So, I go to YouTube, and I type in the words 'SELF CONTROL,' 'cause I wanna listen to the Laura Branigan song, and sure enough that's pretty much the top result. The video's got, like, almost one hundred fifty million views, all's right with the world.
But then, for reasons I cannot fully explicate, I scroll down a bit-I guess to see if there's a live version I haven't yet watched-and I start seeing all these videos about 'discipline' and 'epic ownership' and all this self-help pop psychiatric bullshit-videos with titles like 'TOP TEN BUSINESS INSIGHTS FROM MARCUS AURELIUS' and 'WATER FAST FOR NEURONAL RESET' and 'HOW STOICISM TAUGHT ME TO BLOW MYSELF' and a bunch of other pathetic techbro garbage stinkin' up the joint.
There was some video about Miyamoto Musashi-you know the famed swordsman-as an exemplar of self-discipline-and I'm like, "Didn't that guy fight on both sides of a civil war? Does bloodlust plus duplicity equal max ownership or whatever nonsense syllables are trendy these days?"
And what's all this community college Philosophy 101 shit about stoicism and Marcus Aurelius? Is being bored to tears the new hotness? Or could it be that these grifting techbro assholes are so alienated from their own emotions that anytime they vaguely start to feel something they freak out, and need to hire some drill sergeant cosplayer to spank their asses at a corporate retreat? What's the point of having all the money if you can only relax with a jackboot up your ass?
Could it be that mountains of cash only exacerbate what's already malfunctioning within these man-children we've allowed to run the Internet? And haven't we had just about enough of this shit?
Which brings me to my actual question, Larry:
Do you remember when they used to have jukeboxes at the Waffle House? They don't have 'em anymore! And I noticed that they started disappearing right around the time YouTube started blowing up. And YouTube basically blew up because you could find every kinda song on there-it was the world's jukebox. And with the advent of smartphones and mobile data you carried that jukebox everywhere you go-do you see the connections I'm makin' here?
Do you see, Larry . . . ?!
