San Bernadino: Same Old Song And Dance

Breathe in, breathe out.
Breathe in, breathe out. 

I had a piece in my mind that was going to involve willfully misinterpreting Jessica Jones through a critical theory lens, but then two things happened. Anita Sarkeesian actually beat me to it (with a great deal more sincerity than mine was going to involve, or at least I think so -- one can never be sure) so due to some similarities I'm going to have to rework some of my ideas, and some assholes shot some people in San Bernadino.

When it first happened, and I first read about it, I was fine. I could still do this. In fact, until I opened the window to write this, I still had every intention of writing that Jessica Jones piece. The event itself wasn't the issue; it was watching my social media feeds last night, as every person who posted it with the intention of pushing an agenda -- some people I knew, some people I only knew in passing, and some people just internet randos or minor celebrities -- used it as an opportunity for gravestanding.

Actually, gravestanding is too dignified at this point. I'm going to refer to it as gravesquatting from now on.

Every post that was an argument to take away guns, or to get rid of the Muslims, chipped away at my ideas for a darkly sardonic piece about how Jessica Jones was really a harmful and problematic depiction of women and people of colour that propped up a white supremacist patriarchy. Chipped them away to the point where those ideas are scattered on the floor of my mind right now and need time to re-form.

So I'm writing this instead. I'm going to take every opportunity to ignore what happened and, more importantly, people's reactions to it, on my social media feed and instead just play more Fallout for the next three days or so until some other piece of annoying news catches the interest of the Internet at large. It's times like these that I think maybe I should have more friends out in the world instead of online, but I imagine they'd probably just do the same thing.

Every time. I'm getting so very tired.