Community Writing

Oh, the drama I have caused this bleak midwestern school as it slowly tumbles downhill! Like throwing rocks at an avalanche, I am definitely not part of the solution.

People have routinely asked me to edit my posts- for names, for compromising situations, whatever. I have consistently relied on what I feel is the only pure justification we still have- humor. Humor justifies anything, it is the only solid foundation left in the otherwise normatively stripped and naked world.

Of course, any appeal to humor automatically invites the obvious retort 'but its not funny'. This very phrase fills me with what I can only imagine sacrilege must feel like to the theist. There is only one time when this devious phrase is appropriate: when there has been a deliberate attempt at humor that fails.

However, none of my posts have been specifically an attempt at humor, and there isn't much actually all that funny in its contents. The posts are little slices of life in the downward spiral we call The Philosophy Department in The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It is, what I will hereby dub, 'community writing'. We know there are no universal narratives, no singular stories left to tell. There is no Great American Novel left to write, and appealing to a wide audience is bound to leave you unpublished and broke. So screw the wide audience, I say. My target audience is you, dear loyal reader, whom I know personally and outside the domain of the ethereal INTERNET; because it is only you that will see the substance in my otherwise trite narratives, and only upon you might they have any effect.

And upon achieving some effect, on having what little substance herein uncovered, there lies the humor. Humor, then, is justifying in these cases, but is not the motivation behind them.

I will not edit or self-censor my writings, though I will take out any names upon request. Doing otherwise will neuter what little effect and control I have over my own situation. Fuck you for asking me to do so.