we need to talk about mobs

We need to talk about mobs.

point #1 about mobs

a group of kangaroos is called a mob

no this is not a post about kangaroos

i just thought

i just thought that was an interesting tidbit

lots of holiday parties coming up

you know

i thought

we could all use some

tidbits

APPARENTLY, WE'RE IN ONE.

Apparently, if people express strong disgust at a pedophile, we need to, like, rein that in because it's... unseemly? Or possibly even dangerous? Apparently, our disgust (not the pedophile) is the dangerous entity here. Banish your disgust! The pedophile should RUN FOR SOMETHING while we feel our feelings quietly in the kitchen. He should be able to make LOTS of choices about people's lives. And visit girl scout troops. And maybe even give them his number. NO YOU'RE RIGHT WE WERE THE ONES WHO WERE WRONG THAT TOTALLY MAKES ALL THE SENSE.

Apparently, if people express powerful and unified suffering over shared humiliation, we are basically the same thing as a hate-fueled murder-spree?

I swear to fucking God, sometimes the internet drives me to Jack Daniels.

But hear me now, people of the internet.

If you are ever tempted to describe a bunch of pissed-off people in the internet as a "lynch mob," because they accurately use the word "pedophile" to describe a man who thinks that girls who aren't old enough to drive should be super interested in his low-hanging, middle-aged, mall-creeping nutsack, here's what you need to do:

1) Tape your hands to an ice-cold 40 of Boone's Farm and pound the whole fucking thing and then

2) barf on yourself because you can't open the bathroom door with a 40 taped to your hands, and then

3) the next morning while you're eating an extra-greasy omelette with home fries at Denny's, think about your choice of words and remember that a lynch mob is a real fucking thing and we're not fucking it.

yeah

that's the stuff

WE ARE NOT MURDERING INNOCENT PEOPLE WE ARE TYPING "I-STATEMENTS" ON THE INTERNET.

OH OH OH!

And if you're tempted to describe the long-overdue reckoning of predators as a "Witch Hunt" or a "Sex Panic," then here's what YOU should do, mon frere:

1) Buy a really nice piece of fish and then

2) let it sit in the back of your car for 6 days and then

3) eat it with your hands like Gollum on Fear Factor and then

4) barf all over the back of your car and then

5) clean up your own rotten fish barf in the back of your car using only Starbucks napkins because that's all you fucking have in there.

Because you need to know how it feels to be the women that you've forced to eat shit, and then forced to sanitize their own suffering while moving through the world gagging on the smell.

All this talk of mob justice and witch hunts and sex panics. I'm just waiting for someone to say "Ladies, ladies, calm down, don't get hysterical. Are you all on your periods? Jeez. And where's my pot roast?!"

All this talk likening the revelation of fucking true stories of predation and sexual greed to unjust persecution of innocents... the hypocrisy renders me fucking unable to use punctuation in this next paragraph, so just read it out loud and stay with me.

The Salem Witch Trials are a historical example of how powerful and comfortable men used their social capital to punish women who had the bad luck to live in the same time and place as these men and lynch mobs are a historical example of how powerful and comfortable white people used their social capital to punish people of color who had the bad luck to live in the same time and place as these men and women and right now on the internet the use of Salem Witch Trials and lynch mobs is a contemporary example of how powerful and comfortable people are using their social capital to punish people who have the bad luck of living in the same time and place as they do. And who are done taking their shit.

These atrocities are LITERALLY TEXTBOOK EXAMPLES of the silencing of vulnerable populations by comfortable populations. And RIGHT NOW, comfortable populations are USING THE HISTORICAL SILENCING EXAMPLES to FURTHER SILENCE vulnerable populations, by insinuating that the vulnerable populations are using their... power?... to SILENCE THEM.

PUT ON YOUR HIP WADERS BECAUSE WE ARE THIGH-DEEP IN BULLSHIT, PEOPLE.

that's real

that's a sewer exploding

it should look

familiar

Listen, guys, I get that we're changing the rules in the 4th quarter here.

It's like we've been watching a football game where everyone kind of decided that the Broncos could punch the Patriots in the nuts any time they wanted to. For 3 quarters the Patriots have been taking blows to the junk and the refs looked the other way and the Broncos coaches were pretty much okay with it because they were scoring a shitload of points (runs? I don't know) and the Pats coaches were pissed but everyone was like don't listen to them they're beingemotional .

i just

i feel so

ashamed

And suddenly in the 4th quarter, the refs have started to blow the whistle every time a Bronco haymakers a Patriot, and the Broncos are like wait what that's not fair and the Patriots are like JESUS FUCKING FINALLY THANK YOU I'M LIVING A LIFE OF GENITAL TERROR HERE, and it's confusing for everyone because even though nobody wrote down the rule, "Broncos can donkey punch Patriots," those were the rules that everyone implicitly agreed upon after we all let the first couple of Pittsburgh surprises slide.

I GET IT. It's easy to feel persecuted when people suddenly change the rules back to what they fucking should be and you realize how much shit you might have been trying to slide through unnoticed.

It's easy to feel naggy when you suddenly feel the need to demand fair play. It's easy to feel tentative or hesitant.

It's scary for everyone to change one of the basic rules of the way we have all quietly agreed to live; it's scary to wonder what will happen if women stop silently taking all of the shit and then cleaning up after themselves.

but

but where will i shit now

I get scared sometimes too. When I do, I unplug for a few hours. I take a walk. I read to my kids. I eat something with butter and salt in it. I remember that the world is full of beautiful people.

What I don't do is shit on people who have strong opinions about the importance of human dignity, just because I'm uncomfortable with the force of that opinion. If you don't want to talk that loudly, then you don't have to fucking do that. But you also don't have to fucking try to shush everyone down to a polite volume. The polite volume at which to discuss powerful men doing shitty things is silence , by the fucking way. That's not a thing I do. Please don't do it either.

So the next time you're on the Internet and someone says, "Roy Moore is a piece of shit pedophile," and you're tempted to come back with: