I was watching Glow Up (because I have run out of gentle competition shows to watch and reluctanctly gave it a shot. It’s not bad, but it’s so out of my interest zone. I think there is a lot of art on display, but the restrictions of the medium irritate me. Such as all the models are thin and stereotypically pretty. And that while the judges urge the makeup artists (MUAs) to be creative, it’s within a very limited scope. VERY limited. Also, while I appreciate that Val is passionate, she borders on being a caricature with her Ding. DONG! and other catch phrases) and more than one person uttered this banal phrase.
“You can do anything you want.”
NO YOU CAN’T.
I understand wanting to bolster kids’ esteems, but giving them false promises is not the way to do it. Look. I knew from since I was a little kid that I could not be president.
“Minna,” I hear you say. “You could be president if you want! Anyone can be president.”
Or, “Minna. That’s being ridiculous. Most people can’t be president.”
That’s my point. There are things I can’t be. Yes, technically, I could be president, but let’s be real. America is not ready to elect a fat, queer, areligious Asian AFAB person who defies all definition. Hell, i’m not ready to elect me. You may say it’s a technicality, but I say it’s reality. We weren’t ready to elect an established white woman, for fuck’s sake! No way in hell I could ever be elected. I realized this at a very young age, so it exposed ‘you can be anything’ as a lie.
Before my experience with, well, death, I considered myself a cranky old lady who was a mild version of the ‘well, actually’ dude that everyone hates. I had a mania for the truth in part because I grew up with very unreliable narrators (my parents). My mother forgets the bad things that happen or spins them in a way to make them positive. Years later, when i mention the original incident, my mother will look at me incomprehensibly as if I had grown another head. My father, on the other hand, has selective memory as well as genuine memory issues. He will forget things even if you tell him several times–and that’s something he’s interested in. If he has no interest in it in the first place, then you can forget about him even attempting to remember it.
As a result, I am overly nitpicky about details that don’t matter. That actually runs in the family, but I’m the only one who will admit it. I didn’t realize until I was in my late thirties that I could not rely on my mother’s memories any more than I could my father’s. It was a jolt, but it also was a relief. I spent so much time wondering if I was crazy because my mother would out-and-out deny things I knew had happened. One minor example is when I graduated from college, I was magna cum laude. I was pretty damn proud of that. After my graduation ceremony, my mom said that if I hadn’t gotten a B in my Intro to Psych class, I probably could have graduated summa cum laude. Needless to say, that deflated me and I was no longer proud I had graduated magna cum laude.
I asked my mother about it several years later and she had no recollection of ever saying it. In fact, she claimed that there was no way she could have said something like that. When I insisted that she had said it, she replied, “Well, if I did say something like that, it was probably to make you feel better in case you were feeling bad about not getting summa cum laude.” Which is utter horseshit, of course. It was clearly something she had made up on the spot and even if it were true, it’s not a good rationale for saying something like that. It’s my mother in a nutshell, though. Introducing something superfluous into the conversation, based on a worry that she has or would have.
I am a pessimist, and I have a negative outlook on life. I know it; I own it; I’m trying to change it. Or rather, I’m trying to modify it. I don’t want to ever be a blind optimist, though I know they live longer. It’s a funny twist of life–optimists live longer*, but pessimists are more realistic about life. Anyhoo, I’ve been thinking of negativity vs. positivity a lot this week because of several things I’ve seen/heard on the internet. One is a post on Ask A Manager about a coworker being relentlessly (I initially typed resentfully, which is a Freudian slip If I’ve ever written one) positive and forcing others to be positive as well. The reaction in the comments was swift and brutal–the coworker must be murdered, and no jury would convict. I had to laugh, albeit ruefully, because that was my response as I read the letter as well. The comments touched on the toxic positivity mentality that is prevalent in America (and I went down the rabbit hole of suggested links, also about this kind of forced positivity), which struck a chord in me.
I can hear you thinking, “Minna, what does this have to do with video games?” My response is, “Relax. I’m getting there. I’m just taking my sweet time as is my wont.”
I listened to the latest RKG podcast for producers, and one of the questions was from a supporter who had secured a job in games journalism. His main question was just asking for tips on how to be a good writer in the field, but he also touched on his guilt at being a white cis het man in a field that is, well, glutted with them. I’ll get to the second part later, but it’s the first part that ties in with the positivity/negativity theme. Gav went off on a rant about how he hated it when people immediately tore down something as their go-to. He was speaking specifically in the industry, and he said it was his pet peeve how people just wanted to rip on something new. Rory was in agreement with Krupa being a bit more tempered. Krupa pointed out that it’s not easy to write a negative opinion/critique well, which I agree with, but he wasn’t as on board with the ‘don’t be negative’ thing (possibly because he’s the problem solver in the bunch).
Gav said there was someone on Twitter that he follows who always is snarky about something new coming out. Again, I’m assuming in the field. The example he gave was the new Jurassic World movie in which apparently Laura Dern, Sam Neill, and Jeff Goldblum are appearing in. He’s super-excited about it, and the aforementioned guy on Twitter posted something snarky about it. Gav was like, “Why can’t you just enjoy it for a second? Maybe it’ll suck, but why not just revel in it right now?” He didn’t say ‘revel’, but you get the picture.
Full disclosure, I’m touchy about people policing other people’s Twitter/FB TLs/Feeds because I’m a weirdo who doesn’t like what other people like and because I’ve had it done to me. Someone got mad at me because I posted so much about cold and snow on my FB page (heard about it through someone else), and I saw another FB friend post something about why do people who hate Christmas have to talk about it? Why couldn’t they just keep it to themselves? I hadn’t posted anything really anti-Christmas that year, but she certainly knew how I felt about it. I’m sure I wasn’t in the forefront of her mind when she posted her rant, but that’s kind of my point.
Here’s the thing. Those of us in the minority are usually well-aware that our opinion is not usual. Many of us keep 90% of that shit to ourselves for that very reason. Small example. I was at Cubs yesterday and exchanging pleasantries with another customer. I said something about the sun being so bright, and she said, “At least there’s no snow!” I laughed and said nothing, and we went our separate ways. Had I been true to my feelings, I would have blurted out, “I fucking love snow!”, but it wasn’t necessary to say that to a stranger.
Here’s the other thing. When you are in the majority about something, you vastly overestimate the times you hear about the opposing opinion.** Or rather, you don’t notice how many times your point of view is being vocalized. If you live in America, you can’t fucking escape Christmas starting from the day after Thanksgiving (actually before, but I’ll be generous). It’s everywhere, and it’s annoying as fuck if you don’t actually like Christmas/are indifferent to it/don’t celebrate it. Let’s say you read three posts on Facebook in a week about how Christmas sucks. You probably read a hundred pro-Christmas posts in the same time-frame, but because you like Christmas, it doesn’t even register in your brain.