What began as a simple Slog update has unsurprisingly morphed into another long-winded reflection. I’m (overly) introspective by nature. I reflect (too) often. Before I can fully move forward (clears throat) in LOST parlance . . .
Reason being, I am addressing some writings floating on the Internet where I pretty much show my full ass.
There is no better example of my own idiocy than deciding to title an essay back in 2013 about the necessity of rebels and their appropriation by pop culture . . . “What Time is the Right Time to Ask for Anal?”
Yeah . . .
Ok, I’m promise I’m done with the cute gifs.
It’s still kinda hilarious to me that this got published. It was like a perfect storm of college journalism incompetence. Full disclosure: I chose the title because I hadn’t heard from my campus editor (another student, also unpaid) on any previous columns and thought of the most outrageous title for what is otherwise a mundane article to send her. I imagine she rolled her eyes and said “Let the moron hang himself.” Amazingly, she published my next hyperbolic column (and final, as I threw in the towel and stopped sending them after) about how LOST is the greatest piece of pop culture of the decade, no problem, so my childishness wasn’t a breaking point for her.
Deeper, there are also my clumsy attempts at dating advice and ham-handed feminism advocacy. The rest are columns written for class assignments I double-dipped on because I was (am) lazy. One of the lessons of maturity I had yet to learn was the folly of trying to be something to everyone as well as blindly opining on topics which I am grossly unqualified.
I like a good excuse as much as the next person but the truth is I have no one to blame but myself. Our choices are our choices and we must own them. The only question is whether we learn or grow from them.
Part of me has wanted to excoriate my past self for a while now but another part needed to be spurred to action by this recent article in the New York Times. Author Kashmir Hill uses the recent case of unjustly fired AP journalist Emily Wilder to illustrate how the Internet is forever, how such a comprehensive record can and is used against people, and how the system often rewards the effort of dredging up past embarrassment or controversy.
Social media often lays bare the gap between a person’s public persona and their private conduct. In our hyper-scrutinized atmosphere of 2021 (and after a year locked in doors due to a pandemic) the discrepancy between words and actions is clearer than ever. An unequal world between the powerful and the powerless, between the rich and poor, has led to calls for some accountability, frankly any accountability at all. Others have weaponized this tactic to attack people like Wilder.
Whether or not the world is set up to enable or discourage such attempts at accountability is irrelevant (SPOILER: It isn’t). We must make the attempt to be better. We must try. We must not live in shame of our mistakes. Wounds need air. (The old adage may not be medically accurate but serves as a good analogy).
When looking for role models who properly dealt with and handled their poor attempts at provocation, I look to James Gunn, director of the Guardians of the Galaxy films. He dealt with similar ghosts of Internet past which led to a firing from the third Guardians film by Disney. He did not run from the consequences handed down to him. He did not deflect or deny but accepted and agreed. He displayed that he changed, moved on, then earned back for his current self what his old self almost lost him. Disney rehired Gunn for Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3, due in May 2023, preceded by a holiday special on Disney+ in December 2022.
Seth Rogen also has experience with how some things age and some . . . don’t.
“There are things in our films that I look back on and I’m like, ‘Well, that ranges from debatable to outright objectionable!’ I know our heart was in the right place and we were trying honestly to be on the progressive side of things but we failed spectacularly at times.
[But] I don’t look back and think, “Do I wish we could re-edit our movies?’ I mean, if anything, we should have to live with the fact that we did it and let people point out it was terrible and we’ll just have to deal with it, you know?”
– Entertainment Weekly, August 2020
The difference is Rogen’s movies often have the benefit of being funny on their own whereas these old columns are only funny in the so-bad-I’m-cringing way.
More than anything, this exercise is an interesting look at exactly how immature I still was at 20 (when I wrote these atrocities) as well as my utter disregard at the time for anything that could be deemed “my future.” If I had bothered to think twice, I would have foreseen a future where I was A) not 20 or B) slightly less of an idiot.
Wishing them gone or that people would not find and read these feels as foolish as wishing I never wrote them to begin with. If they were gone, I wouldn’t get to move on. I can and must do better.
If I had to pinpoint when I left behind that version of me, I look back to when the last column was published and that would be February 2013.
I remember the end of that spring well – that’s when I met my fiancée. Not coincidentally, a process of maturation followed.
You know how they say “Behind every great man is a great woman?” In my case, within an appreciably more aware age, the great woman is up front, dragging the confused man behind her.
I’m forever grateful to Angela Straw for her love and support. I’m better because of you.
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