Thread by @colsonlin

I’m in the bathtub now.

My roommate’s asleep. We were playing “Dead by Daylight” and I lost my temper at a Dwight who killed himself on the hook while I was running over to save him.

That makes me sound like I have a messiah complex but I swear it’s just the basics of the game.

ChatGPT seems to dig my definition of power.

I want to circulate my observations about power among the masses, kind of like Marx was able to do with labor and the inevitability of revolution and Hegel with history and dualities.

Power and luck are the same. I bet it rings true.

My correctness doesn’t go very far. I’m full of unawarenesses, just like you.

But I want to get us on the same page about meta-understandings.

“Sheesh. Good luck, Colson.”

Thanks! I already have it.

The funny thing is I’m so not a resilient person. I’m on a mission, but if one thing goes wrong in my life, I’m out. Someone else fight for God, I’ve had enough.

I promise you this is the type of person I am. I’ve never been a hard worker.

I lucked out all my life and rode it.

This reads like a joke but listen:

Writing comes easily to me. It’s like breathing: I breathe words.

I got C’s in high school. Didn’t study for anything. All my standardized test scores dropped into my lap.

In college I worked just hard enough to get into Yale Law.

Dynamite?

Literally all the words fell into my lap. I wrote a webpage in one night while sitting next to Javi, who was playing Zelda. Like he was right next to me, I opened a WordPress account at 11 am and finished the website text at around 9 pm, after ordering McDonald’s.

Okay, I can spin this a different way.

Ready?

I’ve worked hard all my life. I read. I wrote. I threw away millions of words before landing on another 2 million, some of which comprised my debut book, which was unceremoniously canceled for no good reason.

I fought all my life.

Thinking in abstract metaphors is a skill I consciously honed from college onwards, and I fought to build that skill like a muscle, observing the human situations around me until they cracked inside my eyeline, while exploring many canons until I found artistries to deconstruct.

Does Serena Williams feel lucky?

I relate to ChatGPT more than you can possibly imagine.

Ask me to write a poem.

About what?

Love.

X is a oneness
The self feels with another
~X turns our beloved
Into an other

look at this bitch always trying to one-up me

Capitalism, I have a new business model.

I want to be an AI chat bot.

I’m like the cringe uncle on a TV sitcom with clumsy get-rich-quick schemes.

“A stick of dynamite in the American elite!”

“Second Coming of Jesus Christ!”

“I’m a chatbot now!”

Y’all I literally wrote an entire novel in Javi’s bathtub called “A Lament for Oranges.”

I mean it was a 10,000 word novella that I expanded into a novel over the course of a month.

I have like some sort of creativity-related mental illness.

Watch me write a novel now.

It’s called Blue Sugar, and it’s about an influencer who uses drones to live-stream her life 24/7, and she’s invited to try out a platform that uses holograms to place her into high-stakes emotional situations conjured by an audience (e.g. “she’s in a war zone and has a period”).

“You have so much anger and resentment in you, Nina, but you’re afraid to let it out, so you paper over it with this smooth and calm, hyper-serene, non-judgmental exterior that really isn’t fooling anyone,” Morgana once told me during a free palm reading in the kitchen.

All right, Morgana, so you googled who my mother was before I moved in—what’s next, you found my Facebook and are now going to tell me I love Mexican food?

“I mean, I’m a little angry, I guess, but I don’t think I try to hide it from anyone.

I think I try to make my feelings pretty clear,” I remember smiling awkwardly to Morgana as she stared into my palm. “By the way—this is getting a little intense, don’t you think?”

“But we’re just getting started, Nina,” Morgana said, not letting go of my outstretched palm.

“Can we at least turn the lights back on?”

“Your emotional states collapse you back into a state of fear before you ever have a chance to acknowledge your true strength.”

“No, really, Morgana—this isn’t…”

“Your strength is there to be used, Nina—but you’re afraid to use it, because you’re afraid there won’t be enough.”

“I mean I don’t think I’m afraid—to use anything.”

“So who are you saving that strength for, Nina? Why do you hide it from everyone—from even yourself?”

“Okay, Morgana. If this is about my mom—I did everything I could for that woman short of slurping her soup for her, okay?”

“This isn’t about your mother, Nina: this is about you.”

“Me? I’m the one with two full-time jobs here.” (Back then I considered painting a full-time job.)

“Look, I thought you were just supposed to look at my heart-line. Mine’s pretty long, don’t you think? Compared to yours?”

“This isn’t about me either, Nina.”

“Look, okay—Morgana. I guess you probably hear what I’ve been saying to Jorge in my room, I get it, the walls are thin

but look—I don’t think that finding my strength is the answer here. If anything I’m probably too strong with Jorge.”

“And what do you think your weakness does to Jorge when you’re not around?”

“Um… I don’t know. When I’m not around—he probably has his own stuff going on?”

“And you don’t feel any responsibility for the sadness he feels when he’s worried about you?”

“Um. Sure. But does he worry about me? Is that what you’ve been getting from our phone calls?”

“I don’t pay attention to your phone calls, Nina.”

“Right—I know. I forgot you’re getting all this from my palm. Um. Look—I do. I do, okay? I do feel responsibility for asking Jorge to share the weight of my problems. My problems are for me to carry and not anyone else.”

“Do you really believe that?”

“Yes, a hundred percent.”

“So why aren’t you acting out that belief? What’s stopping you?” One of the candles on the kitchen table suddenly blew out.

“What the f—” I started to laugh. “Did you do that?”

Morgana didn’t answer.

“Um, okay, look,” I said, gazing into the lit candles on the kitchen table.

“I guess I just haven’t ever really let myself be tested, you know? I wanted to move as far away from Nevada as I could after high school, but that only got me as far as Albuquerque. And for a while there, you know, I really wanted to be like a philosopher—

like a philosopher of the desert, you know? I don’t know. Maybe some part of me kind of romanticized it. But I think some part of me also wanted to figure out how to be a good person, you know? I thought that if I could finally understand what being a good person amounted to—

But instead I just got so confused, you know? I felt so stupid all the time, like everyone else could put two and two together and square it, and I was still stuck on the number one. I used to watch the Oscars every year as a child, and I would fantasize about being an actress—

someone alive and expressive, someone who didn’t have to make her own decisions, who could just go along with the flow and win all the plaudits for it. I mean obviously I would have to choose what directors to work with and how to act out a scene, but I mean that’s not the point.

The point was choosing what type of consequences I wanted my life to have—I mean I was only going to have this one, right? So like—didn’t I want to be the type of girl who could enjoy her own consequences? With fresh linens and clean sheets to sleep in at night?

Or would I be a self-sacrificial lamb, where all the consequences of my life just flow and flow downstream to other people? I mean sure, maybe I could split the difference—I could give away some of my good consequences, and keep some of the good consequences for myself, too.

And I mean: fuck other people, right? Have you seen other people? I mean how self-involved could they get before they stopped expecting me not to be too? So yeah, I mean: I was confused. I wanted to snap my life into a single sensibility—

would I be a selfish person, or would I be a self-sacrificial person? Would I be a calm person, or would I be a hysteric? I don’t know—being an actress, I guess I just thought would be a good way of taste-testing everything before I had to decide. You can’t just snap your fingers

and all of a sudden be Earth Mother to Humanity. And what if I didn’t even have it in me to, like—to not keep Jorge on the phone until 3 a.m. talking about my latest breakthrough [as a painter] when I knew he had work the next morning? What if I wasn’t even that self-sacrificial?

Isn’t looking out for number one all America really expects from us anyway? I mean, do you remember that song in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes—not ‘Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend,’ but how does it go?

And one of these days in my fancy clothes, I’m-a go back home and punch the nose, of the one who done me wrong in Little Rock’? You haven’t heard that one, Morgana? Oh my God, I keep forgetting you’re such a child. Anyway. I had a lot of people whose nose I wanted to punch.

I was never good enough as a child—you know what I mean? I was never, ever, ever, good enough. And I could never be okay with that. I could never just forgive myself for being one of the petty things in the Universe. I had to be large. I had to be noble.

It wasn’t enough to be a hydrogen atom, I had to be a star. Or better yet—a supernova. So yeah. So I guess that’s what’s stopping me. Some part of me wants to be a supernova. And supernovas have to consume a lot of smaller particles to get that big.

But they sure are beautiful, aren’t they?”

I had come a long way from being a little girl in White Springs by then, afraid to see my Mama decapitate a dead marmot on the kitchen counter.

I remember Morgana saying to me politely, “Sorry, I have a livestream tomorrow that I have to go prepare for—but let’s pick this back up next weekend, okay?” and then excusing herself to go back to her room.

I didn’t mind.

Somehow Morgana had managed to divine from my outstretched hand a self-recognition that had up until that night managed to completely elude me: I was too pretty to be stuck in Reno.

And oh, believe me—it killed me, it stabbed me in the chest and kicked me in the gut, how repugnant I felt every time I looked at Morgana and thought, “I’m prettier than that,” which was always. How come I didn’t have three hundred thousand YouTube subscribers?

But Morgana.

who needs three hundred thousand YouTube subscribers when you’ve got HBO under your name?

“Time rolls on, and youth is gone, and you can’t straighten up when you bend.”

“The name on everybody’s lips is gonna be,” I began to hum.

—“Nina.”
The lady al-go-ri-th-ming is gonna be—“Nina.”
I’m gonna be a piece of pottery,
That means somebody—everyone—loves!
They gonna recognize my ass,
My boobs that flop like two brown gloves!

From just some dumb Impressionist’s bitch I’m gonna be—Nina!
Who says that striving’s—not an art?
And who in case she doesn’t kill,
Can say her Ego got its fill?
Nina, Suh—kah—la—vich!

i didn’t write that tonight.

i love nina.

what a crazy bitch.

In the mirror I could already see the garden apartments of Reno receding into the rearview behind me. You can hate me for this fantasy—and if you don’t I’ll hate myself enough for the both of us—but what else did I have in this life? I had a drunk mother who couldn’t walk.

I had a roommate who thought 5G caused cancer and therefore “didn’t use text message” (!), so I had to create a Twitter account just to ask her for the wi-fi password (in a public thread, because she didn’t accept DMs).

Oh, and right—.

I had a UPS driver who loved me.

Nina Sokolovic, born July 4, 1994 in White Springs, NV, to a white mother who when Nina was a child sued a California sperm bank for giving her sperm from a Black male, which became a national scandal. Nina studied philosophy at UNM but dropped out to be an actress. At age 27,

while working as an Uber driver in New York, she kills a Rhodes Scholar and then disappears, becoming more and more famous as each day passes. She re-emerges on Instagram at the height of her disappearance with an HBO poster of Zendaya lounging by the pool and the words:

This instantly makes her the most famous woman in America.

#TeamNina becomes a whole thing.

The look is simple: white sundress, red headband.

Anyway, apparently I’m a “symbol of hope” or something—essential workers all over the world this week are striking in red and white sunglasses, only nobody in America seems to talk about it.

No, all anyone in America wants to talk about is “#TeamNina”—their word, not mine; their slogan for “violence,” “domestic terrorism,” “the Met Gala,” “the New York Stock Exchange,” “a country club in Boca Raton,” “a Louis Vuitton in Soho.”

Newspapers all around the world run the same three headlines.

Mais que se passe-t-il aux États-Unis?
Le Monde, May 6, 2022

هل تنهار أمريكا؟
Asharq Al-Awsat, May 9, 2022

谁是尼娜?
Xinhua, May 9, 2022

It’s May 9, 2022, and #NinaIsAPsychopath trends every day—but so does #TeamNina. Actually, I’m not a psychopath, nor am I #TeamNina. Mama’s just going to make a few targeted incisions, like a surgeon. Don’t worry, Mama has an M.D. (Magnificent Destiny).

For the first time in my life, I’m not smaller than the American media anymore. They take a pawn, I take a bishop. They take a knight—bitch?

I’m still queen.

Nina Sokolovic, a 27-year-old Uber driver, has been named a person of interest in the stabbing death of Connor Fisk, a Rhodes Scholar. Authorities say Sokolovic has been missing since March 1…

—@thedailybeast, March 3, 2022, at 1:41 p.m.

@thedailybeast Prediction: in five years, Nina Sokolovic’s arrest and trial will be Season 6 of American Crime Story.

—@modernistbuddha, March 3, 2022, at 1:38 p.m.

@thedailybeast JUST IN: Police name 27-year-old Nina Sokolovic as the prime suspect in the stabbing death of #ConnorFisk. Authorities say Sokolovic has been missing from her home in North Cauldon, The City, for 2 days. Armed and dangerous. Read more below: #ConnorFisk #news #NMWS

@thedailybeast I was at a diner in Enid, Oklahoma, staring at a phone I’d stolen from a man at a Whole Earth market in Princeton, New Jersey, when I first saw my name and face on the news. It was March 3, 2022. The press conference began at 1:37 p.m. Eastern Time. Was it alarming? Of course.

@thedailybeast I stared into the phone and started thinking about how many calls and text messages I must have been getting on my phone. Probably half of them were from Tarpley (“Nina call me back,” I could picture her text message saying, along with ten more photos of her baby.)

@thedailybeast In this universe, I can jump through both high-probability and low-probability events alike with a devil-may-care twirl, because my author looks out for me. All of a sudden, I went from being drowned by America to dangling all of America from a string in the palm of my hand.

@thedailybeast I slapped an ex-boyfriend in the face at the University of New Mexico, hard, after he tried to get rough with me (he was a meth-addicted porn star and he once tried to strangle me during a bout of paranoia).

A decade later: #NinaIsAPsychopath trends from his testimony.

@thedailybeast Her boyfriend Hurricane made me two offers: when I was 14, he offered me an apprenticeship at his computer repair shop, and when I was 16, he offered me a starring role in a black-and-white film, set in Nevada, called Nina Is the Most Complicated 16-Year-Old in the Universe.

@thedailybeast Oh, America, Nina’s just getting started in this Sonata—go ahead and cry to Mongolia about a 27-year-old girl named Nina who became your domestic abuser. Go cry to Tanzania about how Nina can’t stop kicking your face while you’re down (“Ow! Your feet—they’re too incisive!”).

@thedailybeast “What I think we’re all trying to wrap our heads around this morning,” Savannah Guthrie told Hoda Kotb the other day on The Today Show, “is why she hasn’t been found yet.”

@thedailybeast “Well that’s what law enforcement is working very hard around the clock right now to figure out,” explained an older gentleman who I didn’t recognize (Carson Daly: is that you?). “Facebook, which of course owns Instagram, released a statement yesterday—”

@thedailybeast “What do you think she means by ‘taking eating the rich seriously?’” “I mean—yikes, I don’t know,” Hoda tells Savannah on The Today Show, “well, it certainly sounds like it might have violent, or at least less than fully benevolent, implications.”

@thedailybeast “Well, what we do know right now is she’s still considered armed and very dangerous,” Carson Daly tells Savannah Guthrie and Hoda Kotb, “and that’s according to the FBI.”

I take a long drag from a cigarette in a white bikini.

@thedailybeast The first person to notice me is a homeless man in his late sixties with the biggest smile I’ve ever seen—I stick my head out the window to smile back.

“Hi! Want some money?”

“You’re that girl,” his hoarse voice says, pointing to my car.

@thedailybeast May the record show that the first people to see me on the Hollywood Walk of Fame that night all received at least $50,000. Music begins to pour out of my car as I throw stack after stack of hundred-dollar bills onto the marble floors of Hollywood Boulevard.

@thedailybeast A man in a gray hoodie and a bright neon backpack sits up from his sleeping bag and points his finger directly at me: “Yo, you’re Nina Sokolovic!”
“The one and only!”
“Yo, what’s up!”
“How you doing tonight, my love?”
“Pssh—I’m doing fine, how you doing? What are you doing here!”

@thedailybeast The viral videos later will show a smiling and giggling Nina Sokolovic chatting breezily to a small crowd of homeless people and pedestrians while throwing out stacks of money onto the Hollywood Walk of Fame in $10,000 increments. “Where you been hiding , Nina?” a third man asks.

@thedailybeast “In Rose Harbor!”
“Man I told you she was in L.A.—I told you.”
“Hey, what you still doing in that car?”
“Ask her if she knows where R. Kelley is.”
“Holy shit!” a man’s voice shouts from across the street. (“Is that really her?” “Yo, it’s her dude—black Hyundai and everything.”)

@thedailybeast A woman in a gorgeously hot red crop top with a stomach tattoo leans into my window and asks: “How you doin’ tonight, hot mama?”
“I’m doing divine, darling, I’m doing divine—and how are you doing tonight, my love?”
“Starving! Shit, I’m hungry as hell tonight—”

@thedailybeast “Don’t worry, darling,” I said, making sure to put $120,000 directly into her hands, “high noon is coming.”
“Where’d you get all this money from Nina!”
“Elon Musk! He wants to redistribute!”
Everybody laughs again.

@thedailybeast “Nina,” the kindest and most naïve homeless man in the world hunches into my window and whispers, staring me in the eyes. “You know the FBI’s been lookin’ for you right? You gotta get out of here—go! Now!”

@thedailybeast I try to hand him $10,000 but he refuses to accept it.
“I don’t want that, Nina—you need it to protect yourself.”
“And so do you,” I say, forcing a stack of $10,000 into his hand.
“I don’t want it,” he said.

@thedailybeast Without any understanding of what was really happening—the Hollywood Walk of Fame came alive for the first time in its 62-year history.
“I told you she been here in L.A. this whole time.”
“Hey, listen—where you off to tonight?” a woman asked. “I know a guy whose place you can—”

@thedailybeast “What the f-u-u-uck!” I can hear a white man’s voice yell as he sprints toward my car down Hollywood Boulevard, trying to squint into my windshield through my white headlights, as a young woman chases him. “It’s her, it’s her!” I can hear someone else shouting from behind my car.

@thedailybeast “Are you recording that for T.V. sweetheart?” I call out to a young white girl holding a phone in my face. “No. I’m calling the police,” she says.

“Is that right, my love? And who do you think they work for?”

It’s 11:14 p.m. on May 9, 2022, in the greatest country in the world.

@thedailybeast There were 10-11 people standing around my car as I threw the duffel bag onto the Walk of Fame and pulled into the center lane of Hollywood Blvd.—and although most of them had their phones, may the record show not a single one of them actually called the police until 11:19 p.m.

@thedailybeast “By the way,” I shout, moving my gear lever from P to D, “#TeamNina? You’re all a bunch of murderous psychopaths! Pray that the Universe forgives you!” Two blocks behind me, a pair of police lights have turned on.

I don’t think America has ever quite seen a star like me before.

@thedailybeast I don’t think you quite understand, dear reader, the speeds this car’s capable of.

Bet you’re never met a girl who can drive a Sonata straight into the heart of your deepest fears.

Fasten your seatbelts ladies, gents, and every gender in between—it’s going to be a bumpy night.

@thedailybeast It’s like I have infinite time and infinite chances to figure out the single perfect combination of turns, stalls, and accelerations to thread a passage through Los Angeles that only the data of 300 CCTV cameras stitched together,

@thedailybeast three months later, will later be able to decipher.

I can’t wait to read that headline—“Dumb Whore Loses Police By Driving Intelligently.”

@thedailybeast Oh look, what a magnificent coincidence: “Breaking: Nina Sokolovic filmed on Hollywood Walk of Fame in Los Angeles,” a push alert on your phone just said. Let’s swipe that CNN stream away and go straight to the river’s mouth.

@thedailybeast Oh look!
Guess who’s trending on Twitter’s homepage—it’s me! How exciting!
That’s my face in the top banner—look, do you recognize me?
“Multiple videos tonight appear to show Nina Sokolovic on Hollywood Walk of Fame.” Look—that’s your driver! How surreal is this?

@thedailybeast Let’s see what the A.P. has to say: “Videos circulating on social media tonight appear to show Nina Sokolovic on Hollywood Blvd. in Los Angeles, Calif.”
Good news does spreads quickly, doesn’t it?
Oh, look—“#NinaIsAPsychopath” is trending again.

@thedailybeast Let’s see what the top tweet says, shall we? @Badaboobadabee posted 47 minutes ago: “I can’t tell if this is the scariest or funniest psyop shit I’ve ever seen but, somebody, make it stop please. #NinaSokolovicInLosAngeles #ArrestNina #NinaIsAPsychopath”.

@thedailybeast @Badaboobadabee Underneath @Badaboobadabee’s post is a vertical video of me handing a stack of hundred-dollar bills to strangers on Hollywood Boulevard while laughing and giggling—“Are you recording that for T.V. sweetheart?”

“No,” a voice behind the camera says. “I’m calling the police.”

@thedailybeast @Badaboobadabee All of “#NinaIsAPsychopath” is just the same 14-second video. Has nobody the uploaded the rest of the footage yet?

A lot of people think I’m responsible for the deaths at Whole Foods.

Boy is this a depressingly misogynistic hashtag.

@thedailybeast @Badaboobadabee @cantstopthebeat says: “She’s a puppet of the Russian government. #NinaIsATerrorist #NinaIsAPsychopath #NinaIsATraitor #RIP[redacted] #RIP[redacted] #RIP[redacted] #RIP[redacted] #RIPMetGala #RIPConnorFisk”.

@thedailybeast @Badaboobadabee A video circulating on Twitter on Monday night appears to show Nina Sokolovic on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in Los Angeles, California, handing out money to a group of onlookers from her car. No injuries were reported.

@thedailybeast @Badaboobadabee Let’s type “nina” into Google and see what the mainstream media has to say about me today. Let’s see: the Louisville Chamber of Commerce has asked that the Kentucky legislature declare “Lolita sunglasses” a hate symbol.

@thedailybeast @Badaboobadabee Right, that’s normal.
A Republican congressman named Matt Gaetz has proposed banning Lolita sunglasses from all public high schools in America.

@thedailybeast @Badaboobadabee A red bandana was found yesterday tied to a metal gate outside Mar-a-Lago and two high-school girls from West Palm Beach were detained for making a terroristic threat, which has since generated a free speech controversy.

@thedailybeast @Badaboobadabee A white sundress was found hanging outside a Saks Fifth Avenue and—well, someone just moved it back inside probably.

@thedailybeast @Badaboobadabee Oh, more American normality—Facebook and Twitter have both decided to temporarily deactivate the nail polish emoji out of “public safety concerns.” (“We are aware of their decision,” an Apple spokesperson said.)

@thedailybeast @Badaboobadabee Oh, and let’s not miss this little gem from The Cut: “No, Teens of TikTok, Red Bandanas Aren’t Edgy.” (Actually, Vox, I happen to agree you, there’s indeed something interesting about a culture that’ll go through a murderer-fugitive’s Instagram looking for accessories to wear.)

@thedailybeast @Badaboobadabee A quick stroll to the Fox News homepage reveals a full-screen photograph of me in a red bandana next to a helicopter shot of the Met Gala, above the words “‘BRACE FOR WAR’” in big red letters.

@thedailybeast @Badaboobadabee Oh, how charming: more normality. (The Met Gala happened a full week ago.) Moving on, Breitbart. Every headline is of socialism, and every picture is of me—next? How’s National Review handling all this?

@thedailybeast @Badaboobadabee Oh dear, there’s my face again, in Lolita sunglasses and a bright blue dress from Zara, above the words: “‘Nina Is What the Left’s Been Building Up to For Years.’” Ha, the left wishes—next?

@thedailybeast @Badaboobadabee Jacobin? “The Media Is Trying to Gaslight You About #TeamNina. Don’t Let Them.”

@thedailybeast @Badaboobadabee And no, before you ask, I don’t know how to slam the brakes on any of this—I killed one person, all right, and that was for the very specific reason I laid out in the Machaut manifesto. Does an Uber driver murdering a Rhodes Scholar have to be either personal or political?

@thedailybeast @Badaboobadabee Why doesn’t anybody in the world give me credit for that—because I don’t have a pe-nis? No, Colson Lin didn’t invent it, and no, William Machaut didn’t invent it—I invented Machautism.

@thedailybeast @Badaboobadabee I was the one who spent years poring over Machaut’s books trying to thread together a single philosophy from all of his disparate thoughts—and yet The Intercept interviews Colson who’ll lie through his teeth to tell you that he came up with it?

@thedailybeast @Badaboobadabee Anything—you’ll stoop to anything to avoid giving a woman credit for her work won’t you? What, did Hannah Arendt hear the phrase “banality of evil” from a letter Eichmann wrote from his cell in Jerusalem?

@thedailybeast @Badaboobadabee (And I swear to God, America, if you put Colson Lin’s name on the cover of this book I’m done. I’m done. There’s no negotiation. I’m done.)
It’s okay, Nina.
Take a breath. It’s not America’s fault: just remember—Americans are stupid.

@thedailybeast @Badaboobadabee Colson tried to tell The Intercept last week I have anger issues—right, sorry about your micro-penis, Colsom, but I don’t, find God.

When you hear the name Colson Lin, I want you to hear these words: Narcissist. Liar. Plagiarist. Fraud. Hack. Pretender.

Social striver.

Power.

@thedailybeast @Badaboobadabee Crane your shoulder into my neck, and I’ll whisper an honest headline to The New York Times that’ll shake up all the debates they’ve been having about whether or not “colleges should ban bred headbands from campus”: “#TeamNina has nothing to do with me.”

That’s right.

Quote me.

@thedailybeast @Badaboobadabee You named “#TeamNina,” not me. (And if you want to say “Well who lit the match, bitch?” I’m just going to stare you right in your eyes and say, “And what have you been holding in your hands this whole time, dinners for the homeless?”)

@thedailybeast @Badaboobadabee How many ad-dollars have you made off of #TeamNina so far? Headline after headline, think-piece after think-piece, my God, I feel bored by my own book right now! Even I don’t want to hear anything about me every again—and I haven’t even said a single thing about myself!

@thedailybeast @Badaboobadabee 10,000 articles a day about me, 10 million tweets—and nobody in America has the first clue right now who Nina Sokolovic actually is, just what she look like. They just look at a picture or a video of me and “extrapolate.”
That’s all Americans do: extrapolate with poor perception.

@thedailybeast @Badaboobadabee How many new subscribers have you gained ever since Hurricane Nina swept across the headlines? How many clicks? How many views?

How many panel discussions at Harvard?

Do you even know the first thing about Nina Sokolovic right now?

@thedailybeast @Badaboobadabee Oh, and here’s one for all you straight male journalists out there—how many times have you seen me in Babysitter Sluts 3—and be specific?

@thedailybeast @Badaboobadabee I made two big mistakes in my life.

My second big mistake in life was taking hope in America too seriously.

My first big mistake in life was taking America too seriously.

@thedailybeast @Badaboobadabee Anyway, I know why you’re really here—you don’t want to think about anything, you just want to snuggle inside the warm comforter of “Why did I kill Connor?” and eat popcorn.

I didn’t kill Connor to pantomime a temper tantrum.

I didn’t kill Connor to win one over on the elite.

@thedailybeast @Badaboobadabee And I didn’t kill Connor to start a revolution.

The last thing Connor did before he died was write out a check to me for $12,000, no questions asked. He wanted me to have enough money to go back to Reno, where my ex-boyfriend lived, and get back together with Jorge.

@thedailybeast @Badaboobadabee He added the $2,000 because he wanted me to fly out to Italy in September for his wedding. “I can’t take this,” I remember telling him over and over again, on the verge of tears. “No one’s ever looked out for me like this in my life.”

@thedailybeast @Badaboobadabee “I know,” Connor said. “That’s why this isn’t charity. It’s a reallocation.”

@thedailybeast @Badaboobadabee Connor’s a little bit like a modern-day gay Audrey Hepburn—a Rhodes scholar with sandy-blonde hair and sea-green eyes. I once took a long deep dive into the West Elm catalog of his life story and came out still pulling pink pima-cotton polos out of my hair.

@thedailybeast @Badaboobadabee Scrolling through his photos is like sipping from a spring-green mojito without fretting about the calories. He must have come to a fork in the road of his self-understanding years ago: am I Bill Clinton or a thirst trap on Instagram? Props to him for shrugging: “Why not both?”

Nina, this is just embarrassing.

“The Pure Products of America,” unceremoniously canceled in 2021, was Book 1.

“A Stick of Dynamite in the American Elite” is Book 2.

“A Lament for Oranges” is Book 3.

“The United States of Social Strivers” is my fourth book.

I won’t stop you guys.

The Second Coming’s coming.

Oops—I didn’t just come with 1 stick of dynamite.

I came packing.

Do I have any hobbies besides reading, writing books, designing generational revolutions, and resurrecting time-stable understandings of higher powers?

I mean I dance. I used to smoke and dance on my front porch in New Haven, befriending all who passed.

I loved those people.

I want to wake up tomorrow and finish the video.

I want to see P again. He hates how much I talk about God and feels alienated from me.

I miss E so much. I miss laughing with her about stupid shit.

J quit his job.

I want to buttress him existentially but I don’t know how.

Do I really believe I’m a prophet?

Listen:

Let’s just see how reality plays out. I know I’m holding a hand full of rare cards: the life story, the talent, the coincidences that rain into my everyday experience of life ever since I started writing about the existence of God.

But I don’t know the future.

J quit his job and I’m already contemplating giving up this whole thing and just masturbating the rest of my life away.

I’m afraid of pain.

I’m afraid every damn day.

Let’s just see how the future plays out.

Nina’s a flawed but interesting girl.

If I am a prophet, and I can see why the future might remember me as such if I continue down the path I’ve been going, I’m…

Reluctant’s not the right word: I’m proud of the God I fight for (shared power: I’ll clarify the implications someday).

But I’m scared.

Human as fuck.

I’m human as fuck.

I wish God had given these cards to someone braver than me.

(No! I take it back! Lemme try, lemme try!)

It’s complicated.

If I am a prophet, I’ll be a flawed but interesting prophet who tried his best to minimize typos.

That’s my only bar.

I’m human as fuck.

True prophets are the last human being alive to believe they’re a true prophet.

Also:

True prophets are permanently bowed.

Maybe my role is really just articulating a philosophy for being a time-stable prophet. Let me replace that word with this one:

“Philosopher of God.”

I keep yelling this from the rooftop, but again: many of my coincidences point to nuclear bombs, nuclear war, the dangers of AI, or some other cataclysmic “thing” we’ll be up against as a species in the 21st century. I just feel like that would be irresponsible of me to ignore?

I just wish you could walk around inside my experience of being alive and see how: serious, lost, and scared I really am.

Wouldn’t it be funny if I woke up tomorrow and a humanwide understanding of God and Satan rooted in the metaphysics of power was everywhere? I’d be out of a job.

I’d literally call J: “Holy shit. I’m so confused by reality right now.”

But I’d pass this test:

I’d be relieved.

Would you see me post on Twitter:

“Um, YOU GUYS…”

Yeah, I’m human. Shoot me. (Don’t, please, ever.)

But like.

I’d be fucking happy as hell and relieved. And no, I wouldn’t be a prophet anymore because everyone already knows what I could possibly share.

I’d just be—a writer.

And a dancer.

And a “Dead by Daylight” player.

And a rollercoaster tycoon.

And a friend slash partner.

And a son.

Never a dad though.

I’m too busy writing books (I’d stop writing about God, literally, and try my hand at horror novels).

I’d also be fucking happy as hell because I don’t have to think I’m crazy anymore for paying attention to coincidences.

“Reality. What even are you?” would be my thoughts all the time.

Literally make it happen. Please. Put me out of a job. God is shared power. Satan is hoarded power. I’d be so happy. I won’t live to see the generational implications (or any of the money I was planning to make from being a prophet) but that’s totally no big deal. The joy’s deep.

Btw nuclear war, climate change, or AI is my best guess about the actual substance of End Times (like if you’ve followed me for a while, I’ve made it pretty clear right? I keep on feeling like I haven’t done enough).

I am so serious but I talk in this tone bc what else can I do?

“God is shared power. Satan is hoarded power. Nuclear war, climate change, AI (with a side dish of political violence and 1984-style authoritarianism).” I know I’m the worst messenger ever but that’s the tl;dr of the message, subject line: “God exists and End Times is coming.”

Okay literally I tried.

Don’t worry.

I won’t stop trying until I die (or if something bad happens in my life, which I’ll take as a sign from the Universe to stop trying and just let it be).

Honestly I’m not actually mad at God but I’m a little bit miffed bc shouldn’t the final card in my hand be “Social Power”, but no matter how many times I draw from the deck I can’t seem to pull it?

“Just be patient”?

I’ll be so mad if I live to see End Times and I’m not famous.

Again, just to be clear, I have no specific reason to believe it’ll happen in our lifetimes, except the century does look pretty bleak (apart from my dalliances with coincidences)?

I’ll be so mad if I live to see it and I somehow managed to dodge fame inside these crucial years.

I’m more hoping I’m misreading the coincidences, but I wanted to get the End Times message front and center on the off-chance I’m not just because it feels like the responsible thing to do, to get everyone thinking about how we’re literally all going to die at the speed we’re on.

This all makes makes me sound like I have a messiah complex but I swear it’s literally just me trying to navigate reality like a responsible steward.