I love the internet. As a millennial, I think I have a somewhat healthy relationship with the worldwide web. Whatever that might be. One might argue that the only healthy relationship with the internet is a non-existent one. I disagree. ANYWAY; I don’t create parasocial bonds, and I understand that much like TV, everything on the internet is curated to some extent. This doesn’t mean that I am immune, oh god no. Quite the opposite. Sometimes I doomscroll a little bit too hard. Luckily for me, my algorithm is rooted in raccoons, Mexican drag queens, and stupid post humour, so my mental health doesn’t get much worse. Mainly because I am always in the struggle bus (driving it), but that’s a story for another time. Bottom line is, I approach the internet with an unserious flirt, taking it as the silly social experiment that it is. No less, no more.

I comment on social media a lot. Mainly because I can. What’s the purpose of social media if it’s not to connect one another? There is this air lately that there might be too many commentators. The contemporary social media universe is definitely atomized and works in small, not interconnected clusters. This might give the impression that the commentators are closer to the matrix. This matrix being the media, art, pop music, politics or whatever the algorithm might feed you. Everyone has a podcast, everyone is trying to commodify every single minute of their lives, and we all (famously like our own assholes) have an opinion. Charli XCX once said,

‘They don’t build statues of critics.’

And there’s some truth to that, there is something real about the fact that not every opinion needs to be heard. We live in the era of over-analysis, the era of making an essay out of anything, the era of always trying to find layers that in all honesty, are not always there. I agree with the sentiment, I agree that we need to shut up more often, log off and go for a walk. But I also desperately want to be heard. There is an egotistical voice in my head telling me that my opinion is interesting, that I bring something new to the table, that I am not like the others. More special, more unique. Better. This is obviously a lie, but it explains my fixation with the need of leaving a comment on any piece of media I consume on my phone.

When I leave a comment, I do it with the conviction that somehow, the person reading it gets all the nuances of what I am saying. And most of the time, I am just saying something silly or harmless. Like if I am making fun of someone selling sketchy coaching courses, why should anyone care? One day, I was scrolling, and as one does, I came upon a seemingly random video. In this video, a recruiter was talking about the state of the corporate job market in the United States, and how horrible it was.

Now, some context. I am a queer anarcho-socialist. I believe in a sense of community. I never attribute to malice what I can attribute to incompetence. I try to be my best self, and love the people surrounding me the best I can. I am not always successful. I make mistakes all the time, and I did make some terrible choices that held me back in life. I studied in my 30s, and now I see myself trapped in the hamster wheel of living an adult life tied to an industry I didn’t choose (the service industry) while simultaneously trying to become a writer (I don’t even know how yet). So I feel stuck, I feel tired, I feel sad, I feel angry. I do not feel all those things all the time, because life is complicated, but I do find it difficult to find hope sometimes. My anger sometimes gets channeled as hatred for different groups of people. Sometimes straight men, sometimes politicians, many times the rich.

When I asked someone to revise this piece, they told me that it was too angry. I thunk I write too many angry things, too many sad things. Note to self: I NEED TO START WRITING LESS DEPRESSING STUFF.

And don’t get me wrong, I live in a first-world country, and I do a lot with what I have. A lot of people can say that I don’t have real problems. I am just another faggot living in London trying to make it. And I am very aware of it. That said, one of my ongoing battles is against corporate office workers. Not against any particular person that might be reading this, or any of my acquaintances or friends. But against corporate office workers as this blob of people that encompasses a lot of things that (in my very humble – serving lattes and cleaning tables – opinion) I hate about our lovely capitalistic society.

Corporate office workers dictate the rules of society. Bankers, lawyers, solicitors, and credit data engineers. Corporate office workers don’t get dirty or physically tired when they work. Corporate office workers can work from home. Corporate office workers get paid more than most of us. I serve corporate office workers. And the worst thing of them all, when I try to talk with some corporate office workers, they will try to meet you in the middle with their struggles, as if they belonged in the same tier. They also rarely ever (if ever at all) help anyone else to get one of those corporate jobs. Mainly because they see everyone else as a potential competitor for their bullshit role in the company. Again, this is material for another essay and another day. ANYWAY, knowing my little story, I approached this Instagram post by commenting, JOKINGLY, this next thing.

First of all, GIRL, I do not to have to be attacked like that.

Do I secretly wish suffering to the people looking for a job in the corporate world? No. Changing jobs is a horrible thing. Time-consuming, humiliating, and belittling, looking for a job has always been one of the most vulnerable moments in someone’s life. Even more nerve-wracking if someone has been terminated and is jobless. Now, do I wish that some of those people would get a reality check? Yes. The truth is that not everyone can be a middle manager in Manager Mc Management, because if we all made a living by sending emails, who would pick up the tomatoes? Who would fix the plumbing? Who would serve lattes?

Not only the fact they (accurately) assumed that I am miserable most of the time, but also the fact that they have criticised my clothes and my haircut. This means that this person has gone through my profile and links and have form an opinion about my questionable looks, which I understand. But this also means that they might have gone through my blog posts (at least somebody has) and have formed an opinion about my depressing writing posts.

Fair enough.

These potential corporate office workers secretly refuse to look at anything that might be ‘beneath’ them, because guess what, they don’t want to work in the first or second sector. They don’t want to cook, clean, or serve. Because guess what, generally speaking, not a lot of people want to do any of this. So, my joke was playfully criticizing the group of people that are somewhat struggling in a corporate employer’s market because they refuse to serve food or clean. They are terrified of seeing their life downgraded by doing something different than ‘what they do‘ to survive. For the record, I do something other than what I want to do to survive, and I have been doing it for more than fifteen years.

And this person chose to read me to shreds.

This mini beef no one cares about led me to think a lot about how we are perceived on social media. This person, with a picture of Divine the drag queen as their profile picture, is probably queer. This means that probably, this unknown enemy I just made on the internet has a lot more in common with me than they think. I mean they chose Divine, not a random drag queen from the last season of RuPaul’s Drag Race. They are not just queer, they are probably well-read part-time philosophers who understand the nuances of convoluted art. Yes, I am assuming a lot here. In the spirit of keeping it cute, I playfully answered in stock gay vernacular.

And this answer shocked me. First of all, the all over the place TMI. But second, all this point about me being somehow PROUD of my career (?) and that I have done nothing with my life (?).

I needed to explore this interaction because I suddenly realised that social media is the ultimate broken telephone. Their lack of context and my lack of decorum have created a conflictive exchange that could have been very different. It is fascinating to see how our different approaches, which we know nothing about, throw us into a spiral, automatically acting as each other’s antagonists.

It’s so hard to make a point in a little comment. It’s so hard to understand where someone is coming from if we only get a glimpse of what they are saying. Under all the irony layers, under all our post-stan Twitter slang and internet vernacular, we are not that different.

Why did I need to go against those job hunters who were probably struggling?

Why did they need to automatically assume that I am a horrible creature?

Why did I follow up with a snarky comment? Why did they try to lecture me?

I don’t know. In fact, I know very little. We all know very little.

But that will not stop me.