I have often felt shadowbanned on facebook and twitter, which is probably just a symptom of mild paranoia, though I’m often convinced what bothers actually bothers me is that I can’t tell if the symptom that leads me to diagnose these hypothetical shadowbans—the fact that I get very little interaction on my posts on both platforms— is actually an objectively observed fact, or if I am a priori affected by a paranoia that causes me to observe data that fits that particular bill. Technically the act of indistinction which causes me psychic dissonance is the choice between the maybe of paranoia and the actually not of being shadowbanned, or even of “naturally occurring” algorithmic formulas that might tend to “hide” my “content” from other “users,” but the prospect that folks don’t interact with me because they don’t like me or they don’t like my posts or my posts are unlikeable or even bad, etc. etc. Again and honestly this paranoia and/or simple worry that I don’t get internet love is mild—but they are landmarks on my psychic terrain.
These psychic landmarks were given some real-world texture this past week following my latest Medium post, in which I confess my now ten-year-old confession regarding marital infidelity, and which received some traction. I’m talking like 10 times more readers than usual. Which makes sense, considering the subject matter. What struck me—what makes me now think that perhaps I was waiting for an opportunity to test my paranoid hypotheses—was that the majority of readers surfed to that essay via facebook, where I had shared it. I thought “surely now I’ll get some hearts or maybe little thumb-ups.” But I didn’t. I mean I got a few but nothing that reflected the numbers the piece had done. Of course this does nothing in terms of giving me the sort of data that might answer my problems: who knows how many folks read my shit on average—or even, honestly, just see something random that I post—this is probably a case of the content matter winning over a click.
I am not up to the task of articulating, or even having, really, the thoughts on paranoia that thinking and writing about this is causing to fester, as I am tired and learning to relax on this glorious Saturday afternoon in Oakland, CA. It’s something about the way paranoid hypotheses branch downwards like a hierarchy which, as you travel down them, you realize are characterized by a deep uncertainty, an impossibility of knowing, coupled with a probability that feels completely rational, and that keeps you from writing off the paranoia itself as a hypothesis, not to speak of that which the paranoia sets as whatever explanation. There’s not climbing back up that rootwork, only the decision to be resolved against an unknowing—how you decided to feel about the fact that that probability and it’s feeling are simply there.
And of course I am writing “against the backdrop” of a paranoid world, a pandemic-scape, laced with paranoid knowing and feeling from horizon to horizon, like a rhizome. That is to say, “against the backdrop” is a horrible metaphor for that which I am doing, or for that which it usually means. I should say what I mean: I am writing “imbricated” or “ensconced” in a paranoid world, from the position of a paranoid inhabitant of that world. Just before finally deciding to sit down and write this I was sitting on my sofa, wondering about all the unmasked folk out in the world, all of the money and supplies I need to keep myself and my family alive for a duration; was checking the covid trackers for the numbers here and across the united states, looking at pictures of large gatherings of folks… I looked at the numbers from a year ago and saw how much higher they were, and I thought about how scared we were then and how scared we aren’t now, and I tried to understand not only why folk have stopped caring (if that’s what they’ve done), but if all of this has changed me in a way that has made it harder for me to “have fun,” or just “go out” into the world. Anyway I stopped doing that so I could write this.
Perhaps because of paranoia’s ubiquity (and please forgive me I legit did not set out to write this) it is better if we think of it as an affect, as a deep more or less shared feeling with which we live and probably will live with for the rest of our lives, as opposed to a diagnosis of a purely psychological problem which we must treat in order to rid our individual selves of it. Because there is no purely psychological problem—it is always rooted in or has a material corollary. Which is to say because of this shit world rendered such by hundreds of years of colonialism and capitalist imperialism etc. etc. etc., paranoia is the affect of this nightmare’s hegemonic hold on the world.
Why would it be better to think of it as this affect that we must live with? Because this doesn’t mean that we can’t do anything about it. It means that we can re-articulate our relationship to this affect, as it is also deeply rooted in desire, and I’m convinced the key to living peacefully is to pay attention to our relationships with our desires, even and especially the good ones: the desire for freedom, to be liberated from this bullshit, freedom from worry, the desire that things can be better. And so on and so forth.
Ok I think that’s all. Though I do want to mention, in what follows, a little bit about supporting my writing via Medium. Thanks for reading this far!
I believe I have mentioned this three times in the previous near-year-and-a-half’s worth of posts (once explanatorily, once in passing, and once somewhere between the two), and this is going to be the last time I do mention it because it is tiresome.
If you become a paying member of Medium, every time you read one of my articles I benefit monetarily from that. You can also choose to support other writers, simply by reading them—go to my Medium page and browse who I personally support for my recommendations.
Recently, Medium has introduced a new referral program, which means that for every reader I convert to full on member status, I get a little mula. It follows that once you become a member and get someone else to do the same, then you get a little mula too.
Full disclosure: I think the most I’ve made on Medium for an entire month has been 31 cents. That was in February following my first 10 Years In The Bay post. That is to say, I don’t have many readers yet. I have a good amount of non-member readers, but very few member readers—and the pay comes from when (paying) member readers read Medium material. Also, weird factoid: those 31 cents came from a grand total of just under 5 total minutes worth of reading time on the part of Medium members. Which means I suppose that if you wanted to do the math, that if I had 2,500 followers and wrote two five-minute essays that each of them read, then I could pay my rent on any given month. Or just if just 1,200 followers read four five minute essays I could achieve the same financial and material goal. These aren’t bad daydreams.
So how might one help me by signing up and reading? I’M GLAD YOU ASKED. Just click >>>>>>>>>>>> THIS LINK <<<<<<<<<<<<<<< and go from there.
Thanks! I’m done. Also if you can’t or don’t wanna, nbd. XO