I genuinely think it's time to cancel Orwell Not because he was personally problematic or had problematic politics (though there's an argument for both) But because his Internet fanbase are the most insufferable human beings known to modern science
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You get that this is the exact same thing as the Ayn Rand quote about "A = A" right She said it a lot worse because she's a worse writer but the basic idea is the same There's a lot of overlap between their current fanbases
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Like, here, I'll translate Orwell and Rand without the fake math and the writerly flourishes: "I think I'm obviously right, but all these other people think I'm obviously wrong They must be lying, in order to oppress me" See, it's not a universal truth, it's highly contingent
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SOMETIMES they ARE lying in order to oppress you And sometimes you're just a dumbass Who then becomes an asshole about being a dumbass As Douglas Adams put it, "The universe had not yet taught Tricia the most vital lesson, determining which of these two circumstances applies"
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Cf. Douglas Adams being the first one to tell that viral email forward story about Arthur Dent being absolutely furious about the random guy stealing his biscuits right from in front of him as this alpha male dominance flex only to find his own biscuits were under his newspaper
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This Captain America "planting yourself like a tree by the river of truth" shit Absolutely intolerable horseshit Maybe plant yourself like a tree and don't talk Plant yourself in that comments section and don't follow me to my own page
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Every Internet Man thinks they're Winston Smith and it's even worse than thinking they were Galileo or Socrates Jesus Christ Orwell was lucky he died before he could see it, and it's unlucky for us he died after the book was published
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I've totally changed my mind from when I was a kid I would not get a time machine and bring back nicotine patches to the 1920s to get Orwell to quit smoking I would try to hook him on menthols
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You know the difference between you and Winston Smith? Winston had a girlfriend You think Julia would've fucked him if he said all that 2+2=freedom bullshit to her out loud instead of moodily thinking it to himself after sex He knew better
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Winston is also intellectually stunted because he's been forced to follow the orthodoxy of the party for so long that he's very rusty at thinking deeply. It's pretty obvious when you read the book.
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So, if you're repeating Winston's lines, you're aping a guy who's only thought about these things for a few minutes.
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