Diary 2018-12-07

By Max Woerner Chase

Diary because I don't want to try to get this to the rough-draft quality of my usual free-topic things...

On the heels of what is, according to an anonymous source, the culmination of months of effort on tumblr's part, to secure greater ad revenue by angering vocal segments of their userbase, now I'm hearing about new policies from Facebook. Policies that sound like an attempt to program an old-timey expert system to hate sexuality. Like someone trying to write ordinances using an uncooperative deck of old Magic: The Gathering cards. Like a neural network read nothing but manifestos.

Okay, enough attempts at evocative dunks. Point is, thinking about these various social media companies' track records with sexuality and violent ideologies, and some other dunks I made on Facebook's policies (which, maybe they're all like that, I wouldn't know), I realized what this is all reminding me of.

I'm having a lot of trouble articulating exactly what I'm feeling here, but pretty much, this scene (I have not seen Zardoz, so I can't speak to the rest of it) feels like it's ended up way too relevant. While the dichotomy from Zardoz is simpler than what we have out here in the real world, there's still a lot of related forces, against, like, bodily and emotional autonomy, and in favor of easy answers and the feeling of power.

My only answer to all of this, so far, is to get more voices out there, and for me, I guess that means continuing to practice art and prioritizing the Romance Instrumentality Project. Why don't I start putting together reference materials for that now. No synthesis yet, just turning them from random browser tabs into a document to improve. Okay, that's the easiest stuff out of the way.

I don't know how much chance I'll have to work on stuff in the near future—this weekend sounds a little hectic—but I've got goals. For now: