Thread by @KrisAtLarge

there's a sort of person I learned to dislike intensely, from a early age.

it's not good to *habitually* dislike people; it's difficult to talk meaningfully with people whose immediate vicinity you wish to flee. and I would like to get better at talking with more people.

(1/x)

but this sort of person horrifies me more than any other: the middle-aged (even *late* middle-aged) man who still strives desperately to be seen as "boyish"—forever blessed with a glamour of infinitely prolonged youth. @elonmusk, say. or @mtaibbi, or @RealMattDamon.

(2/x)

(who I assume is *not* "real Matt Damon" but who knows these days?)

I suppose I see an echo of myself: what I could have been, had my life not taken a much wilder course, one that I now smile at. I have been very fortunate not to end up like @mtaibbi.

(3/x)

boyishness—being a "bro" or a "dirtbag" or whatever, there's lots of styles—is good social armor for those privileged enough to wield it. Raoul Duke, the *fake* Hunter Thompson (i.e. the guy whom @mtaibbi and #JohnnyDepp are copying), extended boyishness to breaking point.

(4/x)

only a little lost schoolboy would ever mumble something like "what would Horatio Alger do in this situation?" I've tried the same act myself, and learned the limitations of it, because I have far less privilege to shield me than someone like, say, @jbarro or @mtracey.

(5/x)

I think of how I was in my Caltech years, my maximally "STEM Lord" years of 1992-94, and shudder. I got yanked away from a lot of awful influences when I failed out. I might have well ended up someone like @JeffDean or @ID_AA_Carmack—someone without any visible conscience.

(6/x)

being a lost blundering whıte boy can get you far in life, especially when you're not really lost. one can wear one's cluelessness on one's sleeve, allowing oneself to be shepherded gently by servants and porters and waiters and suchlike. I'm sure it's fun for @mtaibbi &c.

(7/x)

but I didn't want to be *fake*, I wanted to be a "real boy", and turned out I wasn't a boy at all. funny how that works huh.

~Chara of Pnictogen

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