guiltsick

truth be damned, the instagram algorithm at least thinks i’m some font of the chronically online liberal. so, every month or so i am handed a reel or infographic by a modern intellectual type lamenting their interaction with their domestic worker or some maintenence technician or a cab driver & i often wonder how the person on the other end of the interaction would react if they came across the post.

liberal critique has this unique ability to take the narrative out of the hands of the exact people whose story they're trying to tell.

but i can't just be another tankie dunking on liberals & i want to do more than pass moral judgements so i’m going to do a secret third thing: ✨ psychoanalysis✨ . as phoebe bridgers established, savior complex reveals way more about the person doing the saving than the person they're trying to save.

checking one’s privilege is usually a personal activity. the decision to intellectualise it, make tHeORy out of it, and have it do the rounds on social media is a fascinating specimen of the collection of human behaviours we can call ‘performative’, aka ‘virtue signalling’.

gotta love the phrase ‘virtue signalling’. the idea that virtues or morals could be traded as currency or social capital is hilarious to me. anyone who has actually been in the business of making meaningful friendships/connection sees right through it. because it takes time to learn a person's actual virtues. another reason i love the term virtue signalling, of course, is because to me it sounds explicitly brahmin & that’s just so apt. look at all hindu ancient texts. it’s literally always just some guy mansplaining morality for pages on end. look to the internet and the modern savarna liberal is doing the same thing just armed with woke vocabulary now.

do i think it's a bad thing that people on the internet are discussing their privilege? no. but will i literally throw hands if i see another supposed ‘opinion piece’ that's just a savarna man discovering feminism at the ripe age of 25? absolutely. the most political thing you can do after you discover your privilege is shut the fuck up & listen.

to capitalise on someone else's suffering and make it about the lesson YOU learnt is the type of thing that has only been made possible by our ridiculously online lives. there is value in introspection even when you can't make a show out of it. the way posts like these circulate irks me sm because nobody's trying to have an actual conversation. fully formed prefrontal cortexes engage in a digital circlejerk of validation. reposts & shares populate my feed in succession & everyone's trying to signal that they're Not Like Other Oppressors™.

guilt is wasteful. if a post like that actually made you think about something you haven't thought about before, sit with it for a second. think. what had you taken for granted up until now? if an interaction in your life makes you realise you were treating someone differently because of the class they belonged to, DO fucking better. but if instead of sitting with that discomfort you immediately take it to the internet to validate that you're not alone, you foreclose the possibility of change for yourself.

we all discover in our own time that intellectualising shit rarely solves shit. structural analysis isn't exempt from that. what tangible, material outcome are you hoping it has? because these aren't just buzzwords that could fetch you engagement on the internet. these are lived realities of people fighting to have their voice heard. so it would help to pause for a moment before logging in and wonder if the story really is yours to tell.

stop embarrassing yourself :*