Member-only story
Mind Games
The Art of Hating Everything
Anger is the armor that helps me survive in a world that doesn’t understand me
When I was younger, I imagined there was a world waiting for me in which other people liked what I liked. A world far from the cesspool of high school where people had good taste. Where I wouldn’t be alone in liking uncool dead people like Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, and Henry Miller. Where these interests — which were, in fact, rather mainstream—wouldn’t place the social mark of Cain upon my forehead.
That place was the internet, but I didn’t know it yet.
Like many millennials, I grew up in a weird in-between zone. The internet existed, but in a primitive dial-up format. We couldn’t spend too much time online because we didn’t have our own computers and our parents always kicked us off to do their grownup bullshit. I had an overwhelming sense of shame about using the internet. I didn’t watch porn. I barely did anything but chat with my friends on AIM. Still, it gave me a grimy feeling. The internet was a black hole.
In college, I tried to use the internet to talk to people about my old-timey interests. I wound up connecting with older men on Myspace who, I didn’t realize fully at the time, were talking to me only because they hoped I would shoot…
