Shellshock Summer
The song of the summer was that ringing in your ears.
A recent meme phrase from one of those 30-something Brooklynites who perpetually strive to sound like a 15-year-old theater kid went something like this: the vibes are off this summer.
To this, I have to ask… what did you expect? Emerging from four years of constant social turbulence during Trump’s term in the White House, heightening authoritarian tendencies in both major parties, a year-plus of Covid alienation and death, the biggest protest movement in the country’s history dissipating into negligible actual reforms yet endless corporate branding decisions - there was bound to be a lingering ringing in the ears for even the most detached among us greeting the new normal with a return to brunch.
When the vaccine was first being dispensed at the start of 2021, the type of urban liberal eager to selfie themselves holding their vax card started spinning the fantasy of a “hot vax summer” or “shot girl summer.” Hookups, partying, festivals, weddings, sleepaway camps, stadium brawls, all back. Carefree bonhomie would sweep the nation.
And I’m sure that’s been the experience for a fair amount of people. With horizons for change feeling more and more constrained, a corporate-controlled simulacrum of a mass culture, the wind taken out of the sails of populist movements, a poll stating nearly half the country now encourages the government to restrict speech, more power to you if you’ve been able to log off and enjoy your life. Yet surely something about the retreat into the self feels forced, a sense of foreboding lurking in the calm, like a snake in the creek.
For progressives and leftists, amid finding new ways to alienate people socially, they can’t seem to secure any key electoral victories, with Nina Turner the latest face of the movement to meet crushing defeat. The fad is dying, and the clique-y coastal media types who rode those aesthetics to modest fame and success are rudderless, sputtering out. For mainline liberals, there’s the sneaking suspicion they might just be the new neocon base as many suddenly agitate for renewed intervention in Afghanistan, but this time out of a paternalistic concern for a populace liberals didn’t seem to care much about when they were being drone bombed. For apolitical normies, the Delta variant brings the potential for another lockdown, whipping the country out of its months-long brush with normalcy into a series of booster shots and setbacks. For conservatives, even knowing they will likely have a considerable comeback in the midterms, it’s continued frustration with how much liberals dictate institutions and culture, how their attempts to incite moral panics while out of power pale in comparison to those of the Democrats.
I’m proud to say I’ve done a decent job disengaging from Twitter the last few months. Given that I spent two years on the platform essentially hiding in plain sight while damaging false allegations about me were easily and widely accessible, not knowing who and how many people knew about them, having people cut me off and not explain why, and being terrified of drawing more attention to said claims, it shouldn’t be too much of a stretch to say Twitter has been psychologically trying for me in recent years beyond the usual bellyaching about doomscrolling. When I’m on there now, I still have to watch plenty of mutuals who know me, know what I’ve been through, could be in a position to help - they just sit there and lie. Lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie. They regurgitate the narratives that won’t get them in trouble with their peers or the big accounts they want to impress. That happens almost every day. And without a career that requires me to be on there, what’s the point? Maybe I make a post that does numbers so someone else can rip it off or some trash BuzzFeed-tier site can embed it in an article. I’ve made a lot of inadvertent content for others over the years. It hasn’t done me much good.
At the end of May, I was suddenly out of work. Weeks prior, I’d been hopeful things had finally turned around after several miserable years. Then the bottom dropped out again. Desperate and financially drained, I had to take any job immediately available. That turned out to be working in the warehouse for a small business that rents out bounce castles, waterslides, games, and party supplies for events, camps, schools, and personal use. A ridiculous thing to tell people I do, with just-okay hourly pay, a schedule that means I never know my hours for any given day until the evening before, bounces that are far heavier than one might think (one is close to 1,000 lbs and requires three guys to stand when it’s rolled up) and a warehouse that is somehow the only part of the industrial park without AC - those are the downsides.
The upside: as with all back-breaking manual labor jobs for fledgling businesses, there are tons of characters. For reasons unknown, the company is a hotbed for the local Serbian population. There’s a Black Republican coworker who spent 16 years in Special Forces who, despite serving in Afghanistan, is pretty open about how much operations there were about resource extraction, with an emphasis on opium. He got out in early 2020 then went to work for most of last year for Amazon, which he describes as worse than the military. He’s enrolled at a college here in Virginia, but still has to take remote classes, which drive him nuts from the isolation. Recently, he told me he has to go to Tampa in September for a PTSD screening after some erratic behavior he’d displayed. He noticed some signs of mental strain I exhibited on the job, and I think that’s why he gravitated toward me. We both recognize we’re in tough spots, and that’s enough to form an understanding. Well, that and smoking weed together. When my car wouldn’t start for a few days because of fuel intake and spark plugs issues, he gave me rides to work. On a day off in that stretch, he dropped off bottles of whiskey and coke at my place because he knew I was broke and couldn’t go anywhere.
Part of being off Twitter is critical to getting a handle on anger I’m often consumed by lately. A distressing many things online remind me of the unfairness I dwell on, those who refuse to reckon with it, and the powerful parties responsible. That I haven’t posted much on here since June is more of a testament to not wanting to become somebody who exclusively rails against the excesses of culture war and prevailing identitarian liberal orthodoxy. There are enough figures who carved out that niche and frankly I’m not sure I’d be happy dedicating myself solely to that, even if I recognize there are important battles to wage. So I wrote half-finished posts about things like the Maria Taylor/Rachel Nichols drama at ESPN only to delete them, unwilling to feed the impulse. Mostly I’m numb, and enjoying small pleasures where I can get them.
During a brief posting spree last week, brought on by some frustrating developments in the Cuomo saga, I saw a jokey image meme about how people assume the Delta variant stands to spoil their autumn plans. I’m not sure the public will stand for full-scale lockdowns like we had in 2020 unless things get teeming-hospitals dire. Conditions have been fairly normal here since about April; I’m in a majority blue area where the average person is sensitive to the media’s scare tactics, receptive to mask mandates, vaccine rates are fairly high, and even I doubt most of them would return to a lockdown easily. One of my hot takes of late is that the NFL is enforcing its new stringent crackdown on taunting that nobody wants just because it will take the focus off the league having stadiums full of fans as fall case numbers predictably rise.
Business dries up for the moonbounce company after October, so Delta variant or not, my fall plans remain in the air. I’m hoping by then my fugue state will have lifted, and there will be better outlets for my attention and passion.