funny because I just realized that I feel like I have the opposite thing with winter, too. Because like you have a summer birthday and you have school being off and everything like that. And then, I have the exact opposite thing where I have a winter birthday and I grew up with sort of like a hybrid of like holidays. Where I grew up uh you know I'm Jewish, and then I also had the side of my family that would celebrate Christmas, so I got to have both Hanukkah and Christmas. So I had basically the like you know winter version of summer break.

And

Nick: that, that definitely says a lot.

Alex: Yeah So both of those make sense to me, actually.

Nick: That's funny. But then I think that even the third honest best answer is fall.

Alex: Oh yeah, naturally. Fall and spring are very much where it's at.

Nick: Yeah but between summer and winter... Depending on the place. Here in Portland, I would definitely say winter.

Alex: Oh yeah.

Nick: Uh, 50s or 80s music?

Alex: Eighties music.

Nick: Same.

Alex: No doubt.

Nick: Piercings or tattoos?

Alex: Tattoos.

Nick: Yeah, same. Tattoos are 1,000 times better. Like, piercings are great but tattoos are just...

Alex: Oh yeah absolutely. Piercings are nice because they're way easier to kind of just like play around with, you know? 'Cause people sort of make it seem like one of those things where they're equal in their permanence, but I've had different peircings where it's just like you can just sorta do whatever. It's fine. But I really like the emotional significance of tattoos um and piercings can also be significant; Don't get me wrong. I just love like the it's like kind of a mindfulness moment to get a tattoo, and I love that. And it's also just so cool like standing in the mirror and being like shit that's on me! What, that's crazy.

Nick: Right. Alright, let's do one last one that I feel like would be funny. Where are you not welcome anymore?

Alex: [laughs]

Nick: My answer I love, because it doesn't matter because the place got shut down.

Alex: Oh, I love that. Oh I love that so much. Honestly my answer also, I feel like- [laughs] It's so funny that that could um apply to multiple things.

Nick: Oh yeah.

Alex: That does apply to

Nick: Those businesses that I'm not allowed at have been shut down, so...

Alex: [ laughs

Nick: Sounds like, uh, their fault not mine. [chuckles]

Alex: Right, um, I would say probably the place for me doesn't matter because the dude got fired, so... [laughs]

Nick: So fuck that guy and- [laughs]

Alex: So fuck you Frank.

Both: [laughing]

Alex: He's not going to listen to this, that's fine.

Nick: Yeah, even if he does there's no tracing that.

Alex: Oh yeah absolutely. There's a lot of shitty Frank's in the world.

Nick: [laughs] All right so fuck you, Frank. This has been Ice Cream Parasocial.

Alex: [laughs]

Thank you for joining us again this week!

Yes And uh once again if you have any like particular answers to these sorts of questions that while we were talking you were just like "I really want to talk about this." Feel free to like tweet them at us or comment on our Instagram or anything like that .

Nick: Also if you have any questions that you would like us to answer go ahead and send those over. Uh, I think it would be really cool to do an episode where we do just answer questions that people have for us. So you can send over your answers and questions to our Twitter and Instagram which are both @parasocialpod and we are Ice Cream Parasocial on YouTube, and you can go ahead and comment there as well.

Alex: Absolutely!

Nick: We'll see you next week!

Alex: Bye!

Nick: Bye!

#new podcast #transcribed podcast #accessible podcast #parasocialpod #queer podcast

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