There really isn’t much to say about the latest round of Tell Jesse Singal to Kill Himself that Left Twitter decided to play this weekend. It’s vile and stupid and depressing, of course, but that’s literally all it is. Jesse isn’t going to commit suicide — he’s going to keep writing, people will keep listening to him, the people raging at him online will continue raging, and one day we will all die of old age. It would probably be better to just look away. But if I were to say something (which I am, because why not) then I would just say one little thing, or one little string of things, about irony and online abuse and political subcultures in general.
And that one little thing, or one little string of things, is this: The sorts of abuse that Jesse gets, and that pretty much anyone who violates some progressive orthodoxy gets, is almost universally expressed in the unbearable language and syntax of the Ironic Leftist. You know it when you see it — deliberately unbothered tone, heavy emphasis on the word ‘bitch,’ no full sentences or capital letters and definitely no period on the end of the last sentence, all that. But the thing is, no one actually calls for suicide ironically, any more than anyone ever detonates a car bomb ironically. That’s not even speculation on my part — I’m not saying that, in my experience, suicide-baiting doesn’t usually come with a wink. I’m saying that it is literally impossible to ironically encourage someone else to kill themselves online, because the sort of dispassionate posturing that characterizes internet irony culture is completely incompatible with the reality of the act. If you are telling someone else that they should end their own life, then you really care deeply about what you’re doing. Of course you do. It’s not a joke, or an edgy little game, because none of these people want to joke around or play edgy little games with Jesse Singal.
I’m not necessarily saying every person who sees a pile-on and joins in really wants someone to kill themselves. But every single person who joins in really is mad, really is invested in a meaningful sense, even if they’d really prefer the audience pretend otherwise like they pretend otherwise. They type out “Yikes, do it dawg” or whatever new phraseology they’ve picked up because typing out “I am extremely upset that I can’t hurt you so I would love it if you could hurt yourself” is really embarrassing and upsetting thing to type, something you don’t say out loud because even just giving it a voice is an admission that you’re weak and powerless and angry even though you wish, deep down, you weren’t.
That’s why, somewhere halfway through these little three-day cycles of recreational sadism, you see the mask slip a bit. Someone crosses a line, someone opens up a bit, someone forgets to toss in the right ironic signifier and suddenly people start admitting, yeah, they’re mad. But don’t worry, because this is good anger. Good outrage. Good hatred. It’s the kind you cultivate, the kind you want, because you have trans friends or detrans friends or an uncle in the military or a God up in heaven who has a special plan for you and how could you really love them if you aren’t telling a stranger to jump in front of a bus or a put a bullet in their skull? Across the political spectrum, we’re all supposed to buy the insane notion that pointless, vindictive cruelty is actually super radical and everyone indulging it has some elaborate plan where the first step is heaping abuse on strangers and the second step is establishing paradise on earth.
But the idea that suicide-baiting or death threats or anything else constitute a righteous and considered stand against injustice is so obviously and unambiguously a defense mechanism for powerless, ineffective people that I don’t know why people even try it. Everyone knows what’s actually going on here: When you don't do anything and have no accomplishments and completely fail to even inconvenience the people you're opposed to, the people you hate, then you end up falling into a very specific type of impotent, spiteful rage that is absolutely agonizing to hold inside. And when you're uncontrollably, publicly angry at someone you can’t actually hurt, the only way to avoid looking really pathetic and childish is to pretend it's an expression of some considered political ideology rather than a knee-jerk emotional response to powerlessness. You have to pretend that you’re choosing to be angry. Like it’s some duty you’re taking on. The other guys might be maniacs, but you’re absolutely losing your mind because you want to, because you sat back and evaluated your options and decided the best way to fight transphobia or corporate greed or the guys who make Bud Light or whatever is to cap off an afternoon of impotent fuming with some incoherent sadism. For sure.
In reality, no one chooses to get angry. No one sits back and works hard to conjure up that heat in their stomach because they know it’s the right thing to do. It just happens — like it just happens to me, when I scroll through the replies that Jesse gets or read about California’s new approach to algebra in middle school or whatever else might piss me off. I’m not immune. No one is. The only actual choice any of us have in the matter is whether we recognize inchoate rage for what it is and find ways to deal with it effectively, or whether we dive headfirst into any idiotic subculture that will roll out the exceptions to any rule that stands in the way of our raging. But whatever option you pick, can you at least be honest? Can you stop pretending to be the Rosa Parks of bomb threats? Che Guevara with a collection of ‘kill yourself’ memes? Can you at least admit you’re being dragged along by the same human urges that you find monstrous in others, that the people you hate have erected the same permission structures you’re clinging to with one or two words switched out?
The answer is, of course, no, because these are unbelievably unhappy people for whom even a moment of introspection would hit harder than a bad ayahuasca trip. But I still hold out hope that we might eventually get to the point where everyone else isn’t compelled to pretend alongside them.
This is super well written.