Thread by @KrisAtLarge

and I'll tell you something else about #time while I'm at it.

certain persons in this society have a unique privilege: they're able to *reset* time—effectively, because they inhabit a society that permits them to slice away their own pasts and forget they never happened.

(1/x)

https://twitter.com/KrisAtLarge/status/1616718733787168771

I admit that's on my mind because of "Disco Elysium", which puts the player in the head of a detective who's melted down so completely from booze and burnout that they suffer total amnesia. that's not a new conceit exactly, but DE explores it with a certain thoroughness.

(2/x)

in particular, "Disco Elysium" reminds you very completely of how even a complete amnesiac like Harry du Bois can still keep up some approximation of ordinary social function because he's locked into a social role that's rigidly defined and constrained and *supported*.

(3/x)

Harry's got a sober partner with Job's patience and far more competence at paperwork and social routines, and someone whose _esprit de corps_ is total; Lt. Kitsuragi may think that Harry's a disaster, but he's still duty-bound to prop him up in public, and keep him moving.

(4/x)

what have I just described?

I've described how @jack Dorsey could keep going as @Twitter #CEO no matter how many times he steamed or starved his brain into submission—zeroing himself out, as best he could, then staggering back to his routines after a break.

(5/x)

if @mtaibbi or @elonmusk go on a drug bender, they're surrounded by people who will pick them up, dust them off, and push them in needed directions. Max Renn from "Videodrome", who swapped places with @RealJamesWoods (not so real these days) a while back, was the same way.

(6/x)

(do you suppose Cronenberg knew what he'd done? seems a bit unlikely. well anyway)

this is the chief luxury that the elites have over us. not just @elonmusk or @mtaibbi or @pmarca or @JeffDean or anyone I could tweet at, but basically...everyone in the upper classes.

(7/x)

they can hit "pause" (or even "rewind") on their lives, to an extent that we people on the pavement are not allowed. we're hammered over and over with deadlines and time limits. the comfortable people, the leisure class...they get to take as much time as they like.

(8/x)

that's why "Anglo-Saxon" folks do so well on the @OfficialSAT and all the other meaningless corporate tests that @charlesmurray and @EPoe187 and other complete dunces use in some feeble attempt to prove their genetic superiority over the rest of humanity: it's about #time.

(9/x)

rich people get to take the tests more often; they get *more time* in which they can polish up their grades. that's it. that's all. that's the secret to @charlesmurray's "The Bell Curve" (@ID_AA_Carmack you ever heard of this trash book? @fchollet, you read it at all.)

(10/x)

(you don't need to answer that question, @ID_AA_Carmack)

~Chara of Pnictogen

@threadreaderapp unroll