Impotent Ire
Anger is an energy in that it never dissipates, it merely travels from subject to subject. It cannot be created or destroyed. And while you are welcome to hold it whenever you’d like, and for as long as you’d like, it does not require your engagement to persist. It needs a host, yes, but not necessarily you.
Honey, I’ve been angry. Punch the dash angry, throw the phone angry, salt the earth angry. Anger was the primary emotion that propelled me through my teens and twenties, the first thing I felt upon rising and the last thing I lamented before falling into fitful sleep. I am from angry stock; my blood runs redder than it should. My eyes narrow by default.
In this, I know I am not alone. Anger is, above all else, our greatest unifier. Hell, I wouldn’t be writing this in a colonized country if not for our ancestors’ anger over some powdered wigged fucks trying to steal their bread (said indignation being seen as so righteous, so divinely ordained, the mass genocide it required for said ancestors to get their nut was deemed irrelevant). The incitement of our collective ire has, for centuries, been a cash cow, creating despots and launching media empires and, now, breeding a new economy of morally bankrupt devil’s advocate podcasters garnering tens of thousands of dollars a month from their Patreons.
Side Note: Hacks love lamenting the prevalence of “cancel culture”, but cancellation isn’t a culture, it’s a pastime. It’s fun to kvetch; they themselves do it for popularity and profit. If you’ve fucked or said something you shouldn’t have, simply hit reset and do a hard pivot to alt right; in that godless, lawless land, riches will await you.
Want to feel something? Hate something! Regardless of what side of the argument we are on, we are always arguing. I have watched countless friends of mine whip themselves into a fervor by the words and actions of people they do not know and will never encounter; I, too, have engaged in this exasperation. We are all mad, getting madder, because doing so makes us feel a semblance of agency in a world beyond our control.
Yet therein lies the rub. We cannot control the world, we can only control our reaction to whatever freshest hell it throws our way. Take, por ejemplo, anti-maskers. By virtue of reading this I assume you, as I, am terminally libtarded, heavy with the weight that is knowing the reality of modern existence via, y’know, research and insight. It came as no surprise to find that, when I didn’t travel home for Christmas, my potentially life-saving decision was not seen by my family as pragmatic but, rather, as yet another example of me being an irrational intellectual. In response, I could have but actuallied my grandmother into an early grave, but I abstained. Why, you ask?
Because it is not possible to shame my family into acquiescing to the truth. Because, to them, they do possess it; their algorithm is telling them they are in the right. Until something tragic happens, until it directly affects them personally, they cannot be swayed. This is because they are operating in an alternate reality than ours, powered by the pervasiveness of American exceptionalism which is pumped into their Facebook feeds on an hourly basis. They are human “Don’t Tread on Me” flags, coiled and ready to pounce upon anyone in their periphery who may take umbrage with their willful ignorance. They bait, they pace, looking for a fight. Deprive them of one and they will move on.
Attempting to argue with someone who exists in an alternate reality than yours is like yelling at the television, albeit a television that possesses the ability to yell back. You have to turn on the television in order to allow it to upset you, but nowadays it is always on — we are always on, bored and lonely and looking for something, preferably someone, we can project our frustration upon. But what if — hear me out — we didn’t?
I, more than most, know it is more difficult to not be upset than to rise above. Once you are upset, it can feel nearly impossible to change the channel. I haven’t seen the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, I’ve seen all minds engage in one sided feuds with entities whose minds will never be changed by screaming arguments or endless Twitter threads. It is why you will never see me engaging in pseudo-discourse online.
Because, while these people may anger you, they are not thinking of you. Remember how many times you’ve been cut off on the highway by some dickhead only to angrily pull up alongside them and realize they are completely oblivious to the danger they have put you in. If you were to honk, and rev, and gesticulate, they would not learn a valuable lesson in how their actions affect others — instead, they would assume you are deranged. You, to them, would become the problem. No one would learn, no one would grow. And in a matter of hours, the inciting incident will be forgotten, indignation placed on ice until your next dalliance with a dickhead.
Anger is only useful when you use it as fuel to create something — otherwise it’s just impotent ire decreasing your quality of life and contributing nothing. I wasted so many years mad at the world while adding nada of note, an endless feedback loop of bitterness and resentment usually centered upon the unjustness of my lack of success. While it’s a pleasant diversion to now have things beyond my career to be upset about, up to and including our elected officials’ lack of concern for the lives of their constituents (I’d say the government betrayed its own people but that would imply it ever had the people’s best interests at heart to begin with), I can’t let them control me. If they do, they win.
Side Note: As an, ahem, comedian, I am well versed in the belief that, if a peer succeeds, the rest of us have somehow failed. But here’s the thing: that Yalie who posted the press release about their latest project was going to get it regardless. Do you think anyone actually reads late night submission packets? What are you, 12?
Whenever a friend laments the listability of a peer whose entire fanbase is, invariably, fourteen years old, I ask them “But do you want what they have?” Not only that, but do they make what you wish you could? Hey, grown-ass man who isn’t Howie Mandel, do you wanna get on Tik Tok in order to get a development deal? The answer, ten times out of ten, is no.
I have spent nigh on a decade being told the next year would be mine, a series of promises which never came to pass, thank Christ. It’s better to resent the fact that the entertainment industry isn’t a meritocracy than to resent your managers, your creative partners, and the capricious mindfuck that is fame itself. Whenever I watch a child “blow up” I can’t help but visualize them as a 35-year-old has-been in scuffed Supreme slides wandering through their San Fernando Valley apartment wondering where it all went wrong, in much the same way whenever I see an adult with substance abuse problems get hired on SNL I pray they make it out alive.
There is no sustainability in popularity. There is, instead, sustainability in unmarketability. If you can’t be packaged, if you can’t be easily commodified, it’s not that you don’t have worth — it’s that your worth is unquantifiable. Therefore you, quite literally, are priceless. Isn’t that a nice way of looking at it? How can you be mad at that?
Side Note to the Side Note: Take it from me, comedy’s littlest victim, when I say substance abuse only augments these false comparisons and feelings of worthlessness. Unless you were born blessed, your output is the only thing you have control over. Is writing this harder than hateration? Exponentially, which is why I squandered my youth drunkenly raging against a machine I was too delusional to realize I’d never be handed the nuclear codes to. That being said, spite, when harnessed correctly, can be a great motivator — Christ knows it’s my greatest. Why do I continue to create? For the same reason I insisted on getting sterilized: because “they” didn’t want me to. Hate less. Make more.