the best way i can think to describe the experience of reading moby dick is you’re in line at the dmv and this guy behind you very loudly says “well who HASN’T had a gay experience” and then proceeds to tell you every detail about his life in between anecdotes about how great sperm is and how ropes work and sometimes he’ll say the most poetic shit you’ve ever heard in your life and them jump RIGHT back into explaining how a whale is a fish because 1) it swims in water and you’re still only like halfway through the dmv line
one time in high school, i got lowkey sanctimonious at a friend for something along the lines of “well if people really cared about [x], they would’ve taken the time to educate themselves about it.”
the look he gave me was like he’d been slapped in the face, and i realized all at once what a total bitch i was. turned out my friend did care a lot about [x], actually! and just because he wasn’t terminally online and ruthlessly adept at knock-down ideological spats didn’t make him any less moral than myself. basically the reverse, in this case. he’d expressed some curiosity and uncertainty, and instead of meeting his openness with some of my own, i used it as an excuse for some self-righteous dig. ugh!
so whenever i see shit online along the lines of “well if you aren’t actively seeking broader context all the time that’s lazy/immoral/ignoble” i’m always like… bro would you say that to someone’s face? would you really? maybe try it and see how it feels, huh
Like, I don’t know why we’re constantly surprised when a popular media figure whose playbook is “claim that an oppressed visible minority are secretly responsible for all of my problems” turns out to be getting cozy with Nazis. I mean, if it steps like a goose.
