My mom is a gif

I've been using Tinder quite a lot lately. I know, how relateable, who among us has not used Tinder. It's quadruply ironic, first because dating apps are weird, second because we use it anyway because we want to have sex, third because we don't want to have sex, fourth because it's boring to find this stuff ironic anymore. Well, to me, anyway, but I think the sentiment is shared; all of us are disgusted by the clutch of relateable topics that hold us together, that prevent our true feelings from rising to the surface and tearing us to shreds. The memes, the emojis, and the gifs. Who among us has not sent a gif; but did you feel the whiplash? The sudden pang of emptiness, the subsequent guilt, the guilt of self-negation.

We are alienated from our gifs, comrades, because they do not belong to us. And this is worrying. Whenever facebook or apple redesigns an emoji, there's a moment of panic: how could they get this so wrong? The eyes are too wobbly! The fact that something you use to know who you are is entirely under someone else's control is unveiled, and the reality is unbearable. Where does it stop? How far beyond social media does this go? But perhaps I am too zealous. I can understand the appeal of sending a gif, drawn from pop culture and selected specifically for its efficacy. It's a sure bet. There's no way you can fuck up, socially speaking, by sending a gif. Everyone will understand you, it was made by experts for christssake. There's only a teensy, tiny, price for you to pay: your soul.

For Kierkegaard, the self is made of three components. The finite, which means our specific locus in time, space, and possibility, and the infinite, which means everything we can imagine, think, and could possibly be, make up the first two components. The self is what they already are, and what they could be next, and at the impossible space between the two is the third: the spirit. The spirit is a synthesis, a becoming, and it can never be pinned down, not even in writing. It escapes all definition because it is always beyond conceptualisation which would reduce it to a mere function of the infinite. But Kierkegaard correctly detects a frightening tendency in our times: none of us want to be ourselves. We choose every day to be someone else: to notice almost only our thoughts and to forget our bodies, to think only of who we could be and forget who we are, to forget who we really are and just be like everyone else. A gif is a perfect example of this own violence against the soul, against the true self. I do not exist, I am in fact a mirage of forms that have united of their own will, my consciousness is an accessory to my existence with no potential and certainly no meaning.

There is a long history behind gifs, if you think about it. Two twin traditions, tumblr and the television industry, iterating and iterating on forms to arrive at increasingly perfect entertainment, simultaneously shaping the subjects they entertain, a history that has always been climaxing with its ability to cross bridges and unite people. Gifs bring us together, everyone can understand them. The roots of the jokes of modern TV are in the TV of our parents' generation, we have been trained for this moment. I understand you, I can say, when I receive a gif, I know what this means. But if we don't do something, there's one question that will keep coming back, no matter where we turn or what we say. You'll find yourself in a room with someone, in a bed with someone, in a marriage with someone, with one, singular, annihilating question ringing through your head, as much directed at yourself as anyone else, a modern sun, illuminating all directions: Who are you?

On Mardi Gras

If you're reading this, it's almost certain that you're aware I got mad online last night. Considering the response I've gotten from friends and family has ranged from supportive to concerned to hostile I've tried to expand and clarify my thoughts here.

In the twentieth century, a miracle happened. Revolution was brewing. Communism took country after country, the capitalist powers responded with social democracy. The middle class was the biggest it had ever been, the rich feared the poor.

In this context, the gay rights movement came about. Inspired by the Stonewall riots, a bunch of absolute legends took to the streets in a protest-cum-party which lead to police beatings, arrests, and public shaming. This instituted the annual tradition of Mardi Gras.

Essentially, of course, Mardi Gras is a pride parade. The significance of pride here is that queer culture is an underground culture, shamed into darkness for its deleterious effects on the family unit and gender roles. This cannot be overstated: being queer is hard. To be queer is to have a part of yourself utterly contingent on the enthusiastic approval of others- I am lucky I am not more queer and less materially privileged. But it's always possible to be queer, anywhere: people learn how to communicate queerness in hidden ways, to create secret communities. Pride is the direct inversion of shame: it follows pride should have at least two essential characteristics: visibility and accessibility.

We are certainly granted queer visibility by the Mardi Gras of the 21^st century: there is a lot of glitter, a decent amount of skin, dancing, disco music. But the accessibility of Mardi Gras is significantly managed by powerful interests. There remains among the floats themselves clearly a degree of access by left-wing causes, which is excellent, and these floats are of great value. But even in this case, our relation to the floats is for many, unfortunately possibly most, merely the consumption of a spectacle, that is to say, purely visual, rather than a moment of political action. Particularly the fact that the left wing floats are realistically speaking insufficiently contextualised for most viewers, who being the neoliberal subjects they are are unlikely to seek out the information for themselves.

Visibility, reconstituted as representation, PR, optics, lies, is something contemporary capitalist liberalism is perfectly happy to concede to queers in the middle class of the Global North (while internationally still operating as a queerphobic system, implementing reactionary regimes happy to shaft queer people all over the world.) But firstly don't get comfortable- if it were in the interests of the ruling class, the relative acceptance queers have now in the west would be entirely wound back. And secondly, it's manifestly obvious to me that representation without access is totally unacceptable. Put briefly it makes no difference how diverse the elite is if it's still repugnantly destructive.

Writing this now it seems obvious, but the movement of bodies last night was incredibly managed and geared above all towards consumption. I walked around the city and I saw the animated corpse of a liberatory movement. Of course it is genuinely ridiculous that I expected anything else. To think in the logic of neoliberalism, the error was my own mis-calibrated expectations of what Mardi Gras in 2017 is, in other words, the error was my hope.

But even with more moderate expectations the situation is pretty dire. Sydney is a bad place to go out at the best of times. A natural consequence of this combined with the systematic logic of guaranteeing visibility while deprioritising access is that unless you plan ahead, prepare, know how to go about it, know the right parties, the right attitudes to hold, the shadows, it's actually surprisingly hard to have a gay time at Mardi Gras. (In a better world, it would be hard to have a straight time at Mardi Gras. Isn't that the whole point?) I certainly failed. That is to say: On the night of Mardi Gras itself, when it comes to access, queer people have been pushed back underground. Where we belong.