In the earliest myths, punishment descended from the heavens. The defiant were struck down, chained, or condemned to eternal repetition: Prometheus bound for stealing fire; Sisyphus condemned to his ceaseless ascent; Tantalus forever reaching for what retreats. These figures embodied divine justice as spectacle and punishment as something done tothe transgressor by cosmic authority. Then, philosophers started to reframe mythic punishment as psychological disequilibrium wherein vice is a pathology of the soul. They began to reinterpret these myths allegories of inner disorder rather than literal accounts of divine wrath. Iniquity was likened to fracture one’s own being, falling out of harmony with reason, truth, and the order of things.
Plato reinterpreted torment as the consequence of an imbalanced soul. In the Republic and Gorgias, wrongdoing became its own affliction because vice disfigured the psyche long before any external penalty was imposed. The soul itself became the theatre of justice. Socrates’ claim that “it is better to suffer injustice than to commit it” redefined the moral cosmos, turning vice from an external offense into a pathology of the soul. Later, the Stoics developed this into a moral psychology. They saw anger, greed, and fear as symptoms of a diseased spirit rather than offenses that required divine punishment. Early Christian thinkers like Augustine expanded on this by defining sin as a “privation of good” and inner exile from God, a self-inflicted hell. By the Enlightenment and beyond, philosophers—from Spinoza to Nietzsche—had secularized this insight. Punishment emerged from within, as guilt, alienation, or disintegration of self. Once punishment was understood as internal imbalance, the focus shifted from appeasing divine authority to restoring psychological and ethical equilibrium. Myths of endless toil and frustration served as metaphors for the restless mind caught in its own contradictions and for the regretful nature of evil. Injustice became its own prison, hubris its own chain—and this inward turn still shapes modern storytelling where moral conflict often plays out as a crisis within.
Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths (2010) externalizes that tension through parallel worlds of virtue and corruption, continuing a tradition that began in ancient Greece: the recognition that every cosmic struggle is also psychological; that the conflict between good and evil lies within the divided human soul. The story unfolds across parallel universes. In one world—our world—the familiar Justice League exists as heroes: Superman (Mark Harmon), Batman (William Baldwin), Wonder Woman (Vanessa Marshall), Green Lantern (Nolan North), J’onn J’onzz (also known as “Martian Manhunter,” voiced by Jonathan Adams), and The Flash (Josh Keaton)—while in another, an evil counterpart dominates the planet through corruption and fear. They call themselves the Crime Syndicate, led by Ultraman (Brian Bloom), Owlman (James Woods), Superwoman (Gina Torres), Power Ring (also Nolan North), J’edd J’arkus,and Johnny Quick (James Patrick Stewart). From the alternate Earth, Lex Luthor (Chris Noth) escapes to our Earth to seek help from the Justice League. As the last surviving resister, Luthor hopes they can help overthrow the tyranny. The Justice League clash with their villainous doppelgängers in efforts to dismantle the Syndicate’s global control. However, a deeper conflict centres on Owlman whose nihilistic worldview leads him to a plan that transcends ordinary evil. Believing that existence itself is meaningless due to the infinite number of parallel worlds, he steals a quantum weapon to destroy Earth Prime, the original world from which all others diverged; and thus resolves to erase the multiverse entirely.
To me, Owlman’s despair completes the philosophical descent from divine punishment to self-annihilation. Once evil is no longer punished by gods but corrodes the self from within, nihilism becomes its purest expression; the soul that, unable to reconcile meaning with multiplicity, seeks to end meaning altogether. His desire to destroy Earth Prime is the metaphysical equivalent of the tormented psyche longing for silence, like a Promethean intellect turning its fire against creation itself. In him, punishment and vice collapse into one act as the punishment he inflicts upon the cosmos is the punishment he unconsciously desires for himself—which is why he ultimately chooses to perish.
Then, there’s Ultraman whose menace lies in his utter normalization of cruelty. He rules through the exhibition of impunity and personifies as brute authority as the inverse of Superman’s moral ideal. He’s power without principle, strength ungoverned by empathy. His tyranny is more performative than abstract as he reminds the President (an alternate version of Deathstroke voiced by Bruce Davison) that the Syndicate murdered the First Lady during a failed assassination attempt and suffered no consequences; a declaration meant not merely to terrorize but to prove that might is immune to justice. Where Owlman’s evil is reflective, seeking meaning in annihilation, Ultraman’s is instinctive as the latter’s creed is that power justifies itself. For me, he illustrates the fulfillment of what philosophers once feared when virtue ceased to be cosmic law; that strength, unmoored from moral order, would crown itself as the only truth. In him, punishment no longer descends from heaven or arises from conscience; it becomes a spectacle of dominance, a demonstration that there is no higher court than force itself.
And while Ultraman enacts domination through fear, Superwoman wields it through desire. She distorts the compassionate strength of Wonder Woman into possession and provocation wherein power functions as erotic and authoritarian. She has no use for moral conviction since she commands loyalty by manipulating others’ appetites and insecurities. In her, love—or something like it—is reduced to leverage, and affection becomes a form of conquest. Her relationship with both Ultraman and Owlman encapsulates this dynamic in the comics where she seduces each in turn. And this seduction isn’t driven by fidelity or passion; it’s a means to assert control, to keep them orbiting her pull of ego and cruelty. What makes her so fearsome is her deliberate perversion of intimacy. She derives power from deceit and domination, turning care into coercion and compassion into spectacle.
Power Ring depicts the corruption of fear. His ring, unlike Green Lantern’s symbol of will and creativity, enslaves rather than liberates. It speaks to him, dominates him, and feeds upon his anxiety. His every act of aggression is rooted in terror; the desperate need to prove mastery over a power he cannot control. Where the Lantern’s oath is an assertion of inner order [“In brightest day, in blackest night…”], Power Ring’s existence is an admission of inner chaos. He wields power but lacks sovereignty. His weapon of choice is a parasite reflecting the tyranny of his own psyche. Unlike Sinestro, whose corruption springs from authoritarian conviction—the belief that order must be imposed through fear—Power Ring’s evil arises from submission, not control. Sinestro is tyrannical while Power Ring is terrified. The former wields fear as an instrument of dominion, the latter is its instrument as a slave to the dread that sustains his strength. Moreover, his character exposes the inverse of Stoic virtue. The Stoics saw courage as the harmony of reason and passion, the calm governance of self, whereas Power Ring is governed by fear. His spirit is fractured, subject to an external will masquerading as his own. He represents what happens when one’s moral center collapses entirely; when the self becomes host to the very force it fears. In that sense, he is the purest embodiment of vice as psychological disequilibrium: a man so divided that even his source of power becomes a source of torment.
Though only briefly referenced, J’edd J’arkus speaks to the death of empathy itself. J’onn J’onzz channels telepathy as communion. He links minds to share understanding to evince a harmony in the collective soul: a state of moral and emotional attunement in which individual minds and wills are aligned through empathy, reason, and shared purpose. As such, this forms a unified ethical consciousness rather than a collection of isolated selves. On the other side of that, J’edd’s marks spiritual disintegration. His telepathy is about intrusion as opposed to understanding, operant upon weaponizing intimacy and reading minds to dominate rather than to understand. In him, the Martian gift of connection becomes a curse of surveillance. Additionally, his very absence—narratively and conscientiously—signifies a warped presence; a void that speaks to the moral isolation of his world. Early in the film, his death is mentioned without grief or reflection; just a passing detail in a world numbed to loss. But this omission is the point: in a universe where every virtue is inverted, there is no mourning because there is no empathy left to mourn with.
Finally, Johnny Quick manifests the perversion of temperance. The Flash runs on—no pun intended—hope and vitality. What defines him is the catharsis that adversities are not meant to be prevented or all consuming, but honoured. Even though he can time travel, he understands that time [temporal paths and values] shouldn’t—and simply can’t, by virtue of reciprocal causation—undone. Following The Flashpoint Paradox, Barry Allen as The Flash learns that it’s okay to be defined by adversities; but more so defined in the way that a compass defines direction, not the way that a chain defines captivity. Wally West—the version of The Flash in this film and predominantly featured throughout the DC animated universe otherwise—carries that lesson further. He appreciates presence, understanding that velocity without connection is emptiness. Across comics and adaptations, his characterization transforms speed from escape into empathy. He runs to stay in touch with history, not alter it. He seeks to close the distances that grief, guilt, and time impose. His sense of motion becomes communion as a way of feeling the world’s pulse rather than fleeing from it. Through him, the Flash’s legacy evolves from mastery over time to harmony with it.
Which also sets him apart from the Reverse Flash—Eobard Thawne—who never comes to realize that despair is the only outcome when you relive or redo life events without any space for meaning to circulate. Personally, I can appreciate this as I find myself contending with—what feels like a never-ending—repetition [of adversities] without relief because new losses reopen old ones before healing can occur. In that respect, injustice and loneliness reinforce the sense that everything is pointless; and I find myself praying for things—all things—to simply just end. Then, I remember the Dark Flash [as seen in The Flash (2023)] whose character is defined by tirelessly trying to unravel a fixed point and orchestrate a perfect outcome. Each temporal intervention just reopens his first wound, and he keeps running back to the origin instead of forward through its echoes. For me, in everyday life, this entails intrusive thoughts respective to my OCD—constantly revisiting the “what ifs”—and aptly feeling that every new attachment only rehearses the inevitability of loss; to which the adversities stop transforming and start depleting.
Likewise, Johnny Quick purposes speed as compulsion. Driven by arrogance and the terror of insignificance, he doesn’t run toward anything; he runs away. His energy is manic. For him, speed is addiction. Velocity evinces a desperate refusal to pause long enough to face the void within. He’s like the Syndicate’s Sisyphus as a figure condemned to perpetual motion wherein his every triumph immediately collapses into futility. His final act—overexerting his metabolism until it kills him—turns this pathology into a tragic metaphor as his body disintegrates under the very force that defines him, as if the cosmos itself enacts poetic justice for his excess. When Johnny Quick realizes that Batman outwitted him to assume a fatal role [in lieu of The Flash] under a bogus premise of him being faster [than The Flash], he simply smirks: “Good one, mate.” Even in death, he proves consumed by the velocity of his own vice. He represents the soul that mistakes movement for meaning, collapsing from within when it can no longer outrun its own emptiness.
So, the Crime Syndicate come from a world that isn’t exactly a mirror of our own. Their Earth is a metaphysical inversion where every virtue becomes its own caricature. But this inversion also exposes the moral contingency of all worlds. Goodness isn’t the default; it must be continually chosen, created, and renewed. In life as we know it, evil may often prevail in power or perpetuity, but it can’t define meaning unless we let it. The classic hero’s struggle, like the soul’s, is to resist the normalization of corruption rather than eradicate it completely; to keep the light from dimming in a cosmos inclined toward shadow. The parallel worlds in Crisis on Two Earths are less about cosmic dualism than about the fragility of being—or becoming—human; the perpetual effort to make life more than repetition, more than entropy. However they may prove violated or misplaced, I’ve come to accept that my good faith and goodwill don’t make me weak. They enable me to feel, connect, and move through life with wisdom and integrity instead of just force. While the Crime Syndicate depict what happens when the soul collapses inward, the Justice League represent what it means to keep moving forward and persist in faith, justice, and compassion even when the universe seems indifferent. For all its darkness, I think Crisis on Two Earths reminds us that life, like virtue, is something we create through choice. Not the absence of evil, but the refusal to let evil be final.
♫ Title song reference – “Justified & Ancient” by The KLF ft. Tammy Wynette
Around the time I got Clark, I was binging Smallville. I thought that his muscular build likened him to ‘The Man of Steel.’ He was the fittest, largest cat I’d ever met, weighing in at 22 pounds at his heaviest; but he never had any health issues and was always active. I think that I only really started to process change or “expect the unexpected” after I got Clark. I never actually planned on getting him. Initially, I got James. Edith came along after my mom’s former boss offered her years later. Then, I got Vera to be Edith’s friend since the age gap between Edith and James meant they weren’t too friendly with each other. They got along, but James was older and exasperated. Clark was the anomaly: a mouser meant for the rural living space I shared with my father. I’d hoped to bring James or one of the girls there, but my mother forbade it. Being a woman of action, I just resolved to get yet another cat.
Clark and his siblings were advertised in local classifieds although there were no pictures; but back then, just the word “kitten” was enough to generate interest, and pickup was well within range of my daily commute. So, I set out that frosty morning after a quick phone call [to the classifieds poster], then thrifted a sturdy cat carrier before I made my way over. Given the genders as they were—the pair of girls and James—I figured it’d be ideal to even things out with another boy. Clark was the only guy left when I got there. He was also the only shorthair—or short-ish, given how it would grow to be relatively wavy and mid-length—unlike his sisters. I don’t know if Clark was the runt of his litter, but he’s acted as much since as the youngest of the others. Even more memorable was how neither he nor his sisters were separated from their mother, which is usually advised since cats can be protective of their kittens if someone attempts to take one; but Clark was the only one unnerved when I took him. I’ll never forget the indifference of his mother and sisters, even his father who lounged on the backyard patio.
Clark was meowing a lot despite my assurances. I chalked this up to nerves, not unlike the others I had when I first got them; but time would reveal Clark to be chatty, now sassy. I also suspect he was hard of hearing due to how loud he’s always spoken. Anyway, Clark was roughly two when we came to live with the others after my father moved. While they eventually tolerated him to varying degrees, his later introduction marked him as an outlier. I used to feel bad because I often wondered if he felt lonely or ostracized, and I guess I projected some of my own feelings of that onto him since I knew how that felt. I knew what it was like to be bullied, so I learned relatively early on how people could be tirelessly cruel and relentless; how it felt trying to belong only for prevalent disparities to render all efforts fruitless; having every amity or crush be rendered likewise, yet still vying for reciprocity. Essentially, Clark personified what alienation defined—and honestly, continues to rationalize—my social anxiety and aversion; but as a caregiver, this was something to behold. Seeing how Clark was typically excluded by James and the girls, I always made a conscious effort to dote on him; but I knew for however earnest my efforts were, I was no substitute for acceptance at large.
What I didn’t know was that my efforts weren’t for nothing. It never occurred to me that Clark notices, cherishes, and loves me because of them. For years, I assumed he was aloof and miserable. I worried that it wasn’t enough to just care; that I could never fill the void left by his exclusion from the others, that he must feel as lonely as I usually do. But recently, I’ve come to realize that Clark’s love has always been there—shrewd, steady, and uniquely his. It’s in the way he seeks me out, even when he could easily retreat to his favourite hiding spots; and how he lingers near, brushing against me or calling. Then, there’s how he bunts me. He didn’t need validation from others. Instead, he was simply content to exist with me. I used to think I was trying to fill a gap in his life, to compensate for something he lacked. Now, I understand that Clark has been filling a gap in mine. He’s shown me that love doesn’t have to be loud to be real and that even the smallest efforts to care for someone can create a bond that speaks louder than words ever could. Clark had also been a steady and surprising source of comfort throughout Edith’s terminal diagnosis, showing me another side of himself I never noticed before. He seemed to sense my sadness, appearing by my side just when I felt most overwhelmed, letting me hold him and holding me. His calls, once simply part of his quirky personality, had become a call to action that motivated me to get up, keep going, and stay present for the both of them. In these moments, I saw a more intuitive side to Clark, one that reassured me I’m not alone.
Which is why I found myself reconsidering his namesake. Likening him to Superman, I’d mostly thought of strength, endurance, and physicality. After Smallville wound down and I rewatched the animated series, I saw how the name also meant resolve and loyalty. Superman was never just a symbol of might. He was an outsider who navigated loneliness while carrying an immense capacity for love. He also realizes that fulfillment isn’t found in grand heroics or cosmic purpose, but in the quiet, simple moments; the small joys of an ordinary life, and understanding that being human, in all its imperfections, is enough. Every trial and tribulation drives home the importance of those who see him as more than Superman.
In many ways, Clark has shown me the same. All my overthinking, overdoing only to realize that nothing is ever enough; that systems are incorrigible in what and who they oblige. I used to think getting to the bottom of the how and why would help me make sense of the what and render the when and who more discernible—but that was never the case. People are too fickle. Their ignobility is on par with their ingenuity to conjure sentiments and scenarios in which little, if anything gets addressed lest we fail to accommodate endless variables. Complicating life just makes us lose sight of what truly matters: the pure, unspoken bonds that don’t need justification or grandeur to be meaningful. But while simplicity reveals what truly matters, too many mistake submission for security, believing that aligning with power will shield them from its corruption. Superman also understands that no amount of strength can truly dismantle the iniquity that defines this world, but he still chooses to exist within it and strives to do good however he can. Clark taught me that even in a world where I can’t change the larger forces at play, the simple act of caring, being present, and finding comfort in moments still matters. Maybe Superman’s greatest act isn’t saving the world, but finding peace in knowing even small acts of kindness are worth something.
And as I consider this, I can’t help thinking of Saw 4 and its ill-fated protagonist, Daniel Rigg (Lyriq Bent), who was ultimately destroyed because his defining trait—his inability to let go—was manipulated against him. While imperfect, his compassion and drive to save others was genuine; but instead of being given the space to learn or change, he was forced into a test designed to ensure his failure. Saw 4—specifically, how much I’ve always despised how it ended—showed me how much I fixate on inconsistencies, injustices, and unresolved truths because I refuse to compartmentalize or dismiss what feels fundamentally wrong. Rigg’s trial reflects the cruel irony of a system that punishes those who care too much and twists virtue into weakness, exploiting it rather than guiding it toward growth. In the end, Rigg didn’t fail himself; the game was rigged against him from the start.
Kinda like the last son of Krypton. For all his strength and idealism, Superman is ultimately doomed to fail because his unwavering sense of duty and a need to protect everyone—the very qualities that make him heroic—are also the ones that leave him burdened, isolated, and vulnerable to being twisted by grief, disillusionment, and the impossibility of saving a world that refuses to save itself. There’s a tension between what he needs to acceptand what he feels responsible for. No matter how much he tries to let go, knowing he could do more gnaws at him.
At its heart, Injustice: Gods Among Us (2013) depicts Superman’s inability to let go and accept that some battles can’t be won. Not everyone can or should be saved. Unlike many DC storylines that originate in print and later expand into other media, Injustice was made specifically as a game narrative, integrating complex character drama with the mechanics of a fighting game. Adding to its impact, the game features most of the iconic voice actors from Justice League and other beloved DC animated projects, which lends a sense of familiarity to a story that takes these characters into uncharted territory. Set in an alternate DC universe, the story casts Superman (George Newbern) as a tyrant after the Joker (Richard Epcar) tricks him into killing Lois Lane and their unborn child, which also detonates a nuclear bomb in Metropolis. After killing the Joker in rage, he establishes the One Earth Regime, a totalitarian government that enforces global peace through absolute control. Most heroes—including Wonder Woman (Susan Eisenberg), Green Lantern (Adam Baldwin), Aquaman (Phil LaMarr), Cyborg (Khary Payton), Shazam (Joey Naber), and The Flash (Neal McDonough)—join him alongside villains. Resisting Superman’s rule, Batman (Kevin Conroy) forms the Insurgency and allies himself with Lex Luthor (Mark Rolston). He transports alternate versions of himself, Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Aquaman, and Green Arrow (Alan Tudyk) from our universe. With their help, the Insurgency fights back, leading to a climactic battle between the two Supermen. Our Superman defeats the tyrannical one, and Batman imprisons him in a red sun cell, ending his reign—for the time being.
Superman has always understood death as an inevitable part of life. He was sent to Earth because Krypton perished. Then, he was raised by Jonathan and Martha Kent whose values shape his dealings with loss as both Clark Kent and Superman. They taught him humility, responsibility, and the limits of power. Logically, Superman knows that even with all his strength, he can’t stop death from claiming those he loves. But Injustice exposes a contradiction within the Man of Steel: while he accepts death in theory, it is also his breaking point in practice. The loss of Lois and his unborn child doesn’t just devastate him; it shatters the core beliefs that have always tethered him to restraint. Instead of seeing death as a painful but natural part of existence, he sees it as a failure to protect what matters most. And from that moment on, he refused to ever let it happen again, no matter the cost. Long interpreted as a Christ-like figure: Superman is an all-powerful being sent from above to guide and protect humanity, sacrificing himself time and again for the greater good. In Injustice, that messianic role warps into something authoritarian. Instead of offering salvation through faith, hope, and inspiration, he demands it through force and obedience. He no longer trusts people to follow the right path; he compels them to. In that sense, this Superman shifts to something more akin to an Old Testament deity or even a fallen angel. Injustice casts him as an absolutist where any threat to peace must be eliminated by force, if necessary. He believes he’s doing what’s best for humanity; but in doing so, he strips people of their freedom and autonomy, enforcing his will rather than allowing people to make their own choices. He becomes the very thing he once fought against: a tyrant no different from Darkseid or Lex Luthor; wielding power not as a protector, but as a ruler who demands submission in the name of his own vision.
A happier read would say that Injustice Superman is righteous albeit misguided as his need to save people morphs into a compulsion that blinds him to reality, that he truly believes he’s doing the right thing; although in the end, his inability to let go causes more harm than good and leads to his own demise and those of others. Superman cares so much that he refuses to accept some people don’t want to be saved, or that trying to help can make things worse.
My pessimistic read—and perhaps, a more honest one—suggests that Superman’s downfall isn’t just a tragic miscalculation, but an inevitability. His belief in doing the right thing was only righteous when it aligned with the ideals he once upheld. The moment the world deviated from his vision, he abandoned those ideals in favour of control. His need to save people was never truly about them, it was about his own inability to tolerate loss; and his refusal to accept that suffering, injustice, and even death are woven into existence itself. And in his desperation to rewrite the rules of reality, he proves that power—no matter how noble its origins—can corrupt. Not because it changes those who wield it, but because it reveals what was always there: the capacity to enforce, to dominate, to reshape the world in one’s own image, no matter what or who must be sacrificed along the way. Even now, I can’t help but recall the people I’ve encountered who gained more systemic power. I think of the long-term commitments I’ve made, the communities and relationships that once gave me a sense of belonging—only to be met with the realization that they never truly saw me as part of them. Everything just vindicated my misanthropy or distrust. This kind of disillusionment runs deep, especially when it comes from people or institutions that proffer justice or belonging. It’s one thing to see power corrupt from a distance, but another entirely to witness it in those who position themselves as advocates or allies. When people who preach about accessibility, equity, and inclusion turn out to be just as self-serving and complicit as those they claim to oppose, it only reinforces the sense that power—no matter how it’s framed—always bends toward self-interest. And worse, when you’ve worked so hard, given everything just to be part of something—only to be toldyou’re not enough or that you don’t belong, it makes the very concept of community feel hollow. Sure, nothing in life is guaranteed. Loyalty shifts, promises break, and most beliefs change over time. But what’s constant is the consolidation of power. No matter the era, ideology, or individuals involved—power gravitates toward itself, building in the hands of those who hoard it, at the expense of those who don’t. Systems and seasons may change, but the outcome is always the same. Those with power find ways to keep it, and those without perish. They’re in favour of anything, anyone that consolidates power into their hands; and they’re against the (re)distribution of power—social, monetary, or otherwise.
Fundamentally, it’s conservatism; they’re just content to conserve the status quo so long as they reap its benefits. Norms inform their complacency because that’s “just the way it is.” The way it is premises what should be. This is how power is sustained. This is also how—and why—conservatism is readily co-opted by fascism, the latter of which assumes a hierarchy that admonishes minorities. While conservatism alleges democracy assures [its] fairness, fascism dismantles its foundational principles to accumulate more power. Terms like “SJW,” “woke,” and “virtue signaling” define many of their insults because they believe in innate differences. They can’t believe any sincere calls for equality, only that these—and any—efforts are just ways to take power; ways that they themselves would also exploit. This also explains why conservatives readily accept charity but resist systemic change; they view charity as goodwill from those who’ve “earned” their status, rather than as something those in need are entitled to. In their view, assistance should be an act of generosity, not a right.
Even in light of current events, I don’t believe we’re experiencing a conservative or fascist shift in politics. I think there is a social incentive to embrace conservative politics that can translate into financial incentive, but it’s not the same. Folks tend to frame things as a progression of conservative and fascist influence, particularly because that fits a very profitable narrative for conservatives and liberals who monetize the ensuing miasma of despair. I do believe that billionaires and ownership classes embrace fascism as a means of self-preservation; and their fans carry water for oligarchs and deplorables. Bearing this in mind, it’s no surprise that celebrities, politicians, and the corporate class are openly investing in conservative politics. My point here is that power is subtle. Comparably, desperation is overt. True feelings are closer to the heart rather than the mouth, and we’d all do better to listen to the pulse being drowned out by the chatter. Pretenses ignore the root causes of desperation, offering empty gestures instead of meaningful solutions, leaving the most vulnerable with no recourse but to fight for what they were never given. Violence ensues from performative—as opposed to anti-oppressive—politics because dehumanization begets it. This relates to the paradox of righteous indignation which starts as a response to injustice, yet consumes the very virtues it aims to uphold in seeking to correct the world’s wrongs.
This underscores the rationale of Injustice Superman and likewise powers that be. Power isn’t about morality, justice, or fairness; it’s about control. Those who hold power justify their grasp through brute force, social conditioning, or the illusion of goodwill. Injustice Superman believes that he alone has the strength to shape the world, so he alone has the right to dictate its future; much like how the ruling class rationalizes their dominance under the guise of meritocracy, tradition, or “the natural order.” So, power is not something to be shared, only wielded. Any challenge to their authority is framed as an existential threat. Not because it disrupts peace or stability, but because it disrupts their place at the top. Those in power would rather concede charity than equality, and grant favours rather than dismantle the structures that necessitate them. The consolidation of power is the only true constant, and those who have it will do whatever it takes to ensure they never lose it. Injustice Superman succumbs to the idea that power alone justifies action. He concludes that because he can impose his will, he must. His strength warps into entitlement to which his vision of peace becomes tyranny. The more power he amasses, the more tortured he becomes. As external resistance mounts, his own convictions demand endless escalation. His pursuit of order doesn’t bring him peace; it only deepens his suffering. No amount of control can undo the grief and regret that set him on this path in the first place.
Sometimes, I genuinely miss being radically hopeful with the belief that all people are inherently good, and corruption stems from greed and power rather than something more fundamental. I miss the good feelings that came with that faith in humanity. I miss not being consumed by anger and fear. I long for the time when real, mortal danger felt distant enough to moralize over. I miss feeling safe and valued, and believing safety and value were things I was inherently entitled to. I miss not being so [rightfully] pessimistic. Now, I’m mad, bitter, and resentful because it all proved to be a fucking lie. Unlike Injustice, there was never any Insurgency in real time. Having spent my life working toward a professorship—fast-tracking my degrees, sacrificing stability, and striving for academic excellence—I’ve seen firsthand how tenure operates as a gatekeeper of power in academia, determining who gets security, influence, and a voice, while those without it remain precarious, expendable, and unheard. Tenure is a permanent academic appointment that grants professors protection from dismissal, giving them the freedom to research, teach, and speak without fear of institutional retaliation.
However, it also consolidates power, creating a hierarchy where tenured faculty have significant influence over hiring, policy, and academic discourse, often reinforcing existing inequalities within the university system. It’s depressing that precariously employed faculty and students—some who haven’t even finished their degrees—risk everything while tenured professors stay silent, unwilling to even read a statement condemning injustice on campus. People rush to name a few exceptions, but the reality is that most faculty uphold the very systems they critique in their writing. For them, there’s no praxis—just lip service and theory because, at the end of the day, it’s a career. They talk about “decolonizing the university,” but decolonization isn’t found in edited collections or overpriced conferences; it’s a material struggle. Soon enough, we’ll see “radical” faculty publishing books and articles on student activism, but don’t expect them to stand with actual student protesters or part-time colleagues. Universities will house specialty centres where tenured “progressive” professors lecture about revolution—while their students and part-timers are sanctioned for resisting oppression or abusive faculty.
As this present feels like a betrayal, it’s easy to retreat into the past, searching for a time that felt safer, more certain. Nostalgia lulls us into the illusion that the past was a sanctuary, a place where love was certain, where we were whole. I miss the past, when my beloveds were alive and their presence felt certain, when I could still believe that love and companionship were constant rather than fleeting. Back then, I had the comfort of assurance in knowing they were there, that they existed in the same world as me, that I wasn’t so alone. Now, I am bereaved, hollowed out by absence, and eclipsed by forces beyond my control. Mortality reveals itself with ruthless clarity; and worse still, I can’t stop those I love from leaving me—by fate or choice. I agonize over whether the people I love truly love me enough to stay, or if they merely tolerate me until they no longer can. I wonder if I’m nothing more than an expendable nuisance as I’ve been so easily discarded. Uncertainty gnaws at me, whispering that I’m always one misstep away from being abandoned, one inconvenience away from being left behind. I know I’m operating from a place of trauma, but also from an unrelenting nihilism that seeps from my pores—and I hate it. I don’t know how much longer I can productively sublimate it, or if I’ll know what to do when I can’t.
I don’t know how to accept being powerless.
History imparts that most people are only a nudge away from engaging in harm or cruelty when provided with the right justification. Social structures, ideological conditioning, and collective narratives offer the necessary pretext for moral disengagement, enabling individuals to commit or condone harm under the guise of righteousness. As Aldous Huxley observes, one of the most effective ways to mobilize people toward a so-called noble cause is to grant them permission to inflict harm upon others. This reinforcesthe cruelty of righteous indignation, the pleasure gleaned from harm when framed as virtuous or necessary. Similarly, Friedrich Nietzsche notes that every society harbours people who derive great satisfaction from acts of violence, particularly when those actions are framed as retribution. Huxley extends this idea further by arguing that such moral crusaders rarely operate alone; and that they easily recruit others into their cause because righteous indignation carries an undercurrent of noble sadism, a latent desire for domination that only needs minimal provocation to manifest. This phenomenon is frequently exploited by those in positions of power, who manipulate public sentiment by rebranding systemic harm as an unfortunate but necessary step toward a greater good. Harmful policies, punitive social norms, and exclusionary ideologies are then justified as regrettable yet unavoidable measures required to maintain order or achieve an idealized future. Thereafter, Huxley concludes that the ability to enact iniquity in good conscience is a heady treat, and those who relish this power don’t actually seek justice or progress.
They seek pleasure by inflicting punishment. Recognizing this—seeing the cruelty of righteous indignation for what it is—is crucial to call bullshit on performative movements, ideologies, and institutional rhetoric that claim to be driven by moral imperatives while enacting policies or practices that perpetuate violence and oppression. In addition to cruelty, Injustice Superman demonstrates the folly of righteous indignation altogether. He purposes his bereavement as a personal call to action rather than an expression of underlying tensions which peak due to a tragic stimulus. Hence his exceptionalism inspires tyranny and prevents him from seeing the mechanics of his own downfall therein. Injustice sees Superman exhibit a hubris of sanctimony that leads to subterfuge and failure—but hubris has always been intrinsic to Superman, right? After all, shy of kryptonite, his power fosters a belief in his own glorious purpose. Arguably, this makes him susceptible to the illusion that he alone can oversee order and justice. I also can’t help thinking how, systemically, hubris is a curious thing.
When individuals repeatedly succeed within systems designed to favour their advantages—wealth, extroversion, timing—they tend to believe their privileges substantiate their greatness. Cultural narratives around genius, exceptionalism, and inimitability reinforce this illusion. Psychologists termed this to be the hot hand fallacy, an illusion gleaned from a pattern of success. Essentially, the illusory belief [bias] that past success increases the likelihood of continued success, rather than recognizing it as a probabilistic [systemic] outcome. This bias is bolstered by our cultures of individualism where outcomes are [often erroneously] attributed to personal agency over systemic or situational influences. Injustice Superman’s brand of hubris—his belief that he alone is responsible for order and that only he can save humanity—fits within this broader cultural mythology. However, his power is not merely the result of his own strength or will, but rather an outcome of systems reinforcing his position. So, he fails to realize how contingent his power truly is. His downfall doesn’t come from a single misstep. It comes from the very same systemic forces that once empowered him, now shifting against him. Moreover, Injustice Superman’s downfall can be understood through a drift into failure in how the slightest deviations from ethical decision-making gradually become normalized, leading to disastrous consequences.
Humanities researcher Sydney Dekker speaks to this, noting how behaviours that are initially seen as justified or even beneficial can reinforce a false sense of security over time, which makes it difficult to recognize when success has turned into failure. Local rationality can put this in perspective too. Philosopher Karl Popper terms this to abstract the principle that people do their best with the cards they’re dealt. It’s commonly referenced in the context of failure for workplaces and high stakes scenarios. It’s purposed to put the mechanism of failures in perspective. Ideally, localizing and identifying variables that factor into failure would prevent another; but this somewhat absolves personal accountability despite acknowledging that we’re resigned to our constraints. It’s not that we should be, do, aspire for better; it’s that folks should recognize—and appreciate—how much it takes just for us to get by. The world is shitty as is. So is life as we know it. We see injustice firsthand in fuckface billionaires, grifters, and charlatans. Given the state of the world, just getting out of bed entitles us to something—and yet, we still end up coming up short. If anything, it’d be “rational” to burn everything down. I don’t say this out of nihilism and misanthropy. I say this knowing that the powers that be are only concerned with identifying or localizing variables not to prevent failure, but to assure their own success. They seek to sustain a supremacy premised on history. Because his decisions consistently yield positive results in the past, Injustice Superman is convinced of his superiority. Every success strengthens his belief that he alone can succeed where others would fail, fostering a hubris that blinds him to the growing dangers of his authoritarianism. Since his system continues to function—sustained through fear and control—he can’t recognize its flaws and instead doubles down on his every action; and the drift of failure peaks when an individual believes they’ve secured absolute control. Which is why Injustice Superman, never hesitates to eliminate perceived threats and surrounds himself with voices, villainous and otherwise, that validate his authority. He purges opposition, centralizes power, and positions himself as the sole arbiter of order to create a pretext of dominance. Still, this sense of certainty dooms him to fail because it occludes a fundamental truth: control, once total, becomes inflexible—and what can’t bend will break.
This reflects the paradox of power: its greatest strength is also its greatest weakness. At its peak, authority is most fragile, because it thrives on reinforcement rather than adaptation. It minimizes dissent but also eliminates the very structures that allow for course correction. Injustice Superman, convinced of his own invincibility, fails to see his tyranny makes his rule brittle. Despite his belief in total control, Injustice Superman’s authority remains dependent on external forces—political structures, technological infrastructures, public perception, and the compliance of those beneath him—all of which he has steadily eroded. In trying to secure his rule, he unknowingly pushes his system to its breaking point, amplifying complexity and fragility. Each new decree, purge, or restriction entangles him further in a web of dependencies, where every effort to tighten his grip introduces new vulnerabilities.
This growing web of power and consequence creates a reality that nobody can fully comprehend, let alone control. Injustice Superman, having designed his immediate surroundings to suppress dissent and eliminate corrective feedback, believes himself to be more in control than ever, even as the foundations of his authority begin to erode. Each purge, each reactionary decree, further destabilizes the system he seeks to command, creating unforeseen and uncontrollable ripple effects. At this point, his downfall is no longer a matter of if, but when and how—not the collapse of a man, but of a regime that could no longer sustain the weight of its own contradictions. What he perceives as consolidation is, in reality, the acceleration of his own collapse. He reacts with increasing volatility and paranoia leads him to lash out. He sees betrayal at the slightest hesitation and insolence where there’s doubt. And, he infantilizes us [humanity] as “disobedient children” who “must be punished.” Each decision and rationale grow more reckless, fuelled by the false confidence that past successes ensure future triumphs. His hubris becomes his undoing and resigns him to an uncompromising cycle that leaves no room for adjustment or retreat, augmenting the structural dimension of One World Regime’s collapse. Systems built on fear can only hold as long as their subjects do not resist. Over time, the Insurgency and humanity itself reaches a breaking point. When the illusion of Injustice Superman’s invincibility fractures, the Regime crumbles. His cruelty and paranoia are consequences of his own design, not mere symptoms of fear. The more he seeks to suppress “disorder,” the more isolated and precarious his “order” becomes. This ensures that when his fall comes, it will be as inevitable as it is absolute.
Again, this defeat doesn’t occur as a singular moment, but as an inevitable consequence of a power that can no longer sustain itself. Which makes me wonder if power can exist as something deeply personal, tied to love and connection. I can’t think of any instances of integrity that weren’t shaped by the influence of power. Power is a construct of those who wield control. Integrity, in the way it’s commonly defined, is always shaped by larger power structures, but the kind of power that exists in love—such as the love of beloveds like Clark—is something different. It’s not about dominance, control, or historical narratives; it’s about care, memory, and the quiet influence that lingers even after someone is gone. Maybe that’s a kind of integrity, or at least a form of goodness that exists outside of the systems we usually associate with power. Love, in its purest form, doesn’t need validation from authority or history—it just is, meaningful in ways that don’t require justification. However, in a world where injustice prevails, even something as pure as love doesn’t exist in isolation. Love is shaped by the very systems that seek to undermine it, making it both a refuge and a liability.
Given the prevalence of iniquity, love is an externality we create which comes back to destroy us. Love isn’t just something we experience. It’s something we bring into existence, something we shape and invest in—only for it to turn against us through loss, betrayal, or the inevitability of time. In a world defined by injustice, love becomes an attachment that exposes us to pain rather than protect us from it. When everything is fleeting, when even the strongest bonds are ultimately broken, love feels less like a refuge and more like a prelude to devastation. Yet, despite this, love still holds meaning, and though its impermanence feels more like a burden than a gift, I remain grateful for it. It feels almost unreal that I have Clark. He brings me a love, care, and support so profound that it sustains my belief in good. In a world so unkind, Clark reminds me that some things—some bonds—are real and worth holding onto. I don’t know if I’ll ever see Superman flying overhead, but I know love is the one thing that will lift my gaze toward eternity.
What marks Clark from his Injustice namesake is that he doesn’t let power corrupt him. Cats have an evolutionary intelligence. They meow to mimic human baby cries, an adaptation designed to elicit care and attention. It’s an effective tactic to ensure their needs are met. And yet, Clark, for all his intelligence, doesn’t use this ability to manipulate or control. He has the ability to influence, but he doesn’t seek control. He can easily summon me with a call, demand my attention and know I’d give it. Arguably, he could also call me endlessly and solicit more than he needs, but he never does. He remains steadfast as he ever was, clear of the hunger for control that fells even the greatest of humans. If only the same could be said for those who have known the taste of power and, finding it sweet, could never again be sated. He’s also powerful in his own right—muscular, large, capable—but remains darling nonetheless. His strength doesn’t demand submission; it invites affection. He doesn’t use his might to take control, nor does he feel the need to dominate.
In Clark, I see an alternate path to power—one that does not seek to rule or reshape the world, but simply to be, content in existence rather than in control. Which brings to mind a quote from our Superman after he bests his tyrannical alternate in Injustice. “Put in the same position, I might have done the same thing,” he admits, “We never know what we’re truly capable of.” This acknowledges that morality isn’t fixed. Under the right—or wrong—circumstances, even the best of us can become something unrecognizable. It’s easy to condemn Injustice Superman and see his descent into tyranny as a choice that only he could make; but the good Superman’s admission suggests that his fall wasn’t an anomaly, but a possibility that exists within anyone, given the right pressures, losses, or justifications. Which ties back to the way power consolidates, the way people rationalize holding onto it. Injustice Superman never intended to become a dictator. The scariest part isn’t that he fell; it’s that, under similar conditions, we all could.
However, Clark stands as a counterpoint to everything Injustice Superman represents. Where the eponym sees power as something to wield, the namesake simply exists in it. While Clark’s nature may be uniquely his, the love and care I’ve given him have surely shaped that. Even if he was always inclined to be gentle and secure in himself, I’ve reinforced that he doesn’t need to fight for attention, control, or validation. Maybe he knows he’s loved, and that certainty frees him from the impulses that drive others to grasp for power? If Injustice Superman’s downfall was always a possibility given the right pressures, then does the same logic apply to Clark in reverse? Could it be that, no matter the circumstances, he simply wouldn’t seek control because it’s not in his nature? Or is his contentment, his quiet resistance to power’s lure, a reflection of the environment I’ve fostered for him—one where love is given freely, where he has never needed to fight to be seen? It makes me wonder—if Injustice Superman had been reassured of love and security rather than losing them so violently, would he have been able to resist his own worst impulses? Or was his fall inevitable the moment he realized that, despite all his power, he couldn’t control everything?
To me, it’s not about wanting power or control. It’s about recognizing that no matter what is done, people will always find something to criticize or tear down. Injustice Superman, for all his strength and conviction, sought to impose order on something inherently chaotic: human nature. But even if he’d succeeded, would it have mattered? Would people have truly changed, or would they have simply resented him until they found another way to tear it all down? Which kinda acknowledges what Superman never could—some things simply are, no matter how much effort is poured into changing them. That’s why Clark, in his simplicity, feels like such a contrast. He doesn’t try to change the world, he’s just in it. That’s a kind of wisdom Superman never had. Regardless of everything else—disillusionment, exhaustion, the flaws of the world—I still hold onto love, and I still give it freely. Clark may not express it in words, but in his way, I believe he knows I love him too. He reflects that love back in his bunts, purrs, presence by my side.
And the fact that I continue to pay it forward, even with everything I’ve been through, speaks to the depth of my own heart. Honestly, I think that, despite everything, love—Clark’s, mine, in general—still holds meaning, even if the world itself doesn’t seem to reward it. Even when it isn’t reciprocated or rewarded, love still carries weight. Injustice Superman’s love for Lois and the world was real, but he let his regret twist it into something transactional wherein love only had meaning if it was preserved, protected, and controlled. When the world failed to uphold his love, he abandoned its mercy and turned it into justification for domination. But Clark’s love exists simply because it is, not because it must be proven, enforced, or rewarded. That’s the real tragedy of Injustice Superman—not just that he fell, but that he stopped believing love had value outside of his ability to safeguard it.
For as lost as I feel in life, Clark isn’t lost with me. I’m his home. I don’t feel like I’m doing enough, but Clark’s love is proof that I am. Even when I’m anxious about the future, Clark is still here in the present, purring beside me, choosing me. And in that, there is love. There is certainty.
There is enough.
♫ Title song reference – “I’d Love to Change the World” by The Zombies
As innovative as they seem, I think these up and coming social media personalities (especially, the marginalized peoples) have hard[er] times ahead.Because the more likes/followers/subscribers they see will do little, if anything to aid them as they face a glaring disconnect. Seldom do they discern that their lived realities [from which they draw reference] will remain incongruous to the faceless, gratuitous reverence of their online lives.
I find this to be a sad debacle, but the phenomenon is nothing new. Alan, Kali, and Damon** are MGMT majors who were kind enough to share some insights on this with me. They’re no strangers to social media, networks, or marketing; and their understandings of connections have been further augmented by their own anecdotes.
Together, we scroll through some of the more popular feeds; feeds filled with profiles who, in thewake of disastrous house bills and vitriolic campaigns, have ascended with viral insights and have cited their positionalities in opposition. For the most part, they’re all stars. There are few people unfamiliar with their handles, bylines, or explosive exploits. Beyond the sedentary, salaried constellations appear to be charismatic figures on the rise. Their statuses have been shared tens, sometimes hundreds of thousands of times; many of which have been screenshot and shared longer and further. Some have been relayed offline to accessorize gigs and lectures. Others have been printed, then postered around to accentuate existent disparities.
The MGMT scholars I’ve met shake their heads. What strikes them are the crowdfunds, rustic crafts, and miscellaneous independent projects which are peddled by the creators—and drive home the callosity of capitalism wherein the survival of marginalized peoples is most precarious, visionary or otherwise.
It’s the paradox of social capital, I gather. It means nothing if it can’t be monetized.
Alan shrugs, then shifts in his seat: “This is the difference between people like these and celebrities.”
Alan is from El Salvador. He spent the better parts of his life backpacking through South and Central America as a volunteer for several outreach programs. He describes himself as a rolling stone: shuffled between homes and schools after his parents were murdered by the Contras. Business came some years after he became more involved in community service. He found himself alongside diverse personnel amidst various grassroots initiatives, many of whom were stretched too far and too thin. Alan resolved to take business in an effort to further aid; and he was impressed with how entrepreneurs prospered through free-access, social media technologies.
We met two years ago through an academic support network. Sharing many of the same politics, frustrations, and rants against the institution led us to become fast friends. Back then, he was relatively new to social media. Not much has changed, but he made a point to join Twitter.
“Less than a tenth of the people who are seen the most are paid the most,” he shrugs. “Nobody ever stops to think that isn’t a coincidence.”
As resourceful as most graduate students tend to be, Alan started an independent marketing company last winter. It’s one of many side jobs he’s taken since his scholarships have declined and academic employment rates have become touch-and-go. The most important yet seldom mentioned aspect of grad school is how things very rarely stay on schedule, which results in what essentially become indefinite degrees. I suspect this is why graduate admissions now require payment [bank] statements and funding outlines prior to acceptance; because the academic industrial complex need be assured students are able, regardless if they are willing to pay in the instance of whatever (or whomever) may prolong their programs.
Ceasing that tangent, I refocus on Alan’s marketing hustle. He retains several clients, all either founding independent brands or hopeful startups. Their biggest misconception, he says, is believing high numbers of likes/follows/shares are tantamount to success.
“It [this misconception] comes from celebrities,” he explains. “Peopleseecelebrities all the time. They think they’re seeing the whole picture, but that’s not even a fraction of the picture.”
“I think it’s apart of social engineering,” Kali adds. She muses about how commercials wire us to process things in a weird way, as if we’re granted an exclusive look although everyone else is also watching. Her anthropology thesis spanned surveillance and state control. What I read as the main takeaway: the irony of how it takes nothing for unseen sources to moderate hypervisible masses. Kali says her research and the humanities’ precarious job sector led to her marketing. Like Alan, she earns extra income by providing consultant social media [marketing-campaign] services. It takes very little for her to profile prospective clients.
“The thing is, business is a constant,” she states. “So is the state of crisis.”
Essentially, Kali thinks that the world hasn’t—and won’t—stop turning despite how bad things become. This is evinced in how no scale of devastation unnerves how seamlessly capital is maintained by popular culture and celebrities. It’s something Kali finds jarring to behold. She also mentioned this last year when we met at a conference, then again once we reconnected this spring.
On the surface, Kali relates to much of what’s said by these increasingly popular profiles; whose positionalities are also marginalized. However, she is cognizant of the reality that chafes beneath. Kali once comprised these ranks years ago. Before her accounts were resolutely suspended [due to notoriously faulty algorithms], then shut down after trolls doxxed her: her posts enjoyed a torrential traffic. Her virality earned her an occasional shoutout and invite to panels; and caught the eye of a publisher who solicited her manuscript. She remembers being awestruck after what felt like innumerable photo shoots, speaking events, and the odd compliment from an A- or B-lister who strayed into her mentions.
This recollection makes her eyes glassy—because it’s bittersweet. What began as a somewhat cathartic outlet to rage against the machine and pride an identity she’d concealed in her small town, became a hollow testament. All she put out in the world—for every person she’d served as fodder or inspiration—had amounted to little, if anything in return. Almost every labour or appearance had been unpaid; and she could barely afford trinkets with the rare, modest honorarium. Despite what seemed to be avid fans, her book barely sold. Her publisher shortchanged her advance: a loss she’s swallowed since it was substantially less than what she would’ve had to pay—and couldn’t successfully crowdfund—in legal fees. Moreover, her transparency had proven for the worst since she was eventually outcast from her IRL community and couldn’t garner any aid from her online one.
Kali and I have shared dark chapters with each other which I won’t detail, but I will say her spirit never ceases to amaze me. Nor does her ability to keep a clear head. In a rather objective fashion, she pegs a handful of profiles I’ve shared. Bound for hurdles, she says. That is, if they don’t log off indefinitely. She already recognizes two whose online presence have waned in the wake of IRL afflictions. She also notes their calls to aid and action which have been met with silence. Yet, their viral insights are crystallized. They continue to be shared, cited, and [I suspect] plagiarized.
Damon attributes this to the market itself. He holds a degree in communications with a minor in history. Social media, he believes, is like Hollywood. Rather, what we’re sold as the image of Hollywood. He discerns how much the picture varies from the reality: how inessential glamour or ambition are against the grain of contracts, cliques, and callbacks. Damon says going viral is a matter of making lightning in a bottle, then cultivating something steady from the static. The common ruts people find themselves in are to get hung up on trying to build the perfect storm or to glean something similar from the ensuing charge. For Damon, thinking in terms of lightning is key. The jolt is a practical metaphor. It illustrates that the means to success are just as fickle as their constituents.
Damon grew up in Buxton, North Carolina: a small town with the lion’s share of attractions in a string of islands known as Cape Hatteras. The kind of place where no nook or cranny is beyond a nodded hello or goodbye in passing. It was also the kind of place that thrived on tourism, which is how Damon came to consider business in his sophomore year. Seasons saw the town littered with what he recalls were “obscenely wealthy and wasteful” businessmen. Once he befriended their kids—who were his age at the time—he followed their suit in ways to connect, and that was how he got on social media. Intrigued by the burgeoning personalities and debacles, he resolved to explore how advertisements could abridge what he understood to be long lasting impressions.
In the winter of 2008, seemingly out of nowhere, Damon saw a dramatic shift online. Lightning had struck, then burnt out the cool kids.Scandals deposed royals whose reigns dated back to grade school.When tensions bled offline, the damage proved irrevocable. Damon recalls how the wave had been tidal, how nobody expected it; although in hindsight, he believes the outcome was inevitable. He muses that insecurity and malice underpin popularity; and that the public nature of respectability and social media graft a performative dimension which cheapen [what are purported to be] transparency or sincere messages. These elements would precipitate what people—players and onlookers alike—knew to be an unspoken creed of artifice and umbrage until they peaked to brew a perfect storm.
For Damon, this explained why and how easily the mighty had fallen—to be instantaneously replaced. He says the key in working social media to your advantage is realizing thatinconstancy is the only constant.This is why many rising stars are fated to burn out. If they don’t wane under adversities on- or offline, they’re likely to dim against the lustre of shinier newcomers.
Unlike Alan and Kali, Damon works decidedly less in marketing. Odd, outdoorsy jobs—trades he’s learned from his family—make up the bulk of his extra income. In terms of MGMT, he strives for employment in the private sector. This semester is thankfully his last, he tells me.
Sifting through choice feeds, he adds: “The problem is…they forget there are people behind the profiles.”
This statement holds true as users wade through the drag culture online that fosters immediate albeit erratic esteems; a culture characterized by varying degrees of deprecation and harassment—often under the guise of tough love or comic relief as an offshoot. But Damon says this to address platformers directly; noting how particular figures peddle empowerment, but actually thrive upon the misery of others since they are unable to monetize or romanticize their own. He discerns that there’d been countless falling outs amongst the cool kids, many of which ended either amicably or in blocks. People buying their own hype is what set it ablaze, he says. Rather,too manypeople.
Alan, Kali, and Damon conclude that bearing in mind the people is key: real people exist within and beyond whatever discourse or canon they assume. Social media has afforded people relatively accessible platforms whereupon one might speak, be heard, and resonate apart from a world at large that silences them. It enables people to connect with one another, learn, educate, in addition to cultivating local and international initiatives.
However, the individualism of profiles is contingent upon the falsity of [what I’ll call] ‘lone supremacy’; that is, the misbelief of one being invaluable or holding inerrant mastery. Pillars within communities (however sincere or disingenuous) fail to grasp that people and therefore, ranks are interconnected. The engagement—likes and shares; subscribers and followers—that subsist profiles is no exception. Whatever social capital is generated becomes indistinct since all capital is controlled by the state. This is why voices alone prove fruitless for speakers. Mere statements, however insurrectionary or insightful, are rendered vacant once they manifest upon platforms which themselves are a form of enterprise.
Which goes back to Alan’s earlier distinction between these figures and celebrities. The latter are integral to (and consequently operant through) imperialist propaganda; endorsed by conservative corporate interests. Conservatism strives toconserve, not equalize or challenge modes of power. In contrast, independent figures tend to clamour for clout; marked by misadventures as they aspire to become ringleaders in the online circus—a futile distinction as hegemonic powers have commodified and now define the carnivalesque.
Neither prosper on their own merits, but the individual figures are discerned as particularly unremarkable. The world doesn’t revolve around them and under no circumstances will it cease to turn. Moreover, their virtual support systems are intangible; dislocated by the industrial complex wherein they struggle to survive. Those who pay them lip service pay them little, if anything else. What marks the circus is that it’s definitively performative. Whether audiences boo or applaud, their presence is always in passing. Their lives process beyond the tent. For the attractions, there’s not much beyond the ring.
Fame is a long, if not endless trivial pursuit for public figures of any variety. The same could be said about seeking validation. Catharsis is an even rarer prospect. People seem more intent to press forward than process lessons learnt from times past: another mortal flaw upon which social media thrives and exacerbates. The cursory ovation it corrals doesn’t hold up in the long run. The same can be applied to the historic decline of actual circuses which grew obsolete against entertainment technologies; and further into what derision, poverty, and isolation characterized the offstage lives of performers. We need only look at trenders to see that not much has changed in this vein.
Alan identifies this as a principle in advertising: “Everything is always great—even when it’s not. Happy or sad, people are on a soapbox.” The platforms imbue everything with a sensational aspect. People fall short as they yield wholly to the immediacy of social capital and what whims it bolsters therein, despite no operative prospect of what comes next.
Kali suspects this also relates to audience retention since the pretence disinclines people to look away. Because enmity coexists with fascination, people goad and gauge unhealthy or unrealistic behaviours. She says this is why folks muster little, if anything for the [figure’s] rise whereas they relish the downfall. This is an important dimension as marginalized peoples may be consumed as well as surveilled to the amusement of more privileged positionalities, only to be placated by saccharine acclaim. The truth is unspoken because it’s inconvenient.
As an avid reality TV fan, Damon agrees; nothing that independent figures are different than contractually obligated (and remunerated) personalities. Certain whims can be indulged within the realms they are dramatized. Lone figures aren’t so much “indulged” as they are misled to believe their adversities are mere brooks to pass. He thinks back to the circus parallel, saying that history really repeats itself.
We pride ourselves in this day and age for our “progress”; as if our modern technologies and sociological strides enable us to live easier and repress less than our ancestors. But the old world has a way of coming back to haunt us, whispering within until we are likewise aggrieved; and our foundations in life as we know it fracture, stone by stone. What we’re faced with is a myopic weight we can under which we may yield or moderate.
**Names have been changed in this story for personal reasons and to avoid associations with clientele
The word “freedom” in its most common iterations has been and will likely remain such a romantic and bourgeois concept. I could say the same for terms like “self-care” and “solidarity” given how social media has advanced. In this day and age, the prospect of this commodification seems like a Black Mirror episode. I don’t say that because of some dystopian, authoritarian regime. I say it as an old millennial who’s lived through various social media startups; and who’s watched technologies breed toxic, viral online cults of the individual. When the internet took off—back when dial-up was a novelty, long before high speed—I was too young to process the implications of an open access world stage, but I was old enough to appreciate and beaters in tandem with the pulse of globalized connectivity.
I related to profiles and trends on the other side of world. I published my first stories and poems through a number of fandom sites, and I received critical feedback. I also encountered forum moderators on power trips and profiles whose popularity insulated them from accountability, if not reality. There were also targeted harassments and death threats hurled close to home. The worldwide web and its hubs had pros and cons which I barely managed to navigate. All in all, I was incredibly lucky—literally. Luck is the only thing I can liken it to: I managed to surf the web relatively unscathed despite torrents of online predators, burgeoning Mean Girls and stalkers, on top of miscellaneous cyberbullies, some of whom would go on to instrumentalize -bait message boards and revenge porn.
Maybe I was just lucky to be apart of a generation that came of age around the tail end of the early IMs, MySpace, and LiveJournal; the latter two which I never really got into. Few of us seemed to register the very hard and real consequences of our glamorous, invincible online personae: personalities which can now bleed into offline violences evidenced by the organized hate campaigns and fatalities which prompted today’s rampant cyber-safety initiatives.
When these platforms hit, it was under the guise of affording users a unique and ideal way to articulate their narratives. Personalization was the lure. It wasn’t just a colour scheme change or avatar. It was an entire profile which offered an individual composite that interlocked with other profiles. You could be unique to last detail, but simultaneously apart of something. It started off as basic, then the gravity hit once people were exposed or locked out. The old school technologies were somewhat innocuous in that their limitations beguiled their users and observers. Things becoming more personal and capable didn’t enable solidarity or connectivity. They inclined users to critically consider that there were real people behind the profiles.
Except these [many] cases don’t account for the bigger picture: the plethora of users—everyday people, many marginalized peoples—who are antagonized at large. The onslaught of one’s personal information—hometown, relatives, high school, college, employment, etc.—coupled with unchecked, poorly moderated usage ceases to reinforce ties rather than sever them.
At large, the social media conglomerates we know now meant that Big Brother wasn’t watching anymore because people simply (perhaps unwittingly) volunteered all their information. For all the good plugging in seemed to yield back when I was younger, the bad has since profoundly evolved. There isn’t an expiry or vast scrubbing option. Regardless of how far back they stretch, our highs and lows have been immortalized and are able to nullify how far we’ve come. Our meltdowns and milestones can be gleaned in a matter of clicks or mutuals, just as our hangouts and hobbies. It takes little, if anything for people to poke holes real-time.
Unhealthy online habits have also transcended cyberspace as particular users don’t take kindly to intervention. This makes for two polarizing extremes: users whose IRL is demoralized and therein overshadowed by virtual anguish, and users divorced from reality as they’re insulated en masse by positive reinforcement. Both scenarios correlate to a world whose connective modes have become increasingly callow: a world where values aren’t earned as much as they’re amassed. Everything has always been for sale, but a new currency was introduced through contemporary social media technologies. These platforms enriched everyday people who grew loved and/or hated beyond their wildest dreams, which cultivated a new breed of celebrity whose merits are defined by cliques and compatibility. Consequently, merit is defined less [if at all] by talent.
The charisma boils down to nostalgia for a paradise lost which in reality, is a world that never was; or a paradise promised which is a world that will never be. The appeal is less about substance than projection. All of the personalized nodes on social media optimize sharing with incentives for oversharing, which enable user audiences to live vicariously as well as intimately through personae. Which ironically desensitizes users to reality. The immersive, often ignoble insights bred online see users emulate caricatures and luxuriate despite their absence of privilege. Identification subverts the reality that one is just another number because they comprise the base of a higher power in numbers. This is why cyber-safety personnel strive to drive home not only the dangers of hypervisibility, but also anecdotes of profiles who’ve yet to reconcile their virtual esteem with real-time losses such as firings, assaults, bans, amongst other quandaries.
Quite simply, the charge gleaned from plugging in doesn’t cover other disconnects.
Life offline isn’t as uncomplicated because our identities and settings are multifactorial and not so much compartmentalized. Tumult in real time can’t be blocked, muted, or filtered away. Our lives are largely defined by our adversities and adversaries: whether or not we overcome them, and how we identify them. Only they can get distorted. Networking technologies ushered users onto a world stage tailored to their own scripts—only to enact faulty Community Guidelines and algorithms which mismanaged curtain calls. They then leave users to their own devices when real life steals through their intermissions.
I say all this to preface a new series I came across this week on Netflix: On Children. It’s a Taiwanese anthology series which has drawn comparisons to Black Mirror and The Girl from Nowhere given its dystopian read on technology, connectivity, and coming of age. But what sets On Children apart is how and why it drives home the impacts of social media and school as determinants (not mere accessories) of fate. Modern technologies and academia have altered our sense of self and identity in addition to concepts of home and happiness. Our conceptualization of success is a value system obliged in the scheme of colonization and white supremacy. Attempts to use race, class, gender, and the like to assign (or rescind) rank are exclusionary; and moreover, subjective as these characteristics are not impartial or ontological. On Children conveys how individualism—particularly as an aspect of neoliberalism and through the lens of childhood—is a paradox.
From youth, people are conditioned to believe that assimilation and accumulation are the means to happiness and success; and despite their efforts, they are inevitably damaged and disillusioned. Parents and guardians are keen to encourage conformity as much as reverence for the imperialism and capitalism which comprise the world as we know it. They espouse principles of discipline and abstinence; they claim these principles lead to a payoff of wealth and acceptance. No sooner would they contest, if not acknowledge the historical and present socioeconomic violences marginalized peoples (including themselves) face. The legacy of colonialism informs our ancestry as much as current praxis. By that same token, technology magnifies this in its impersonal, bureaucratic nodes; especially in grading systems. Social media platforms and communications technologies are also crucial in fashioning mass responses—which takes on an even direr meaning when we consider the significance of payola and propaganda.
The children at the heart of On Children speak to this in their narratives. The horror is how these tales are not far off in terms of life understood. What’s thematic of this series is the integration of virtual reality and uncompromising authority in discerning how children develop their sense of self (or lack thereof) in accordance to society, parenting, and identification. They don’t simply choose to go forward. They must. There is no alternative. There are no heroes or silver linings. And, there are no distinctions to be made since ultimately no customization or personal detail sets them apart. They agonize to achieve stellar grades only to discover that they are unremarkable. Scholarship is denoted by exhaustion and isolation which foreshadows failure in the grand scheme of life. After graduation, people are essentially small fish in a big pond because the real world is not contingent upon A’s or good character references. With the hyperlinked globalism of technology, the pond then becomes an ocean where students are bound to fail even further as they’ve yet scale amongst the school they swim within.
For me, On Children also hit close to home in my own studies and upbringing. The older I grow, the more I learn how much scholarship truly exists beyond the books and grade point averages. No amount of micromanagement [parental or otherwise] or academic integrity can thwart life’s course; just as no respectability politics will save us. Nothing really prepares you for the hard lessons in store. And, regardless of how hard you’ve worked, how far you’ve come, how “good” of a person you think you are, how much you’ve suffered: you aren’t guaranteed a happy ending.
I don’t like to call myself a writer. Bearing the occupation is a double-edged sword. On one hand, I could own it. I make a little, but helpful income as a writer; specifically, ghostwriter. While I can’t disclose my clients, I have recognized my work elsewhere. I publish under my own penname and adjust my own prose accordingly to avoid plagiarizing myself since I’ve sold the rights to similarly created content. Moreover, my own writing earns exponentially less than ghostwriting.
Which brings me to other hand: anyone can be a writer. Independent bestsellers are typically plucked from obscurity thanks to social media. Most of them lack middlemen or filters. If they don’t hire professional assistants or score a literary agent, they bank on shock value or cliqued networking; which requires a lot of time. It also requires patience and instinct. There may be distinct target demographics, but the public is altogether fickle—which is why things often change; why viral content that was once everywhere, palpable to everyone and everything dries up in a matter of weeks. People have a loose grasp of time in the market since they frame things in terms of immediacy.
First impressions matter because gratification must be immediate. So, it’s unsurprising that fruitful figures tend to have a loose grasp of right and wrong; and even looser grasp of accountability, almost like children. They make little, if any sense of how the world turns and their place in it. I think this is why they people—buying or selling—never think to burn bridges; why they can go off the deep end only reel and reconcile. The only thing they seem to understand is that it pays to be popular, often by being provocative.
Fame is not unlike writing. It’s about quantity, not quality. Writers are seldom seen for their words, but their assets. Calling myself a writer inclines folks to ask not what I write, but what I’ve sold; and since I’m not really selling—at least, under my name—I don’t have any business calling myself one. The only things I have to show for my writing are a fat stack of manuscripts—novels, short stories, screenplays, an unfinished memoir—rivaled by an even thicker packet of rejection letters. A stray reader may leave a decent review. They have hope I can either improve or publish something to acclaim.
I have bills. I have dependants.
I don’t have good sales skills, but I do have knowledge and a choice. I know that everything is for sale, even if money is not always the currency. I also know how invisible, impoverished and therefore, inconsequential I am. I know money is just paper and pieces of metal so, I have chosen to monetize this craft however I can to amass what I can of this constructed medium of exchange.
I have chosen survival.
I’ve also just chosen one of many jobs. Ghostwriting is the ideal route for me since it’s simply supply and demand. It takes no time at all to get your feet wet as a content creator amongst classifieds. Each assignment affords you some scope to familiarize yourself with a client. More often than not, satisfied customers revisit your listing; and in a matter of months, you’ve built a recognizable and reliable client list. Rates climb slowly, but surely. The key to making the most of this is time management. You write off time for correspondence if you can’t schedule check-ins; if your subject requires research, you wade into whatever that may be. Most importantly, you spend time looking into your actual clients: if they have positive feedback, references, and good standing with their source of listing; which requires more time if you’re still building, shopping around.
What sold me on ghostwriting is that it requires little to no audience engagement. I’m not on the prowl for potential readers; I’m not dangling freebies or swag on the prospect of sampler loyalties. If they haven’t found me already, my skillset is enough to solicit clients and earn me a guaranteed payment. This isn’t too unlike how regular jobs work: you clock in, clock out, and an employer pays you hourly; sometimes, a flat fee. The rate of pay is contingent on the economy and industry of your field. Time and pay coalesce when you work independently, albeit there are hurdles for entrepreneurs.
Last Wednesday, two bills which were pitched to curb online sex trafficking passed the American Senate by a landslide. The Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA) and the Stop Enabling Sex Trafficking Act (SESTA) will criminalize the “promotion or facilitation of prostitution” and those who “facilitate traffickers in advertising the sale of unlawful sex acts with sex trafficking victims.” Overall, FOSTA and SESTA are initiatives which will screw over sex workers. These bills are poorly conceived because they conflate sex trafficking with consensual sex work. They have no clause that discerns between consenting and non-consenting sex workers and clients, which will result in gross exploitation and potentially violent working conditions for regulars whom evade their execution.
In the realm of ghostwriting, think of these bills as equivalents geared to criminalize—I don’t know, bad writers. FOSTA becomes the Fight Online Bad Writers Act (FOBWA) while SESTA turns into the Stop Enabling Bad Writers Act (SEBWA). The problem with the initiatives of FOBWA and SEBWA is that while they aim to outlaw bad writers, they do not have clauses which specify, let alone define what makes a good writer. Rather screening or prosecuting bad writers specifically, these bills would instead outlaw all writing. While I’m not the greatest writer, these bills would be ridiculous for obvious reasons; and if legislators endeavored to regulate the business of writing in the wake of these bills, I would probably have a smaller pool of clients and likely see even less of a profit due to service fees.
While I’m not equating literary work with sex work, I can appreciate the entrepreneurial and ethical threats FOSTA and SESTA pose to sex workers. Moreover, the absence of social networks which concern sex work altogether bodes badly for present and prospective sex trafficking victims. Networks are comprised of safety nets and public records [however informal] which include reviews and references. In addition to actual job listings: advisory boards and mailing lists which cover everything from ringleaders to bad clients, to workers practices, to precautionary prompts and check-ins will now be shut down.
Respectability politics are also at play as there are others, including writers, whose platforms are being suspended or shut down for what moderators deem to be inappropriate content in accordance to FOSTA and SESTA. There are independent erotica writers whose books have been removed from Amazon, CreateSpace, and Draft2Digital; and academics whose references to sex work have been wiped from their cloud storage. In light of how popularity propels profit, however, I doubt those cuts will be made regarding traditionally published authors or famed scholars.
Of course, the implications for how bills like FOSTA and SESTA may influence other countries to erect and enact similar legislation are also huge. The implications are huge because the world at large seems disturbingly comfortable with the fact that life as we know it is contingent to debt and depression under some pretext of one paying their dues. Bestsellers or success stories who strike gold are the result of unlikely albeit lucrative gambles and inherited wealth. Survival within a corrupt, capitalist economy that positively reinforces those whom oppress or shortchange is further hindered by policy and profit motives.
Wonder Woman was the last Justice Leaguer I met when I was a kid. I spent most of my afternoons watching TVO, Fox Kids, and YTV: the latter of which featured debuts and reruns of the iconic DCAUBatman and Superman series. Between the stellar superheroines (even antiheroines) in X-Men and Spider-Man, I wasn’t exactly thinking too hard about the absence of women when it came to action and adventure; but I also wasn’t keen on the difference between DC and Marvel, the latter of which seems to have an endless erection for Wolverine despite its notoriously vast and diverse galleries of narratives.
I met Wonder Woman in the early 00s when the Justice League animated series came out, and became more acquainted with her through cult coverage in documentaries or comic conventions. She seemed like a powerful character: a literal Amazon whose allies and nemeses were themed through Greek mythology, which appealed to me since I liked to read those classics in middle school. Her star-spangled costume with its trademark tripartite of red, white, and blue iconized her in the vein of Captain America: appealing to Americana and fashioning the heroism ascribed to the Allies whom ultimately won WWII whilst championing the USA. She was also strong and intent. Despite the chauvinism that marks faculty and fandom that surround a lot of canon, compared to her male cohorts, Diana was ironically less flushed or furious than forthright. What struck me about her story was how I felt it could parallel the X-Men [my favourite series tbh]. Her narrative was driven less by justice than discovery. Sure, she fought for ‘justice,’ but she was driven by a sense of urgency and reckoning that was yielded from an irresolute identity and past. She left Themyscira to war past (and despite) a realm of reservation, forged friendships, cultivated mortal enemies, and discovered the dynamics of being beyond duty.
I’m sure there would’ve been an abundance of insight into that development and likely legendary enemies or allies added to her roster had she’d been picked up with her own DCAU series—but she wasn’t. Neither were a bunch of my beloved favourites, even if they did manage to earn the odd DCAU movie special or motion comic. Which is why the recent Wonder Woman movie was so ground breaking. Not only did it grant Diana her deserved debut to the big screen, it also reaffirmed the revelatory ethos she stood for and dignified her as a feminist icon: a beacon of light and strength amidst the otherwise all-male Justice League and spotlighted narratives. Wonder Woman was never a feminist idol of mine, although I did think she was a feminist and likewise represented feminism. I was keener to Catwoman, Poison Ivy, and Zatanna when it came to DC; while Storm, Rogue, Jean Grey, Black Cat, and Calypso were my faves for Marvel. Wonder Woman was great, but I felt a bit conservative in how she emblematized Americana and idealism whereas my picks were pronounced through power, prowess, and prerogative.
That doesn’t make Wonder Woman a ‘bad’ feminist or superheroine by comparison. It just means that I hold respect and space for Diana in a different way. Admittedly, I looked at her with new respect when the Injustice games came out. She not only mobilized the misguided Amazon army to rise above an autocratic regime against her evil twin, but she inclined people to discern between independence and interpersonality as well as pride. Her feminism was explicit rather than just implied according to her prior incarnates. She spoke directly of how men can convolute women: how misogyny drove the adoption the autocracy of Superman, and how any allegiance to him was self-destructive as well as superficial against the ethos and hubris of real warriors. And, she did actually say this stuff. Not word for word or quite as abstract, but there’s a portion where she declares these principles during the story mode. It was then my heart took a dive as she proceeded to emphasize ideas with the clank of her sword against her shield, then knocked her evil twin out cold, and led the charge of her warrior sisters against Aquaman’s army. This Diana got me thinking. I could get into this side of Wonder Woman.
Then, some years later, Wonder Woman was announced. Knowing that it was going to be run and adjunct to the lackluster series of films which comprise the latest DC hero franchise, I wasn’t exactly thrilled. For me, the recent movies—Man of Steel and Batman v Superman—bastardized any original character or canon which kind of undercut the source material. Not to mention we saw Superman and Batman on the big screen many times. Given the span of time, the frequency and continuance of their reboots was becoming more of a nuisance than a running gag; a lot like Wolverine. So, a Wonder Woman narrative which shared a similar budget and campaign was refreshing, if not surprising. It wasn’t just going to be great to see an alternate take; it was going to be epic because it hadn’t been done before. Yet, I still found myself mildly unimpressed with the promos and previews—and eventually, the actual movie. Diana was reduced to romance and rebellion rather than strength, urgency, and undertaking. Themyscira read like an afterthought to her fascination with the outside world. She embarks to eviscerate not because she can, but because of clumsy attraction. This Wonder Woman was nothing like the champions I’d read into or watched onscreen over the years, and she was the polar opposite of the star Injustice had made me fall in love with. I still don’t have the spoons to do a film review, but all I can say is that she was like a caricature: a witless warrior whose quest wasn’t to innovate or liberate, but to become one of the guys.
Which is accentuated by Gal Gadot. She was briefly scandalized for being a Zionist, but people could’ve cared less once Wonder Woman broke. The movie captivated critics and was acclaimed by audiences as revolutionary. Folks fancied that it was a text which transmuted the mainstreamed misogyny and signal boosted ‘feminism’ as a matter of representation. Little girls and teens could now assumedly identify with this genre because it had afforded them a leading woman. As if Wonder Woman’s regalia hadn’t already afforded them that before this film. As if everything would’ve been undermined had it featured another actress.
Consequently, Gadot was iconized akin to Wonder Woman by fans whom thereupon imposed their ideologies. She became an avatar of ‘girl power’ in light of her casting, and further assumed the role when she refused to work with Brett Ratner whose sexual harassment was exposed in the wake of callouts which followed Harvey Weinstein. I honestly don’t think much of celebrities when it comes to activism or advocacy, especially the declaredly ‘feminist’ ones whose social justice is operant upon their social capital. For me, Gadot’s Zionism and cult of celebrity discredited any likeness to Wonder Woman and feminism as I knew it. Because, the personal is political. Politics inform and reflect our worldviews, and their principles signify encoded values we abide and legitimate. Zionism is not merely problematic nor can it be divorced from someone’s personality; and given historical horrors and current events, I don’t think it should be taken lightly, especially when it’s assumed by a prominent celebrity who is cast as some symbol of feminism or revolution. I also just don’t think it’s wise or realistic to levy that much likeness upon one person or one text. The personae of Wonder Woman and similar heroines related as feminist are vast in and of themselves. Gadot and Wonder Woman are simply singular instances, however informed they purport to be by the whole.
When it comes to the hype of Hollywood and celebrity, prospects aren’t so much limited as they are sustained. If something is made, it’s bought. Its dislike doesn’t discount its dollars. Which is why Wonder Woman and others like her can be commodified and commercialized through any means. If their stories are ever dignified, they’re applauded. Their mere existence is seen as radical even if there is nothing particularly innovative in how they are delivered or conceived, even in considering their constituents or market objectives. I don’t know if Wonder Woman will ever get the diverse, continued cinematic treatment equivalent to her comic counterparts. What I do know is that I’m not the only one displeased by this one as it stands; nor am I the only one who discerns between the face of the character onscreen and whom or what that face belongs to IRL. Diana might not have had the profound, perspective feature film I’d hoped for; but she has had a good run and I won’t let Gadot or any other casting discredit that.
Back in 2007, I was bouncing from coasts between high schools for what was left of my sophomore year. Guitar Hero, synth-pop, leggings in lieu of pants, along with the prominence (and pervasion) of forums were all the craze. Haute was being subverted through kitsch avant-garde that was nonchalant and nihilistic, somewhat nostalgic of Warhol and the dystopian edge of the eighties.
Social media was also taking on a new life and meaning. Platforms like Blogger, Myspace, and MSN faded out against Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram; the latter of which offered more immediacy and interconnectivity with clicked connections that enabled prompt, personalized content as opposed to tailored templates. Despite their more multiplex and expedient advances, these new sites and services were as accessible and user-friendly as their predecessors; but they were also as frenzied. The individualism was indulgent and immoderate, because there was—and still is—no oversight of this mass connectivity. People connected easily and swiftly, but not necessarily nicely.
The late 2000’s cultivated countercultures through cyberspace which were amenable to activists, but conversely bred toxic trenders and trolls; and unlike the live moderators or some semblance of staffers (however arrogant) of the ‘old days,’ amoral algorithms and unresponsive personnel then supplanted management or moderation. Which is why Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram operate as walled gardens whose fruitful objectives are more quantified than qualified. They’re bigger, better playgrounds, but there’s nothing or no one to prevent somebody—or if you’re targeted, legions—from dunking your head in the sand or cracking your teeth off the monkey bars.
But, I could’ve honestly cared less back then. I was a sophomore, soon-to-be junior, then senior who was absorbed in aces and university applications. Social media didn’t really appeal to me either since I wasn’t keen on being social. I didn’t have many friends. Between relocations, burying myself in school and work, and what would become clinical anxiety: I couldn’t. I also just wasn’t into what was trending. Around that time, most folks in my generation (and some before) were swooning over sparkly, stalker vampires whose concept of romance was obsession—and that yielded an even creepier offshoot which nauseated me, and still affirms an apocalypse or the inevitable extinction [via self-destruction] of our species. These trends, however tripe, dignified the somewhat conspiratorial theories posed by the anti-tech crowds. The internet had bred the means and ends to not simply imposing insights and ideologies, but indoctrinating them. People became content creators who could—and did—cultivate and capitalize upon followings whose interests were not merely interconnected, but intertextual.
Positively, this fractured the gatekeepers. Esteems earned through some establishment were no longer the exclusive determinants of merit or success. The con was pure, unadulterated populism. Free press risked the reverence and redistribution of rubbish. Catharsis could be captured, then consumed through clickbait. Our concept of that surplus, simulated connectivity bled into our concept of real life in very real ways. Society itself is social; but when media mitigates that, the social can wholeheartedly supplant rather than strengthen or subvert the personal and political. Everything becomes a spectacle: a matter of subscribers, shares, likes, hashtags, and filters in which an audience is amassed and applauds. Practice, pleasure, and personality become more performative because it isn’t about catharsis; it’s about a curtain call.
The prospects and power of social media are well-known today, many of which have produced some notable celebrities; but it was only the tip of the iceberg when I was in high school. Social media could create social moments. Folks were eager and excited to navigate their news feeds and create their own headlines. The ludicrous albeit lucrative trends had entertained and inspired people to share, sell, and sympathize; because trends are temporal and definitive. And, these new [social] networks enabled some superfluous signs of the times.
Maybe that was why Gossip Girl was such a hit. The series was created in the same vein as its producers’ prior hit, The O.C. which I was probably too young to get into when it first came out. It was based off a bestselling young-adult series of books, but moulded in the interests of teen angst which meant crucial, liberal departures for the sake of television. Families were drastically scaled down from their literary extensions as were the more marginalized identities of sexuality and gender fluidity, which made for a relatively tame cast of pretentious personalities. What made Gossip Girl distinct were its subtexts of classism, nepotism, elitism, and oligarchy. Most of the characters were woefully wealthy and wicked, whereas the poorer people were craven for acceptance. Everyone was envious, enchanted, and entitled to each other. Everyone had a story that simultaneously anguished and admired avarice and artifice—which was the tragic irony of it all.
The eponymous ‘Gossip Girl’ was an online persona who ran a notorious blog devoted to narrating and knocking the lives of the main cast, for richer or poorer. Its surrealism is marked by its presence as operant as opposed to just existent. The blog was frequented and functional. It incorporated tips from onlookers which were substantiated by pictures, texts, or other messages, some benign and others malicious. Gossip Girl was effected as an equalizer who humbled its loathsome, lavish subjects amongst pessimistic peasants whom came to climb and rival their ranks. It provided a fictional, but resonant account of how real lives are affected by the ‘reality’ of social media; even if that ‘reality’ isn’t real.
Which is why the recent #MeToo hashtag assumed a life of its own in the wake of Harvey Weinstein’s cancellation and comeuppance as a pig who weaponized his industrial interests and insights to extort sexual favours and rape with impunity. #MeToo went viral shortly thereafter to signal the solidarity of women whom had predominantly been victimized, antagonized, and otherwise objectified sexually by men whom had nonetheless prospered. Celebrities applied the hashtag to their own experiences in Hollywood, whereas others used it upon reflection of their overall assaults and ensuing traumas which were enabled by rape culture: a rape culture that social media has not only exacerbated, but aided in its venues which range from chauvinistic forums to crash dumps of revenge porn; all with faulty algorithms that discern offenders are somehow not in violation of Community Standards. Gossip Girl explored this briefly in some of its seasonal arcs, where the titular blogger is privy to sexts, sex tapes, and sexual histories of women whom are subsequently scorned or [slut-]shamed.
I only watched Gossip Girl for Chuck Bass. He was suave, seductive, and surrealistically shrewd amongst the other moneyed misfits and hated the have-nots. He was also a rapist. The first season saw him as a misogynistic misanthrope whose toxicity is haphazardly implied to be justified by his unresolved Mommy and Daddy issues. After trying to force himself onto another character, he attempts to rape a freshman some episodes later—which is pretty much glossed over after he’s consequently punched and he somehow manages to become a redemptive, definitive personality of the overall series.
Chuck was someone I related to family-wise and in the sense of how I internalized. I disliked people; and I was actively aware—sometimes, in awe—of how they could be airy and artificial on instinct, even to their detriment. My cynicism prevented any suspension of disbelief which was a requisite for imagination or immersion. I was more avoidant than escapist, but I preferred to take more than I gave. The difference is that I didn’t just take; and I exercised empathy in that I likewise felt wasn’t not entitled to anyone’s time or energy, because I knew (or at least, liked to think) nobody was entitled to mine. Chuck never quite got that. Maybe money, masculinity, misogyny, and misanthropy prevented him from making that leap. For all of the paltry politics and pretenses, he saw society and social media as walled gardens—and believed any- and everything were simply a means to sow his own oats. The more I watched him, the more I hoped he would change with each passing season.
But, he didn’t.
Chuck’s progression was defined by his own permissions and parameters which would caustically, characteristically violate those of others’. The series stretched on for years and I started hating him, because his privileged, profound, and profane prerogative nullified literally any redeeming aspect. There would be glimpses of reflection, realization, along with some erratic, but earnest effort to be accountable—and it would be completely disingenuous.
Which now kind of correlates to the actor who brought him to life: Ed Westwick.
Westwick was flying pretty high during Gossip Girl’s run, and lived relatively privately despite that while his cast mates were more in the public eye via their relationships or scandals. The only mention of him people really got were his rooming with co-star, Chance Crawford (Nate Archibald), and relationship to his co-star Jessica Szohr (Vanessa Abrams)—which only made waves since fans were annoyed he wasn’t dating his onscreen love interest, Leighton Meester (Blair Waldorf). Some other tidbits about his hobbies also surfaced. I vaguely remember folks mentioning him being a musician and theatre buff? After Gossip Girl [colossally unsatisfactorily] ended, I think he just gradually faded out. There wasn’t any mention of his colleagues, co-stars, or confidantes in following projects; and the rest of the Gossip Girl cast had moved on with their lives in a comparably similar obscurity.
And, I really can’t say I’m not surprised. Not because I link Ed to Chuck, but because this is a story I’ve heard before, one that I will likely always hear; one that I have myself told. Bad people can be those you’d least expect; those with an abundance of assets which are underlain with some fundamental flaw; and those you would expect given the premise of their positionality that prompts them to simply pluck or pain whom they choose. Westwick may be of either likeness in his own way; and I quite frankly find it unnerving that his response to such a grave accusation is a mere note—which oddly coincides with the concept of social media as a delineative, distributive, destructive, and sardonically disconnected force reality must reckon with, if not resolve.
I don’t know what other people were watching that season, but all I saw was trash.
For one, I never forgot this. Everything made sense afterward. Dee was never “overprotective” or comical. She’s one of those toxic mothers with internalized misogynoir whom coddle their sons’ rather than hold them accountable. I mention her because she “apologized” on Scrappy’s behalf; and proceeded to gently walk him through why men shouldn’t beat up on women, tit for tat, even though he had prior knowledge of Erica’s survivorship within other abusive relationships.
The cycle then extends to Bambi—who later went on to order an attack on Erica in a nightclub—whose instinct was to drag Erica regardless; as if expression of condolences was disrespectful, as if she’s responsible for Scrappy’s suspected indiscretions, as if she’s delusional and her attraction was unfounded, as if he did nothing.
Then, there was Mimi Faust—whose sex tape with her then-boyfriend, Nikko Smith [London]—was leaked. Even though the slut shaming she received from her fellow castmates was atrocious, what hit me hardest were her ‘friends’ whom were less inclined to be supportive than sanctimonious. Which is innately contradictory to the emphatic declarations of “girl power” and “womanhood” the women in these series so earnestly and evidently, superficially cite. The condemnation and condescension she fared against from her ‘friends’ as if she were to blame for her violation; as if any resultant discrimination or abuse aren’t yielded from chauvinism and rape culture within society at large. Moreover, there’s the fact that if your friend does have a sex tape leaked, you don’t have to watch it. Nobody does. In fact, if it was leaked without their consent, your viewing is violatory. For me, there was little consolation in the fact that the video was ultimately staged. If anything, that fact just made me think of the more chilling prospects had it been real; how utterly unsupported and undermined a woman would be by her very ‘friends’ whom would rather condemn her as culpable in her victimization.
It all made me think of how and why I’ve always hated LHHATL the most: because, it’s got the ashiest characters whom reinforce the ashiest stereotypes. I know Love & Hip-Hop is already chalk full of slut shaming, internalized misogynoir, amidst the beckies and chads (and anybody else) whom blackfaced; but there’s something about LHHATL that I just can’t shake, and I feel nauseated whenever it comes on.
It’s like a caricature of every toxic trope in a trash song: the serial cheaters; the fools who take them back time and time again; the other women or “side pieces” whom are dragged or demonized for the whole thing; the ignoramuses fighting over ain’t shit mates; and the kids who get caught in the middle, often sadly and naively encouraging their adulterous parents to reconcile. LHHATL has that on loop, and there’s no semblance of anybody remotely evolving.
I just think season three was particularly trash; between Scrappy putting hands on Erica, Mimi being slut- and body shamed for her leaked sex tape, likewise with Althea, and Kayo Redd’s suicide—all of which were glossed over, save for when they were gassed up for kekes or feels at the reunion. It makes me think of how much “reality tv” is divorced from reality, yet isn’t.
These personas lead arrogant and airbrushed lives because folks tune in to see trainwrecks; and yet, their behaviours on meaningful issues reflect exactly what we’d expect from peers only we’re not as indulged or infantilized. We don’t have heaps of money to throw at our problems; and I have to wonder if anybody is truly as inclined to forgive and forget, as if materialism and exhibitionism can supplant intimacy in the wake of infidelity.
In the realm of performativity, are people just innately prompted to pretend when they’re being watched? Or, is it a defense mechanism wherein ignorance insulates us from painful reality? Moreover, what’s to be said about the truths translated by the lies: the simplicity that is irrevocably inconsistent and inapplicable to the reality, the enormity of life.
♫ Title song reference – “If It Isn’t Love” by New Edition
Fame is not unlike writing. It’s about quantity, not quality. Writers are seldom seen for their words, but their assets. Calling myself a writer inclines folks to ask not what I write, but what I’ve sold; and since I’m not really selling—at least, under my name—I don’t have any business calling myself one. The only things I have to show for my writing are a fat stack of manuscripts—novels, short stories, screenplays, an unfinished memoir—rivaled by an even thicker packet of rejection letters. A stray reader may leave a decent review. They have hope I can either improve or publish something to acclaim.
Fallen Kittie 