You're doing it Wrong

In the past several years, the web had been flooded with badly written articles proclaiming “(X): You’re doing it wrong” where (X) can be as simple as ironing a shirt, making a root beer float, slicing a mango, picking your nose, etc.  It’s as annoying as its insipid cousin: “hacks for making something or other better.” Americans are completely obsessed with optimizing everything we do. So much so, that we’re willing to shame other people for not doing it right.

A friend’s recent vacation Facebook post showed a plate of fried fish with a caption declaring he had caught the fish himself earlier that day. More than one commenter exclaimed that it was a “sin” to have fried it. Of course others piled on with recipes and “hacks” for making it perfect. My friend finally explained that the fish was so small it could only serve as an appetizer, therefore frying was the best option. His wife, who does not suffer fools, joined in by calling them snobs. This is exactly what I mean. You can’t do anything these days without some big-nosed asshat telling you that you need to do it differently. Everyone has an opinion and Google has made everyone an expert. But if I don’t ask for your opinion, please don’t offer it.  

Do you like coffee? I like coffee, a lot, and I like to make it in a Chemex? Is it because it makes perfect coffee? No, it’s because it’s easy to use, gets me away from my desk, and looks cool. Besides I’ve lusted after one since I was ten years old. One guy told me I needed to use a specific boiling kettle for my Chemex. Fuck that. There’s a hot water spigot on the coffee maker which is filtered.  I told him that at home I use a percolator. He then scolded me for that since the

She'd grow a beard if she could

percolator “boils the coffee.” Let me tell you something. I worked at Starbucks, so I know a little about coffee, and I know a lot about bad coffee. I’ve yet to have a shitty cup come out of my vintage 1960s percolator. I care very much about the taste of my coffee, but don’t give a fuck how it is made. Since I started using the Chemex at work, a lot of others have started as well. Why? Because they saw that it can be used as a tool in a totally non-pretentious way. They didn’t have to grind it and brew it over a scale like the bearded pretentious fuckwads you see on the web. You know, the hipster shitbirds who spend hours online arguing about infinitesimal details that make Aquinas and Duns Scotus look like punters. They take an ordinary object, reify it, then build an entire canon around it’s use.

With the advent of the Interwebs, the trivial has become the commonplace. So many people have now glommed onto these consumer cults where they have to know everything about a very specific thing. Some call it “nerding out” I call it folly. It’s as if the world now suffers from a collective form of Asperger’s. There’s a forum dedicated to just about anything you can think of. Do you like to shave with a traditional razor? There’s a forum for that. They’ll even berate you for not mixing your own pre-shave oil and lack of straight razor.  

The most obnoxious aspect of these forums is the signature of the poster. They feel they have to put everything pertinent in that tag line. Motorcycle forum posters give you the greatest of detail on their motor, brakes, intake, suspension etc, in their tagline. Then they spend precious time debating the merits of permutations of parts and geegaws. They no longer experience life IRL, they do it vicariously, so afraid to make a mistake.  Even on cancer survivor forums. You’ll find people that list their ailment, treatment protocols and stuff in their signature like the specs of a musclecar.

Offering your opinion in this manner is a smug assertion that you’re sooooo much better. I should know, since I used to do it and I was an asshole. I wasn’t giving people advice or helping them, I was offering my opinion. If I thought the cigar you were smoking or the whiskey you were drinking wasn’t up to par, I’d tell you; usually with a scrunched up judgmental face. The Interwebs are pretty much my old personality with a bullhorn. It’s no wonder we’re a nation paralyzed by anxiety. Everybody is a fucking critic/expert on everything. And worse yet, they contradict themselves. Once piece of clickbait tells me not to rinse my dishes before putting them into the dishwasher, and then another tells me why I should. It’s a 24/7/365 sausage grinder than churns out nothing but misinformation and anxiety. A constant shitshow of judgement, from both sides of the fence.

Fuck it, let’s eat cake.