These disciples of a jewish zombie want you to hate sex

For about the last week and a half campus hereabouts has been bombarded with flyers, posters, and earnest fresh faced kids pushing something called “Porn Nation” and encouraging people to go to My Sex Survey. It’s obnoxious and in your face and supposedly hip and cool but it’s also more than a wee bit deceptive and sketchy as all hell.

To start with Porn Nation is bankrolled by Bravehearts LLC, an organization that seeks to raise awareness of ‘porn addiction’ but also to bring “the gospel of Jesus Christ” to thousands. But the flyers make no mention that this is basically a religious pitch to a sense of guilt and shame using bullshit statistics to coerce people into thinking that they are a) addicted to porn and b) can only be saved by getting down on their knees and praying fervently to some made up dude in the sky.

Pretentious Ass-hatted Wankery

The question has recently come up (like 5 min ago and raised by myself) about why I don’t blog much. About academics. I blog about other things, like nerdery. And cake. And occasionally politics (no links for you tyvm). But not so much with teh skool.

Oh yeah, by way of lame-ass exposition I’m an academic (kind of) but a rather ambivalent one. One thing I don’t like is other academics, or people who call themselves academics. Worse than this is the community of mewling egotistical twits that seems to cling to the label of ‘academic’ on the blogosphere (insert theme music).

For now I’ll restrain myself to speaking of an ideal type (don’t worry names are named a few paragraphs from now). This ideal type first came to my attention as part of the ljsociology community. If you don’t know lj it’s basically a clearing house for attention-whores and people who want to endlessly blog about their self-diagnosed mental disorders. Yes I have an account. Make of that what you will.

Anywho. The lj version of academia is a lot of critical theory wankery and people asking you to take their ‘omg sooo sceintifik sooperduper quiz about being a furry’ and how that’s uhhh, sociological I guess. There’s also a fair amount of deep question asking, the type of deep questions you probably tossed around when you were stoned with your roommates in your late teens but hopefully realize are really dumb once you get to grad school (or if not you’re ok writing essays that look like this.) Also disucssions about which schools to go to. The primary requirement for that is ‘how easy is it there’. A bit of free advice. If your main requirement for grad school is how easy it is to get in and get out you should do yourself a favor and just fucking apply to wal-mart now. Pretend you’re Barbara Ehrenreich if it makes you feel better, but save yourself the liver damage and debt.

Anyway. Academics with blogs. Particularly budding academics (like me, and my ilk but less mean I’d guess) have a horrible tendency to use their blogs, and especially the community of co-dependent hangers-on that they call their commenters as a sort of self-therapy and hugbox all rolled into one (fair warning on the hugbox link, it’ll probably offend you. It vaguely offends me, but only in as much that I close the office door before giggling quietly to myself over it.)

Anyway, all this ranting brings me to a group blog run by a bunch of academics (I originally was gonna call people out but fuck it, let the commenters have dignity). While the blog itself is vaguely amusing in that ‘oh my god is that what an aborted fetus looks like’ kind of sense the post I’m talking about regards a grad student upset that someone dismissed his discipline, his website, and, one would assume, his overall ability as a teacher to inspire interest in the subject (FWIW I totally agree with the sentiment that I’m not here to make my students happy, telling them that may not be a great idea however) but did so by handing in a paper authored by “Hugh Jass” <gasp>.

My advice would be what he already know, just drop it. Walk away. If that’s the worst thing a student has ever said to you count yourself lucky. Honestly. But just reading through the comments you know that’s not going to be what happens. The circle-jerk of enablers has started circling like the disassociated loons they are and offer their increasingly hysterical and inane suggestions.

Let’s just look at the grab-bag of crazy shall we?

Outrage? Really? Over a kinda humorous dismissal of the class? You get outraged over people dying, not over undergrad dismissal. Reality check on aisle 4.

Threatening? Oh. My. Fucking. God. Hello commenter, the Boston police department called, they’d like you to help them identify a bunch of children’s toys that may be terrorist devices. But hey, let’s report this kid and get the cops on him. Totally worth it to engage in second hand oppression over a goddamn piece of fucking paper. And two the two twits who agreed,? I hope the dept. chair would have the good sense to laugh this out of their office.

Is this about power? Well that would certainly make it all high and mighty. And maybe justify the fact you’re letting yourself get all worked up over it. And hey, maybe it is, but it’s probably not going to address the power issue by getting worked up over an angry student. It will however provide the lulz for those of us putting off working on our dissertation who needed to be reminded what a pack of fools most of us actually are.

So I guess the take home message is this; academic blogs can be amusing exercises in stupid (both the author’s and whatever is being blogged about) but the true comedy and tragedy come from the commenters.

Orientation (re?)

In a bit of a blog gap right now.  I’ve got too many of the damn things trying to do too much.  Of course if I had my druthers this would be shit that gets talked out with friends over drinks in a mellow atmosphere but that’s an artifact of the analogue world and we now live int he digital.  So blogs it is.  Maybe trying to get this one a little more face time.  We’ll see.

It’s bullshit on the radio this morning.  People hawking fake diseases and disorders, or maybe they’re real but overblown.  We seem to have to medicalize everything.

I have a headache, it’s a disorder.  I got the shits after eating at taco bell.  Gotta be a syndrome.  I stubbed my toe getting out of bed.  Probably cancer.  Fuck em.

At least the hypos are more tolerable than the man earlier.  Talking about how pop-stars getting piercings is leading to young people cutting.  Bullshit statistics about how 60% of all people who are depressed or self harm or think about suicide have been molested.  Also how dying your hair is a call for help.  Tattoos, piercings, television, the internet.  It all points to how we’re sick.

Medieval thoughts about purity and morality and how we’re a sick society and only the moral superiors know best.  The creeping fascism not just of the state but of culture, religion.  Wanting to tell us how to live.  Rallying under the cry of ‘For the children!’