Tag: woke cancel culture mob

Judge A Man By Who Blocks Him On Twitter

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

“We have all fallen short of the glory that is God,” is one of my favorite Christian saying, even though I’m no Christian. None of us is perfect and we’ve all screwed up to varying degrees because we’re mortal and human. Before liberal darling “Mueller, She Wrote” blocked me on Twitter for being “terribly negative,” the most notable person to block me was Nick Denton. That hurt because, in a way, I really admired Gawker in its heyday.

But, given how obsessively I was tweeting him at one point, I guess I deserved it.

Yet, let’s go back to Mueller, She wrote. As I understand it, she’s based in Sacramento and, lo and behold, I got a ping to this very obscure, rarely viewed site from…Sacramento. The person seemed very interested in the posts I did laying out my concern about being “canceled” for my bad behavior in South Korea nearly 20 years ago.

I am notorious for taking a little bit of information and running with it to absurd lengths, so I’m mildly curious if maybe Mueller, She Wrote is not only extremely easy to trigger, but also a little vindictive. Did she want to laugh at my concern about potentially being “canceled?” Is that what that was all about?

I have no idea, and, honestly, not only is there little I can do about it, the more I learn about the woman behind Mueller, She Wrote, the less I care that she blocked me. She seems very, very sensitive to the point that she blocks and mutes people for the dumbest of reasons.

And I’m well aware that by me saying that, I’m a CIS white male part of the patriarchy who should be, by definition, “canceled.” If I was still irrated by being blocked by Mueller, She Wrote, this is the point where I would tell her to fuck off.

But, you know, she’s just not worth it. She comes across as one of the stereotypical “woke” people who is always canceling people for their human foibles and wants us all to be robots with no emotions that don’t fit the woke mob’s orthodoxy. Now THAT is something I can say can fuck off.

So, live long an prosper Mueller, She Wrote. The only thing that annoys me now is I keep fucking seeing Twitter liberals using eye emojis on her tweets that I can see because I’m blocked. I, unlike her, am not easily triggered and so that’s something I can live with.

Whenever People From South Korea Look At This Blog, I Get Nervous

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Ugh. Whenever random hits from South Korea pop up in my Webstats I get nervous. I was a wild animal in South Korea and I did some things I regret. Nothing too bad, but bad enough to give me pause for thought when they come rushing into my mind as I try to get to sleep.

All of that was a long, long time ago. And I’ve changed. I really have. I’m not saying I’m not still larger-than-life and eccentric at times — I definitely am still all that — but I’m far more wise than I once was. And I don’t drink nearly as much as I used to and when I do drink, I don’t drink so much that I’m “pickled.”

As I’ve written before, I only even think about any of this because I worry that should I ever find any success that I’m going to have some unexpected ghosts from my past pop up. But as I like to say, you have to make decisions on what you do know, not on what you don’t know.

So, it’s definitely possible that I will be “canceled” as soon as I find any successful, but it’s also possible that…maybe I’m overthinking things? Most of my bad behavior in the past was nearly 20 years ago and was the result of drinking too much.

It’s like I’ve had a brain transplant — I’m a far better, far wiser person than I once was. I just hope I’m forgiven.

Contemplating My Own Potential ‘Cancelation’

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Because I’m still in my delusional mode of working on these novels, I find myself wondering what might happen if I actually find success as a novelist. And one thing I think about because of that is my past bad behavior. All I can say is, I’m sorry.

Since I’ve come back from Seoul, I’m a very different person. I have a lot of humility and I’ve lived with the grief of what happened to me in Asia for a long, long time. I can’t go back and change what has happened, but I can accept that I’ve learned my lesson and I’m a much better person than I once was. I’ve matured a lot — not that any of that will satisfy the people who might want to “cancel” me in the future.

And that’s where the whole “It’s better to have loved and lost than never loved at all” element of things come into play. So, yeah, it’s possible I might have a brief moment in the sun that will end when my past drunken behavior comes to light, but at least I’ll have a few days (weeks?) where I will get to enjoy things before it all goes to shit.

But I’m being very delusional to even contemplate this at the moment. All I have is a dream right now and there’s no reason to think it will ever come true. I may continue to drift in oblivion until I shuffle off this mortal coil.

Confessions of a CIS White Male Writing From A Female POV

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m trying to populate this first novel with as many provocative characters as I can. I really want the main characters to be well thought out. And, to do so, I’m doing some fancy footwork. I’m really, really leaning into what I remember about the kooky characters associated with ROKon Magazine in Seoul way back when. Including me!

The protagonist of the first three novels is meant to be something akin to a journalistic equivalent to Mare of Easttown. At least, that’s kind of bar I’m setting for myself. I want my protagonist to be as rich and well developed as Mare of Easttown. That’s the dream.

I’ve also recently figured out the dynamic between two characters — just going to use what happened between Annie Shapiro and me back in the bad old days of ROKon Magazine — and this sets up something of a conundrum. I’m well aware that for many within the “woke cancel culture mob” by definition, a CIS white male writing from a female point of view is a mortal sin, never to be forgiven. Ok, I get it. But, what’s worse, is I really want to make this particular character problematic. She, in a sense, is the person to prompts a six novel series and, as such, she really needs to be interesting.

I fucking hate the woke cancel culture mob…when it tells me what I can’t write as a man.

But my definition of “interesting” could be another person’s definition of, “you’re a CIS white male, just shut the fuck up.” I mean, if Fleabag had been written by a man, would the reaction have been the same? If Mare of Easttown is who I’m striving to be like with my protagonist, then it’s Fleabag that I’m striving for in this very important other character.

I want her to be endearing, and yet so be so problematic that you, the reader, are ambivalent about her and you care about her, but when Something Bad happens to her, you don’t quite know what to make of it. Of course, I’m not nearly the write I need to be to pull off such a feat. But if you for the moon, you just might fall into the stars, as the hackney saying goes.

My greatest fear is I’m going to write from a female POV and write something so absurd that all the female members of the audience throw the book across the room in disgust. I’m trying to be as conservative as possible when it comes to elements of the female experience that I can’t reverse engineer (which is most of it) but the more I push into making my would-be Fleabag character as problematic, the more I have to touch on sex, etc. The very things that CIS white middle age authors like me aren’t supposed to broach when writing from a female POV. (Which we’re not supposed to do in the first place.)

The late Annie Shapiro was my personal Fleabag.

But no one ever got anywhere in this world without taking a risk, as my father says. So, lulz, once more into the breach. I’m going to write what I can — even thought I don’t have a wife or a girlfriend to be my “reader” — and hopefully, I won’t embarrass myself too much.