few things are more terrifying than when the trivia kings try to start one-upping you once they know you cover the subjects they memorize. I'm always left to think...folks, only one of us here isn't doing this for free
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One thing that is more terrifying is when the same performative academics who praise "book reading" (i.e. being seen near the right books) dig into your Google scholar page -- only when working a takedown angle, of course -- to condemn your lack of "expertise"
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Some of the most visibly and vociferously woke people, esp the "allies," are also among the most expertise-valuing, credentials-loving types you'll ever encounter, and it's heartbreaking because thinking yourself toward radical liberation should consist of anything but that
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My takes on college-as-myth, performative reading, testing, and so on have produced some strange bedfellows between folks on both sides of the fence who are united by a shared love of making sure others know they are Elite and Better Than (born of insecurity, etc.)
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And one can say, oh, you have the privilege of saying that book reading and test taking and academic titles are meaningless because you did all that. Sure, I did all of that and, like what I went through as a kid, I wouldn't wish the consequences on my worst enemy
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what I mean is that the whole thing ends in heartbreak because you end up in a bizarro version of the corporate world, where people speak different language and work slower but are otherwise the same, yet much more subtle about it, and you dreamed that they were revolutionaries
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There isn't a single radical cause I wouldn't immediately implement, a single rule of self-abnegation I won't follow, but once you realize the New Testament is advertising language for some, horoscopes for others, and serious only to a few helpless kooks, you're done with it
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I don't know what it is, because it's nobody's fault, just some irresistible force that slowly transforms people who are vaguely idealistic into branded but empty versions of themselves. One of the many tragedies of US culture is that so many of us grow up to be salesmen
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End of conversation
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