Matty Healy is Going to Get Me Cancelled on TikTok

Transcript:

I swear to God, Matty Healy is going to get me canceled on TikTok

I never—I shouldn't say never. I rarely get into it with people online. It has happened a few times, but I rarely get into it.

Here's the thing, I don't know what this is going to be yet, because the other day I sat down, started recording and started rambling about some other comment that had to do with the 1975. And I almost made an ass of myself.

This is not the first time I've almost reacted really poorly, and I walked it back very quickly because I took another second to actually reread the comment and be like, “Oh, they're not being an asshole.” I'm just assuming something about somebody that I don't know.

Anyway, I, I began rambling about that and then it turned into something else. And then I intended to come back and kind of finish that thought or continue it. But now, today, I've really, really gotten into it with somebody.

Basically, I did not like how someone directed a comment at me in the comment section of a TikTok. The thing that rubbed me the wrong way was how they were asking me a question.

I very rarely leave comments on TikToks because I'm lazy and because there's always more I want to say than can fit in a comment. And so sometimes I'll just like leave a comment to then make a video with it on TikTok and get a little bit more runway to get to whatever point I'm trying to get to.

And the problem is we tend to approach things as very black and white.

So the Matty Healy situation, not talking specifically about what's going on there, what he has said, because honestly, I don't have the bandwidth to talk about it. And frankly, I don't think I'm the best person to talk about it.

I feel like it would be more irresponsible for me to come on to the Internet and be like, ”Here's what I think about these things, “ and that may inform how you decide to discern your own thoughts and feelings about this subject, which I don't feel comfortable or confident weighing in in that manner. I feel like it'd be more irresponsible if I did.

I think one problem is that I've gotten this microphone which does give me this sense of authority that I do not need.

The question that was asked to me not once, but twice, how it was phrased to me was why do you get to decide that this is misplaced outrage? Why do I get to decide? And that bothers me because it's not asking me why do I have that opinion. It's asking me why do I get to decide that opinion? And to me, that has the potential to be so dark and dangerous. I really just don't think we should talk to each other that way.

Asking me why I've come to that conclusion is a much better opening than why do you get to decide what you think? Like, what the fuck? If I posed that question to that person who made that comment to me, they’d be so fucking upset. They'd be “How dare you?” They'd be throwing a lot of things in my face that were not a part of the conversation. And something that I notice happening in this exchange, right, is that I was watching this person assume things about what I think and assume things that I was agreeing with based on like two short sentences.

And I understand where there was a gap for this person to fill with that assumption. But again, I understand the risk involved when I open my mouth on the Internet. For me, my motivation in this situation as an example for something or just like a talking point, my passion is definitely more so rooted in the communication behavior and the human behavior that happens on these platforms. They're not really great as a forum. They're not really great to be conducive to actual conversation, which is not one sided, but at least a two way street. And while we believe we are having a two way conversation with each other, we really are just having parasocial conversations and parasocial in the sense of it is one sided.

And there may be this acknowledgment of an imagined or an assumed audience or an assumed receiver of that message. And while we are talking to what we assume is the receiver, we cannot fully anticipate who is actually going to receive that message, whether or not it was intended for them in the first place. I think we need to get more comfortable with disagreeing with each other and not making it a life or death situation every single time we don't see eye to eye on something because it's not that serious.

Like literally last night laying in bed, like it was like before I even got in this pissing match with someone on TikTok. I've already been thinking about doing something like this, I'm not giving it a name in this recording or the other recording because I don't know if this is going to be video. I don't know if it's going to be audio. I don't know if this is a podcast. I don't know if I'm putting it up on my YouTube channel yet.

Like, I don't know, but I'm I was laying in bed and I'm like, Why? Why do I want to do this? Whatever this is? Why do I want to try doing this thing? What am I looking to get out of it? Do I want to be in authority? Do I want to have influence in that way? Do I want to persuade people?

Do I think what I have to say and my perspective on things is enough of value to attempt to share, to a relatively large group of people and have them follow along. Do I think what I have to say is 100% brand new or revolutionary or going to change a bunch of people's minds? Is that something that I want to do? And I don't know. And I think that notion has kind of held me back from opening my mouth, especially over the last few years. I have very strong opinions and I'm not going to share every single one of them with the Internet because I don't think we should share every single fucking thought we have on the Internet. Not because it's bad or dangerous, whatever, because most of the time it's just noise. It's just noise.

To give myself an answer and something to kind of lean back on is something that I know to be true for myself, even when I don't feel like this is who I am right now, or this is what I'm embodying right now, even though I don't physically actively write all the time every day and will go weeks without filling out my journal or whatever. I'm a writer, and even though I don't always feel this to be true, what I do know is that I write to help make sense of the world, to help make sense of my world. Part of that process, that sorting out, that configuration and shifting through a lot of different threads and dots to try to connect.

Sometimes I do that with speaking, with talking and talking to a friend and talking to myself, inner dialog just going on and on and on until like, I find, you know, some golden nugget of clarity for myself that I'm like, yes, that, that thing. That's the thing, of course, duh. So to me, in a way, this is kind of what it is. The purpose really isn't for me to say, “Hey, I know better” or “Hey, stop doing that.” You know, it's going to that's inevitably going to come out. And what I have to say, but this is for me.